This booklet was developed from a 1996 grant program for international education exchange. U.S. curriculum writers worked with writers in partner countries to design training and create a handbook for curriculum development. The "Train the Writers" program was piloted with 14 educators from 7 countries, and this publication, "Connecting the Pieces: Building a Beter Economics Lesson," serves as the workshop text. Teachers and students from Estonia, Romania, and Ukraine worked with the U.S. team to develop their instructional writing skills. This handbook is based on an understanding of the economic content, a mastery of classroom instructional techniques, knowledge of underlying pedagogical and developmental learning issues, and ability to shape these into a meaningful sequence so that other teachers can follow them. Chapter titles include: (1) "What is K-12 Economics?"; (2) "Economics Across the Curriculum"; (3) "Thinking Skills, Learning Skills, and More"; (4) "Models for Active Teaching and Learning"; (5) "Determining What Students Have Learned"; (6) "Generating Great Teaching Ideas"; (7) "Lesson Writing Basics"; and (8) "Flight Testing Lessons." Appendices contain the voluntary national content standards in economics and Content Standard 3 with Benchmarks. Contains 21 references. (EH)