I feel fortunate to have stumbled across this very timely lesson in early June. As usual, I was running out of time at the end of the year, and looking for an alternative to me simply rushing through a lecture on exchange rates. This lesson really has everything students need to know about exchange rates. It includes an explanation of the mechanics of currency exchange, then provides an analysis of who wins and who loses. After a brief introduction (very timely as many students were heading overseas for the summer), I had my students each read the 2 pages of text, then work with a partner to answer the questions that follow. This led us to a fabulous class discussion about the current weak dollar, and whether that was good or bad for America and Americans. It was a great day to be an econ teacher!

This lesson wisely uses graphs to illustrate the concepts of supply and demand as they relate to currency. In addition, the students are asked to calculate some exchange rates, as well as analyze winners and losers in various scenarios. The beauty of this lesson is that, if you were running out of time to cover this material, you could simply assign it for homework. It would require very little explanation, and most students who actually did the homework would be well prepared for a class discussion the next day on the current status of the dollar relative to other currencies, and how this affects various actors in the world economy.

The one minor drawback was that it seemed that some of the (many) questions for the students to answer at the end were redundant. I eliminated some of them. Also, since this lesson was written in 2002, it might benefit from a more contemporary introduction.
Overall, however, a fantastic lesson that I will be using for many years to come.