Inspiring Students
to Better Reading Comprehension
National Economics Teaching Association
Austin, TX
Oct. 24, 2013
Dr. Kevin Gericke
Professor, Economics & Statistics
West Kentucky Community and Technical College
270-534-3201
DO NOT
OPEN UNTIL
INSTRUCTED
One in Four Read No Books Last Year
Tue Aug 21, 2007 8:58 PM EDT
Alan Fram, AP Writer
WASHINGTON — There it sits on your night stand, that book you've meant to read for
who knows how long but haven't yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from
beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing — you are not alone.
One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated PressIpsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most
avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.
The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called
ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read
more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read
was seven.
"I just get sleepy when I read," said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of
Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a
telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would
rather spend time in his backyard pool.
That choice by Bustos and others is reflected in book sales, which have been flat in recent
years and are expected to stay that way indefinitely. Analysts attribute the listlessness to
competition from the Internet and other media, the unsteady economy and a wellestablished industry with limited opportunities for expansion.
When the Gallup Poll asked in 2005 how many books people had at least started — a
similar but not directly comparable question — the typical answer was five. That was
down from 10 in 1999, but close to the 1990 response of six.
In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled "Reading at Risk" found only 57
percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a
decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.
ECO 202 - Syllabus
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This ________assignment is due October 12 (p. 6).
Where the student can look for additional information if they miss a class (p. 3).
This class will look at the principles of __________ (p. 1).
A student must _____ homework assignments or will lose 3 points (p. 3).
A student will fail the class if they _________ (p. 4).
This must be removed or the student loses 5 points (p. 4).
Dr. Gericke's office schedule is located on this document (p. 5).
The final exam is _____________ and is worth 150 points (p.1).
Down
1.
A student must do this when turning in multiple page homework assignments or will lose 2 points
(p. 3).
2. This is not the same as attendance, but students are also encouraged in this (p.1)
4. This person is responsible for keeping track of their grades (p. 7).
5. When making the required office visits, students are to bring a copy of their ______, printed from
Blackboard. (p.2).
7. How many office visits must a student make during the semester (p. 1)?
8. Students will be expected to perform _________ thinking (p. 2).
10. This must be turned off or the student loses 5 points (p. 4).
15. The make-up exam is given during the _____ week of instruction and is comprehensive (p. 3).
Informal Classroom Strategies
3-2-1 Strategy
Example
3 List 3 factors that will increase a country’s
economic growth.
2 List 2 effects of increased economic growth.
1 List 1 reason this is so difficult to achieve in
“country _X_”.
Formal Classroom Strategies #1
Guided Reading Strategies
Anticipation Guide
1. Identify the main issue in the reading.
2. Consider what students are likely to believe about the topic.
3. Write general statements about their beliefs.
4. Have students respond to those beliefs.
a. They can work in groups or individually.
b. Let them know they will have to defend or reject their beliefs based on
the reading.
5. Have the students read the assignment, with their anticipation responses on
hand.
a. Have students make notes from text that supports their belief, or
causes them to re-think their belief.
b. Have a class discussion after the reading.
Made in the U.S.A.
By Rana Foroohar and Bill Saporito April 22, 2013. Time.com
On the outskirts of Nairobi, there’s a bright red cell-phone tower that
delivers coverage to thousands of the city’s 3 million people. Inside the
tower sit batteries with a high-tech design and a simple purpose: to
provide backup power to keep calls connected even when the
electrical grid goes down. The surprising thing is where these batteries
are made. Not China, Japan or one of the other big Asian
manufacturing powers. Instead they come from a plant in
Schenectady, N.Y., a Rust Belt city once seen as a relic of an earlier
industrial age. Now a General Electric factory on the site of a former
turbine plant is churning out the batteries 24 hours a day. “People can’t
get enough,” says Randy Rausch, a manager at the plant. “We’re
shipping all over the world.”
The U.S. economy continues to struggle, and the weak March jobs report–just 88,000 positions
were added–spooked the market. But step back and you’ll see a bright spot, perhaps the best
economic news the U.S. has witnessed since the rise of Silicon Valley: made in the usa is
making a comeback. Climbing out of the recession, the U.S. has seen its manufacturing growth
outpace that of other advanced nations, with some 500,000 jobs created in the past three
years. It marks the first time in more than a decade that the number of factory jobs has gone up
instead of down. From ExOne’s 3-D-printing plant near Pittsburgh to Dow Chemical’s
expanding ethylene and propylene production in Louisiana and Texas, which could create
35,000 jobs, American workers are busy making things that customers around the world want
to buy–and defying the narrative of the nation’s supposedly inevitable manufacturing decline.
