Lesson 2, Part 5: Assessment

Read each sentence and circle either true or false.

1. Buyers have to make choices, but sellers do not.

True..........False

2. When you make a choice, the thing that you do not pick has no worth.

True..........False

3. The opportunity cost of a choice is the worth of the thing that you choose.

True..........False

4. Consumers are people who make goods and provide services.

True..........False

5. Sellers are also called producers.

True..........False


Read each sentence and circle the letter that is the right answer.

6. Which one of these things is done by a buyer?

a. hire workers
b. buy machines to make goods
c. choose which good or service to buy
d. build a building that people work in


7. A simple example of a choice is having to pick between

a. one hundred things.
b. fifty things.
c. two things.
d. thirteen things.


8. The worth of the thing given up is called

a. opportunity worth.
b. opportunity cost.
c. seller cost.
d. making a choice.


9. People whose wants are satisfied by using goods and services are

a. workers.
b. producers.
c. sellers.
d. consumers.


10. People who make goods and provide services are

a. producers.
b. workers.
c. buyers.
d. consumers.


[Teacher's Notes]

Assessment Key
1. False
2. False
3. False
4. False
5. True
6. c
7. c
8. b
9. d
10. a

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.____________________________________
COPYRIGHT © 2009 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use these elementary economics lesson plans as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

Lesson 2, Part 4: Reteach and Enrichment

Reteach

Your teacher will put you in groups of five or six. You and your group are going to write a play. One or two students will be Maria's parent or parents. Maria’s parents are thinking about how to use their land. The other students will be producers. One student will be a builder of houses. One student will be a storekeeper. One student will be a worker for the county. The county wants to build a swimming pool. One student will be a farmer. Each of you should write a short speech. Producers should explain why their plans for the land are the best plans. Then the parents should say who can use the land. Think about opportunity cost and the wishes of consumers and producers. Your teacher will tell you when to perform your play for the rest of the class.

Enrichment

Economists study how people make choices by making an assumption (eh-sump'-shen) about how people make decisions. The assumption is that most people most of the time use rational (rash'-uh-nul) decision-making by comparing payoffs to costs. Imagine that you are walking from a forest toward a river. In between lies a hill. If your goal is to get to the top of the hill, how would you know when you were on top of the hill?

You could use a scientific tool that measures altitude. Or you could look around you until you get to a place where there is no ground above you. Another way is to use what economists call marginal (mar'-jeh-nuhl) analysis (uh-nal'-i-sis). This means studying one step at a time. If the next step takes you upward, take the step and keep going. If the next step takes you downward, stop and back up. If you use this trick, you will stop at the top of the hill. Try it sometime!

So, any time that you are trying to decide how many oranges to buy or to whom to sell your land, you can use marginal analysis. Think of the payoff or worth of your decision and think of the opportunity cost. If the payoff is greater than the cost, make the decision. If the payoff is less than the cost, do not make the decision. This is rational decision-making.

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Teacher's Notes

Reteach

If student performance on Independent Practice is unsatisfactory, use the Reteach activity. In addition, you may choose to use Reteach if your students best learn kinesthetically and auditorily. Follow the instructions in the text for dividing the class into groups. Circulate among the groups as they write their speeches. Make sure that the students who are the parents make a choice among the alternative productive uses for their land. Ask each group to perform its play. Encourage shy students. Be sure to praise each performance. Lead a class discussion about the roles of consumers, producers, and opportunity cost.

Enrichment

Use Enrichment for more advanced students. Students will learn vocabulary terms associated with higher-level study of economics. This lesson introduces the terms assumption, rational, marginal, and analysis. Explain to students that economists assume that people make decisions logically or rationally by comparing benefits to costs. Sometimes costs are measured with money, but even in the absence of money, opportunity cost can be used in the decision-making. Students will return to marginal analysis in Lesson 5.

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COPYRIGHT © 2009 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use these elementary economics lesson plans as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

Lesson 2, Part 3: Practice

Guided Practice

1. It is time to play store! Watch your teacher play the consumer and one of your classmates play the producer. The producer will offer your teachers four goods. Vote for which good your teacher should buy. Ask your teacher to talk about the worth of the good bought compared to the worth of the goods not bought.

2. Your teacher will show you pictures of consumers and will help you name the goods or services being bought.

Independent Practice

1. Your teacher will put you in groups of two or three. Your teacher will tell you who is the producer and who is the consumer. The producer will write the names of four toys on a piece of paper. The consumer will draw some money on a piece of paper. The consumer should pick one of the toys. Now switch places. Working on your own, write a paragraph with at least four sentences about your choice. What was the worth of the toy that you chose? What was the worth of each toy that you did not choose? Put your name on your paper and turn it into your teacher.

2. Your teacher will show you pictures of producers. For each picture, write the name of the goods or services being sold. Put your name on your paper and turn it into your teacher.

