I've heard of a number of favourite starter activities that teachers have to introduce Economics on day one of the course, so we've included one here that you may find valuable.

It's called 'The Bridge of Sighs' and can be used to introduce the concepts of scarcity, factors of production and ceteris paribus.

The objective is for teams of students to build a bridge that spans a river using only the resources given to them by the teacher (straws, sticky tape and scissors). The winning bridge is the one that holds the most amount of 'heavy objects' (e.g. grapes, as in the pictures below).

At the end of the activity the teacher can lead a plenary.

An engaging activity during lesson one may help ease your students in to what they are about to find a very challenging subject. Remember to tell them that not all of your lessons will involve construction!

The full instructions (including the 'river' template) are available here.