The past several months alone have seen some surprising reversals. Apple, famous for the
city-size factories in China that produce its gadgets, decided to assemble one of its Mac
computer lines in the U.S. Walmart, which pioneered global sourcing to find the lowest-priced
goods for customers, said it would pump up spending with American suppliers by $50 billion
over the next decade–and save money by doing so. Airbus will build JetBlue’s jets in Alabama.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina’s furniture industry, which has lost 70,000 jobs to rivals abroad,
Ashley Furniture is investing at least $80 million to build a new plant. “If you go back 10 years,
we didn’t think we’d be manufacturing in the U.S.,” says Ashley’s CEO, Todd Wanek.
This isn’t a blip. It’s the sum of a powerful equation refiguring the global economy. U.S.
factories increasingly have access to cheap energy, thanks to oil and gas from the shale boom.
For companies outside the U.S., it’s the opposite: high global oil prices translate into costlier
fuel for ships and planes, which means some labor savings from low-cost plants in China
evaporate when the goods are shipped thousands of miles. And about those low-cost plants:
workers from China to India are demanding and getting bigger paychecks, while U.S.
companies have won massive concessions from unions over the past decade. Suddenly the
math on outsourcing doesn’t look quite as attractive. Paul Ashworth, the chief U.S. economist
for the research firm Capital Economics, is willing to go a step further. “The offshoring boom,”
he says, “does appear to have largely run its course.”
Formal Classroom Strategies #1
Guided Reading Strategies
Before/During/After
Before Reading Questions
How can a business move from one point on their production possibilities frontier to another?
How can a business move to a point outside their production possibilities frontier?
During Reading Questions
When the brewery stopped production of its Davy Jones Lager, did this illustrate a movement along a
frontier or a shift in the frontier?
In order to increase production, the brewery had to obtain more resources. Describe which resources
it increased.
After Reading Questions
Did the increase in resources (economic growth) have an opportunity cost? What were some of the
possible trade-offs to acquiring more resources?
Heavy demand for Heavy Seas beer drives expansion of
Halethorpe brewery
Production to increase from 17,000 to 45,000 barrels in two years
August 06, 2012|By Brian Conlin, The Baltimore Sun, Patuxent Publications
Heavy Seas Loose Cannon, the flagship beer of Clipper City Brewing Co.,
hasn't stayed on shelves of stores across 18 states and Washington, D.C.,
for long. The thirst of beer drinkers for the India pale-ale-style beer showed
no signs of diminishing this year as it made up nearly 50 percent of the brewery's sales,
according to a company spokeswoman, Kelly Zimmerman.
To meet the demand, the Halethorpe-based brewery stopped production of its imperial cream
ale, called Davey Jones Lager, until next summer. Unable to satisfy beer drinkers up and
down the East Coast and as far west as Michigan, the brewery, begun by former Sisson's
owner Hugh Sisson, began a two-year expansion July 1. The expansion likely means a boost
in its employment from its current total of 36, Zimmerman said.
In its second expansion in less than a year, the brewery added 15,000 square feet to become a
40,000-square-foot facility, enabling it to more than double its beer production through
increased speed and more fermenting equipment. In August 2011, the brewery added 10,000
square feet of space to its 15,000-square-foot facility for shipping and receiving, Zimmerman
said.
Despite the increase in production accompanying the expansion, Zimmerman said the
company has no plans to increase its distribution range for at least the next 18 months. So that
means those outside the mid-Atlantic region will have to do without.
Formal Classroom Strategies #1
Guided Reading Strategies
Topic/Restriction/Illustration
Topic (skim the article to find the main topic)
Restriction (find “restrictions the author uses to this main topic)
Illustration (provide illustrations to strengthen the topic)
Summarize the reading, using the topics/restrictions/illustrations
Excerpt from: Tucker, Irvin. 2010. Economics for Today, 6th edition. Cengage Learning. P. 422.
The unemployment rate does not measure the full impact of unemployment on individuals.
