Economics Lesson!

 In this lesson we taught about economics in Mexico! The first thing we did was have students take a pretest. This was a quick matching activity about different vocabulary students would learn in the upcoming lesson! Then we began introducing our tier 3 vocabulary to the students!

The vocab words were hidden by a piece of construction paper, and each word a student was able to come up with and reveal it! More students participated this time in revealing the answer so they seem more engaged! At first I only went over the first five vocabulary words: economics, goods, services, surplus, and scarcity. Then we began our interactive T-Chart where we separated goods from services. After that we discussed the difference between consumers and producers while examining the different services we had on our T-Chart! Then it was time for a brain break, we listed different items from the goods and services and put it in a sentence that either meant we have a surplus or a scarcity. If the sentence made it seem like there was a surplus, students tapped their shoulders, if there was a scarcity students would pat their knees. After that we finished up the vocabulary board covering the different types of resources: Natural Resource, Capital Resource, and Human Resource. We went over a lot of examples for each having students share as many resources as they knew for each relating to a specific job such as doctor or farmer! Then we had students combine all of these resources for a chef! (Human Resource-Chef, Natural Resource-Plants and animals, and Capital Resource-Different kitchen appliances and tools). Then we divided the students into groups of three, one for each resource, and held up a picture of a different resource.

We then asked each group if this picture was a part of their group and why. After this we looked at our primary source, which was a map of Mexico and showed all of the different resources and where they were located. Students were given three minutes to work with a partner and find as many different resources as they could! We then discussed all of the different natural resources that the students were able to discover.

After this we began our read aloud ‘The Aztecs History Detectives’ by: Phillip Ardagh. We learned a lot about Aztecs in the history lessons so students were pretty prepped on what life was like during the Aztec period. Although, we had not covered Aztec economics yet! We discussed what currency was and students had a strong understanding of this vocabulary word. So before beginning the book we prepped the students to look for the answer to this question: What currency did the Aztecs use? After, the read aloud all students correctly answered cocoa beans. In our civics lesson before this, we had students ‘work’ for the government as a part of the different branches of government, and it was funny when they wanted a pay check because they went to their job and should be compensated! So we did exactly that in this economics lesson and paid them in the currency of the Aztecs, in beans!! Each student received 30 (cranberry) beans. These beans would be used to pay for the materials they needed in order to make maracas! We had a poster of our rates and students would come up to us, with their beans in hand, and add up how many they needed for each material and then assemble it!

The materials were the ‘goods’ and to incorporate ‘services’ students would have to pay one bean in order to receive teacher help! To make the maracas, students had to buy a plastic egg, two plastic spoons, rice, and tape (to decorate the maraca!). They were making two maracas each so they actually had to buy double of each of their materials. Overall, they did amazing with making the maracas, they were very neat and patient. They also would share their materials and give others their extra beans when they were finished. We were very proud of them and their maracas! Then we ended our lesson with our post-test matching and that was the end of our economics lesson!