Harry Potter Economics

I haven’t seen the new HP movie yet but I tell the students that the release does remind me that I actually graduated from Hogwarts but have chosen to live a normal (muggle) life. Every now and then I do choose to use my powers though.

One time to do this is when we are covering exchange rates. I use my pen as a wand and say “Economicus” which happens to be the magic word which makes the student do some sort of task eg a push-up / sing a nursery rhyme / whatever, depending on the make-up of the class. The students do have the ability to use a counter-spell however, which for exchange rates is “Depreciation is good for exporters and bad for importers, appreciation is good for importers and bad for exporters”. This turns the spell back on me and I have to complete the task.

Other possibilities are factors that shift the supply and demand curves, or any definition that you think is very important for the students to learn.

I usually do it once or twice a lesson for a couple of days with exchange rates and find that it helps them remember it - they are pretty motivated to see me do a roly-poly in the classroom…there may have to be some gender discrimination though, boys are usually a lot happier to do physical activity than girls!