October 2024 Updates and Notices
Tuesday 1 October 2024
Welcome to the October 2024 newsletter!
In late September, we welcomed Christopher Williamson and David Farrell, who teach at I-Shou International School, Taiwan, as our 94th and 95th teachers to join the InThinking IGCSE Economics community. Taiwan also became the 20th territory to join the InThinking IGCSE Economics community. These are new milestones for InThinking. Welcome, Christopher, David and all new teachers to this platform!
Content on the website now exceeds 485,000 words. To put this into context, the 320-page Cambridge-endorsed IGCSE Economics textbook published by Hodder Education contains approximately 150,500 words.
Here is a fun and memorable activity for teaching or reviewing one of the most important concepts in Economics - opportunity cost. This simple but effective classroom activity requires students to make an important choice between two sweets (candies) or snacks, to reflect on the benefits of consumption, and to be aware of the opportunity cost of their decision. The Candynomics activity can be found here.
A new Paper 2 exam practice questions and mark scheme for Unit 3.4.3 (The advantages and disadvantages of trade union activity) based on the recent Boeing strikes has been added here.
A new set of 20 Paper 1 Multiple Choice Questions for Unit 4.3 (Fiscal policy) has been added here.
A new interactive true or false quiz for Unit 4.5.2 (Supply-side policy measures) has been added here. There are 25 T/F questions, with a succinct explanation for each answer to support your students' understanding of this challenging topic in the syllabus.
Other updates during the past month can be found here.
Student Access
Teachers can activate Student Access to give their learners free access to the website. There are several key functions to this:
Student have access to all notes related to the contents of the course. Essentially, they can use the website as a e-textbook for the entire course.
It allows students to directly access most, but not all, pages (such as examination papers and mark schemes, as well as other teacher support materials).
It enables teachers to create tasks for their students (refer to the Smart Quizzes section of the website).
It helps to consolidate student learning and facilitates revision (such as the Paper MCQ tasks, which all come with answers that have explanations).
It allows teachers to monitor the progress of their students using the grade book.
To get started, go to the Student Access tab in the top left corner of the home page.
You can also register other Economics teachers in your school to gain access to the website, which is updated every week, 52 weeks a year. The annual subscription therefore represents extremely good value for money and will save you hundreds of hours of planning:
Currency | Annual | Per week | Per day |
USD | 270 | 5.19 | 0.74 |
EUR | 220 | 4.23 | 0.60 |
GBP | 210 | 4.04 | 0.58 |
News about the new syllabus
It won't be long now before we will be able to share details of all the changes and updates to the new Cambridge IGCSE and O Level (0455) syllabus for first teaching in 2025. Make sure you keep an eye out for this over the next month, and/or watch for updates on our social media platforms.
To stay up to date with site developments and professional discussions about the IGCSE Economics course, teachers are welcome to join our Facebook and WhatsApp support groups:
Finally, we know at InThinking that the strength and growth of the community of teachers using our sites rely on word of mouth. If you are enjoying the website, please share your insights through your own social networks. We are certainly keen on hearing from you, guiding the site's future developments. Testimonials for the website can be found here.
In addition to IGCSE Economics, there are existing InThinking IGCSE websites for Geography (authored by Paul Christmas) and History (authored by Jo Thomas and Keely Rogers). There are more subjects in the pipeline as well.
With best wishes for the month ahead.
Paul Hoang