Prolonged unemployment not only means lost wages, but it also impairs health and social
relationships. The United States fought its most monstrous battle against unemployment
during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Return to Exhibit 7 and note that the
unemployment rate stayed at 20 percent or more from 1932 through 1935. In 1933, it
reached almost 25 percent of the civilian labor force; that is, about one out of every four
people who wanted to work could not. This meant 16 million Americans were out of work
when our country’s population was less than half its present size.1 For comparison, at the low
point of the 1990-1991 recession, about 10 million Americans were officially unemployed.
But those statistics tell only part of the horror story. Millions of Americans were “discouraged
workers” who had simply given up looking for work because there was no work available, and
these people were not counted. People were standing in line for soup kitchens, selling apples
on the street, and living in cardboard shacks. “Brother can you spare a dime” was a common
greeting. Some people jumped out of windows, and others roamed the country trying
valiantly to survive. John Steinbeck’s great novel, The Grapes of Wrath described millions of
Midwesterners who drove in caravans to California after being wiped out by drought in what
became known as the Dust Bowl.
A 992 study estimated the frightening impact of sustained unemployment that is not reflected
in official data. Mary Merva, a University of Utah economist, co-authored a study of
unemployment in 30 selected big cities from 1976 to 1990. This research found that a 1
percentage point increase in the national unemployment rate resulted in
 6.7 percent more murders,
 3.1 percent more deaths from stroke, 5.6 percent more
death from heart disease, and
 3.9 percent increase in suicides.2
Although these estimates are subject to statistical qualifications, they underscore the notion
that prolonged unemployment poses a real danger to many individuals. As people change
their behavior in the face of layoffs, cutbacks, or a sudden drop in net worth, more and more
Americans find themselves clinically depresses.
1
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C.), Series D46-47, p. 73.
2
Robert Davis, “Recession’s Cost: Lives,” USA Today, Oct. 16, 1992, p. 1A.
Formal Classroom Strategies #2
Graphic Organizers
Concept Maps
Formal Classroom Strategies #2
Graphic Organizers
Classification Notes
Read the attached article and summarize the main ideas, with specific illustrations under each
main idea.
Excerpt from: Powell, Bill. 2009. China’s Economic Recovery Gathers Steam. Time Magazine: Jul 16,
2009. Online: www.time.com
China's Economic Recovery Gathers Steam
If numbers alone tell the story, then China appears to have beaten the odds. It has
apparently shrugged off the worst global recession in at least 30 years — one that had, at
the end of last year, crippled growth in a country for which exports are a critical part of its
economic lifeblood. The government responded by announcing a $585 billion spending
package, driven by massive infrastructure investments across the country, and, for now
anyway, that policy is paying off. China announced today that its GDP in the second
quarter grew at 7.9%, just a shade below the 8.1% goal the government set for growth in
2009. "The strong acceleration in underlying economic activity is now unmistakable," says
Yu Song, a Goldman Sachs economist based in Hong Kong.
That acceleration — GPD growth was just 6.1% in the first quarter — is unmistakably good
news for China's major trading partners, particularly those countries in Asia that export
raw materials to China's manufacturers.
Much of that investment growth came from the brute force of the government, which is
directing bank loans to state-owned companies, which in turn have been building
everything from high-speed rail networks to new highways and bridges across China.
To analysts still skeptical of China's recovery story, major questions hung over the
announcement today. One concerns long-standing doubts about the reliability of
government economic data — what one U.S. hedge-fund manager calls "the Beijing fudge
factor." In the first quarter of this year, Beijing reported 6.1% GDP growth, but electricity
consumption overall in the country appeared to decline. How a country the size of China
could grow by 6% yet use less electricity was puzzling. And in the first six months of this
year, overall rail-freight traffic declined in China. Again, how that squares with accelerating
growth is not clear.
The bigger issue that divides economists is whether China's growth spurt is sustainable.
For the moment, at least, China is again growing smartly — and that's more than much of
the rest of the world can say.
Formal Classroom Strategies #2
Graphic Organizers
Concept Cards
What is the concept or principle?
Where is it located? Chapter? Page?
Write the problem.
Write each step of the problem.
Right side: explain
(How, what, why)
1.
2.
3.
