My students began their economics unit today. I brought in a black, plastic bag and did not disclose the contents to my children. I told them that I had a surprise inside, but was not sure who to give the mystery contents to. I needed student help in determining how to disperse the contents of the bag.
Each table group was given a large piece of bulletin board paper and markers. Students were given 5 minutes to brainstorm as many ways as possible to deal with our issue of scarcity, i.e. one black bag and 19 students.
Then I asked each table to share their 4 favorite ideas. My students suggested we have a race, arm wrestle, pick a number between 1 and 100, take a timed math test, etc. While they were working I went around the room and removed chairs from various tables. When students returned to their home tables, they found that along with a scarcity of black bags, they also faced a scarcity of chairs. At this point I told them that
Allocation Mechanisms help us deal with issues of scarcity.
Payment is the most common way today that we acquire goods and services.
At the end of our lesson I opened the black bag to reveal yet another bag full of Laffy Taffy which we shared. I explained that
scarcity would be just the first of many economics vocabulary terms we would learn in our upcoming unit on economics, entrepreneurship, and advertising.
We closed out the lesson with a read aloud--
The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins. Interested in more of my classroom economics plans? You can check out my recently posted resource on TpT as shown below. Happy Wednesday, everyone!!! Shannon :-)
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Creating-a-Classroom-Economy-Economics-Adv-Entrepreneurship