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Teacher's Notes

Guided Practice

1. Bring four goods to class. Try to choose items that your students might purchase: a pencil, sunglasses, candy, a banana, and so on. Choose a volunteer to play the storekeeper ("producer"). Have the class raise hands or call out to vote for which good you should buy. Be prepared to explain to the class the value to you of each good. It might be interesting to show that the class chose a good for you that has a lower value than one or more of the goods not chosen.

2. Find five or six online photos of consumers. Project the photos one at a time. With each photo, ask student volunteers to name the goods or services being bought. Give hints if necessary. An alternative is to bring in magazine or newspaper ads.

Independent Practice

1. Divide the class into groups of two or three. Designate one student in each group as the producer. The other student will be the consumer. Tell the producer to write the names of four toys on a piece of paper. The consumer should draw a picture of a dollar bill or any form of imaginary money. The consumer should choose and pay for one of the toys. Have the students switch places and repeat the exercise.

Students should work independently to write paragraphs describing the value of the chosen toy compared to the value of each toy not chosen. Students should focus on estimating value and comparing values across goods. It should be clear that the chosen toy has the highest value. The paragraphs should have at least four sentences, including topic and closing sentences. This is an interdisciplinary exercise that requires students to use composition and grammar skills. Collect the paragraphs and read them to gauge student understanding.

2. Find five or six online photos of producers. Project the photos one at a time. With each photo, students should work independently to write the name of the goods or services being offered for sale. Collect the papers to gauge student understanding of the role of producers.

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use these elementary economics lesson plans as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

Lesson 2, Part 2: Teach

You can meet your economic wants by trading for goods and services. But remember, you probably have many things you want. So, you have to make choices about which goods and services you will trade for and which you will give up.

You make a choice to buy a good or service. Then someone has to sell you the product. But first, someone had to make the product. Making the product meant using a worker's time and skill. Maybe the worker needed a machine. The person might have worked in a building. Of course, the building sat on some land. Let's say that a seller believes that buyers like you want to buy the seller's product. Then the seller will hire the workers, buy the machines, build the building, and buy the land. But what if buyers do not want to buy the product? Then the seller can use the workers, machines, building, and land to make different things.

So, buyers are not the only ones who must make choices. Sellers make choices, too.

A simple example of a choice is having to pick between two things. Making a choice means that you pick one of the things. When you pick one thing, you give up the other thing. Let's say that your school lunch comes with either an apple or an orange. You can only have one piece of fruit. If you pick the orange, you give up the chance to pick the apple. You had the opportunity to pick the apple, but you did not make that choice.

Every good or service has a worth to the person who buys it. Getting that worth is the reason that you want to buy something. But here is the surprise! The thing that you do not pick also has a worth. At lunch, you picked the orange because of its worth. But the apple that you did not pick also has a worth. The opportunity cost of a choice is the worth of the thing given up. Both buyers and sellers think about opportunity cost when they make choices.

Buyers are people whose wants are satisfied by using goods and services. Buyers are also called consumers. Buyers compare the worth of each choice. To choose between an apple and an orange, you think about the worth of each. The worth for the orange is greater than the worth for the apple. What would you do? You would pick the orange. Its worth is more than its opportunity cost.

Sellers are people who make goods and provide services. Sellers are also called producers. Sellers compare the worth of each choice. The choices of buyers matter. Buyers really want oranges, but a store sells apples. Then the store loses the opportunity to sell oranges. The opportunity cost to keep selling apples goes up. Stores will start putting out fewer apples. All around the world, more workers and land will be used for oranges and less for apples.

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Teacher's Notes

Teach

This lesson's goal is to get students to understand the implications of making consumption choices. Consumption affects production and the use of resources such as workers, machines, buildings, and land.

Emphasize the definitions of opportunity cost, consumers, and producers. Ask the students for examples to get a sense of student understanding of opportunity cost.


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COPYRIGHT © 2008 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use these elementary economics lesson plans as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

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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COPYRIGHT © 2008 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use these elementary economics lesson plans as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

Lesson 1 Part 4

Reteach

Your teacher will ask some of the students to be storekeepers and some of the students to be buyers. The storekeepers will have pictures or empty boxes of goods and pictures of services. The teacher will line the buyers up to visit the shopkeepers. Each buyer will have one ticket. If a ticket has the words One good, the buyer must pick out a box or picture of a good. If a ticket has the words One service, the buyer must pick out a picture of a service. The storekeepers will make sure that the buyers pick only one product and pick from the correct type. Storekeepers should be ready to answer questions about why you thought that products were goods or services. Buyers should be ready to answer questions about how you chose your products.

Enrichment

Economists (i-kon' e-mists) are people whose job it is to study economics. Economists assume two things about economic behavior. One thing is that a person's economic wants are insatiable (in-sa' she-bel). Insatiability (in-sa' she-bil-i-te) means that economic wants are impossible to satisfy. People who are somehow able to buy everything they want will just want even more things. People can never have enough goods and services.

