Lesson 2:When You Decide What to Buy, Things Happen

Part 1: Focus

Maria Lopez chose the clock radio at the school fair. She did not choose the stuffed monkey. Paul Brown chose the cheeseburger. He did not choose the hot dog. Each person had good reasons for the choice that she or he made. The things that the friends chose—clock radio and cheeseburger—had values. But the things that Maria and Paul did not choose—stuffed monkey and hot dog—also had values.

Compare the values of the things chosen to the values of the things not chosen. What do you think?

Maria's parents also had a choice to make. They owned an empty lot of land and wanted to do something with it. One choice was to build a house on the land. Another choice was to build a store. The county might be interested in building a community swimming pool. Or a farmer might want to plant soybeans on the land.

The land can be used for only one of the ideas at a time. Maria's parents need to decide what to do with their empty lot. What would you tell them to think about?

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Teacher's Notes


This is the second of four lessons covering National Council of Economic Education Voluntary Standard 1 for Teaching Economics. Standard 1 is as follows:

Productive resources are limited. Therefore, people cannot have all the goods and services they want; as a result, they must choose some things and give up others.

At the completion of this lesson, students will know the following benchmarks:

1. People's choices about what goods and services to buy and consume determine how resources will be used.
2. Whenever a choice is made, something is given up.
3. The opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative given up.
4. People whose wants are satisfied by using goods and services are called consumers.

Focus

Use the story about Maria Lopez and Paul Brown to encourage student interest in the lesson. The basic economic behavior is making choices. In its simplest form, a choice is a decision between two options. A student facing such a choice will pick one option and sacrifice the other. Get students thinking about why they would pick one option over another. What are the relative values?

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