Drip, Decide, Discover: Turning Behavioral Economics into Classroom-Ready Lessons

How can a $199 flight end up costing $340 by checkout — and what does that reveal about how students make decisions? In this interactive session, participants will experience a live demo from Perfect Pairings: Economics in Action, a monthly lesson series developed through collaboration between the University of Chicago’s Econ4Everyone project and FEE’s Learning Center. Using a behavioral economics case study on drip pricing, educators will engage in a classroom-ready simulation exploring unbundling, consumer surplus, sunk costs, and choice architecture. The session models a repeatable three-phase instructional framework—Explore, Apply, Decide—that helps teachers turn short economic narratives into meaningful classroom experiences centered on reasoning, decision-making, and real-world application. Participants will also experience a modified Structured Academic Controversy, a cooperative discussion strategy that deepens thinking by having students examine competing claims before arriving at a reasoned conclusion. Why Attend Walk away with a ready-to-use lesson. Every participant leaves with a complete, classroom-ready Perfect Pairings lesson. Learn a framework, not just an activity. The Explore, Apply, Decide structure is reusable across economic concepts. Teachers who learn it once can build with it all year. Help students think like economists. This session gives teachers practical strategies for moving students beyond memorization toward genuine economic reasoning and evidence-based decision-making.