1. What is step 1 about
2. How did you get from step 1 to step 2?
3. How did you get step 3?
Solution
2nd problem: put steps to solution on back
Problem from front side
1.
2.
3.
Solution
Formal Classroom Strategies #2
Graphic Organizers
Concept Cards
Determining probability using normal distribution
Ch. 6-2 p.314
Assume average call time is 25 minutes, with
std. deviation of 4.5 minutes. Find probability of
a call will be less than 22 minutes.
1.
1. Draw area looking for
22
2.
z
25
22  25
  0.67
4.5
3. P(z<22)=0.2514
2. Find z-score using info from step 1
3. Find area to left of z
2nd problem: Find probability of a call lasting less than 21 minutes
1.
21
2.
z
25
21  25
  0.89
4.5
3. P(z<21)=0.1867
Formal Classroom Strategies #3
Intensive Strategies
Jigsaw
1. Divide class into groups.
2. Have each person in each group read a portion of a common reading.
3. As each student reads, they take notes, jotting down main ideas, using
graphic organizers, etc.
4. Have the representative from each group that read each section get with
others that read the same section to compare notes, adding where
necessary.
5. Have everyone return to original group, and report to others what they
read.
Excerpt from: Heilbroner, R.L. and Milberg, W. 2008. The Making of Economic Society. Pearson: NJ. P. 61-68
CHAPTER 4 • The Industrial Revolution 61
PACE OF TECHNICAL CHANGE
In addition to its small scale of industry, another aspect of the times delayed industrial manufacture
from making known its social presence. This was the absence of any sustained interest in the
development of an industrial technology. Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, little of society's
creative energy was directed toward a systematic improvement of manufacturing techniques. It is
indicative of the lack of interest attached to productive technology that so simple and important an
invention as the horse collar had to await the Middle Ages for discovery; the Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans, who were capable of a magnificent technology of architecture, were simply not concerned
with the techniques of everyday production itself.



ENGLAND IN 1750
Why did the Industrial Revolution originally take place in England and not on the Continent? Why did
the pin factory attract Smith's attention? To answer these questions, we must look at the background
factors that distinguished England from most other European nations in the eighteenth century.
The first of these factors was simply that England was relatively wealthy. In fact, a century of successful
exploration, slave trading, piracy, war, and commerce had made her the richest nation in the world.
Even more important, her riches had accrued not solely to a few nobles, but also to a large uppermiddle stratum of commercial bourgeoisie.



RISE OF THE NEW MEN
One such, for instance, was John Wilkinson. The son of an old-fashioned, small-scale iron producer,
Wilkinson was a man possessed by the technological possibilities of his business. He invented a dozen
things: a rolling mill and a steam lathe, a process for the manufacture of iron pipes, and a design for
machining accurate cylinders. Typically, he decided that the old-fashioned leather bellows used in the
making of iron itself were not efficient, so he determined to make iron ones. "Everybody laughed at
me," he later wrote. "I did it and applied the steam engine to blow them and they all cried: 'Who could
have thought of it?' "



THE INDUSTRIAL ENTREPRENEUR
It is interesting, as we watch the careers of these New Men, to draw a few generalizations concerning
them. This was an entirely new class of economically important persons. Peter Onions, who was one of
the inventors of the puddling process, was an obscure foreman; Arkwright was a barber; Benjamin
Huntsman, the steel pioneer, was originally a maker of clocks; Henry Maudslay, who invented the
automatic screw machine, was a bright young mechanic at the Woolwich Arsenal.
Formal Classroom Strategies #3
Intensive Strategies
Carousel
1. Assign a reading.
2. Create “stations” around the class that each student will rotate to, writing
down information pertaining to the topic at the station.
3. Divide class into groups; one at each “station.”
4. The students will write down the important information for that “station”
and then move on to the next “station.”
5. The first information at each “station” will be the easiest to remember and
write down.
6. Students will find it increasingly difficult to add information to each
“station,” requiring deeper levels of thought.
Literacy Strategies Websites
http://www.adlit.org/strategy_library
http://www.learningpt.org/literacy/adolescent/strategies.php
http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer
http://edhelper.com/teachers/graphic_organizers.htm
http://graphic.org/goindex.html
http://departments.weber.edu/teachall/reading/prereading.html
http://www.udel.edu/leipzig/reading.htm