Which policy wins?

I made a little tool called Which policy wins? It essentially gives a problem and then throws up 3 policy options (plus the option to do nothing) and asks students to pick a winner and say why.

A few ways you could use it:

•       As a starter. It’s pretty easy to put up at the start of a lesson, and students can respond however suits the day: a sentence on a mini whiteboard, a quick paragraph, or a hand up with a reason. No prep needed.

•       As a four corners activity. Tape A, B, C and D to the corners of your room and students vote with their feet. It’s much harder to sit on the fence when you’ve had to pick a corner.

•       As a debate. Groups of four, one policy each, and they argue their corner.

•       For “whilst” practice. The whilst statement (“Whilst policy A does X, policy B is preferable because…”) is great for showing a preference while still acknowledging the other side, and this gives you endless prompts without making a worksheet. I wrote about it in my post on sentence-level writing activities (scroll right down to the bottom!).

•       For inductions, tasters and open evenings. It ranges across lots of policy areas and assumes no prior knowledge, so it’s a quick way to show new students how broad economics is and easy to get students discussing policies

It can also be split into micro or macro, so if you only teach one side, or you’re early in the year and haven’t touched much macro yet, you can keep it to the bit your students can access.

I designed it to be flexible rather than to do one neat job. Have a nosey and see which use fits your classes.