But remember that people have to trade something to get goods and services. We will discuss trading later in this book. For now, let us say that resources (re' sors' es) are what people trade to get goods and services. The other thing that economists assume is that resources are scarce (skars). Scarcity (skar' si-te) means that there is a limit to how many resources are available to trade for meeting economic wants. As a matter of fact, there are not enough resources to trade for meeting all the insatiable economic wants. Therefore, people can have some of their wants and cannot have others of their wants. That means that people must make choices about which wants to have and which wants to give up. How people make these choices is what economists study.
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Teacher's Notes

Reteach

If student performance on Independent Practice is unsatisfactory, use the Reteach activity. In addition, you may choose to use Reteach if your students best learn kinesthetically. Choose about 20 goods and 20 services to offer in your store. For the goods, bring in pictures or empty boxes. For the services, bring in pictures. Make 20 tickets that read, "One good" and 20 tickets that read, "One service." Choose one half of your students to be storekeepers. The other half will be buyers. Give one ticket to each buyer. Follow the instructions described in the text. From time to time, stop the activity and ask storekeeper volunteers how they distinguished between goods and services. Ask buyer volunteers how they chose products, especially given that they can choose only one product. The key lessons are that buyers must make choices and that there is a difference between goods and services.

Enrichment

Use Enrichment for more advanced students. Students will learn vocabulary terms associated with National Voluntary Standards for older grades. This lesson introduces the terms economists, insatiability, resources, and scarcity. Explain to students that the latter three concepts interact to force people to make choices. People in general have insatiable, unlimited, infinite economic wants. People must trade resources such as money, labor, or time to obtrain economic wants. Resources, however, are scarce, limited, finite. Therefore, people can satisfy only limited sets of their infinite economic wants. This limitation forces people to choose which economics wants are most important to obtain and how to expend their resources. This process of choosing is what economists study.
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COPYRIGHT © 2007 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use this content as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

Lesson 1, Part 3: Practice

Guided Practice

1. Your teacher will tell you about a choice that had to be made between two goods and why your teacher could not just have both things. You should think about a choice that you had to make today between two goods. Why could you not just have both things? Be ready to share your choice with the class.

2. Make a copy of the lists below on a piece of paper. Work with your teacher to match the list of economic wants on the left with a good or service listed on the right. When you are done matching, look at the list on the right and circle the goods.

Something You Want.................................Good or Service

Something fun to do after school......................baby sitter
Something to protect your feet from being cut.........car
Something to check your email.........................computer
Someone to take away your garbage.....................shoes
Something to drive in when you go to the store........trash pick-up
Someone to take care of you when your family is away..TV show


Independent Practice

1. Think about a choice that you had to make today between two services. Working on your own, write a paragraph with at least four sentences about your choice. Why could you not just have both things? Be sure that your paragraph has a topic sentence and a closing sentence. Put your name on your paper and turn it into your teacher.

2. Make a copy of the lists below on a piece of paper. Working on your own, match the list of economic wants on the left with a good or service listed on the right. When you are done matching, look at the list on the right and circle the services. Put your name on your lists and turn them into your teacher.

Something You Want..............................Good or Service

Something you want when you are hungry...................bus
Something you use to listen to music.....................kennel
Someone to help you learn about economics................movie
Someone to take care of your pet when you go on a trip...radio
Something to ride in to get to school....................sandwich
Something to see with friends at a theater...............teacher
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Teacher's Materials

Guided Practice

1. Think of an example when you had to choose between two goods. Emphasize why the items in your example are goods and not services. Students will be interested to learn that their teacher is also a consumer. Describe your decision process to the students, paying particular attention to the fact that you could not choose both goods. The important lesson is the necessity of making choices. Ask student volunteers to share about choices they had to make today or recently. Be sure that the examples are choices between goods and not services.

2. Guide the students through completing the matching exercise. Explain as necessary why some items in the right column are goods and some are services. Note that the examples in the right column are listed in the definitions of goods and services in Part 2 of the lesson. The answers are as follows. The items in italics are the goods. Guide students through circling the goods.

Something You Want............................Good or Service

Something fun to do after school.......................TV show
Something to protect your feet from being cut..........shoes
Something to check your email..........................computer
Someone to take away your garbage......................trash pick-up
Something to drive in when you go to the store.........car
Someone to take care of you when your family is away...baby sitter


Independent Practice

1. Students should work independently to write paragraphs describing recent choices between two services. It is important that the students focus on services, not goods. The paragraphs should have at least four sentences, including topic and closing sentences. The paragraphs should also explain why students could not choose both services. In this way, students can demonstrate an understanding of being forced to make a choice. This is an interdisciplinary exercise that requires students to use composition and grammar skills. Collect the paragraphs and read them to gauge student understanding.

2. Students should work independently to complete the matching exercise. Students will need to distinguish between goods and services. The answers are as follows. The items in italics are the services. Students should circle the services. Collect the results and determine student understanding of the concepts.

Something You Want...............................Good or Service

Something you want when you are hungry...................sandwich
Something you use to listen to music.....................radio
Someone to help you learn about economics................teacher
Someone to take care of your pet when you go on a trip...kennel
Something to ride in to get to school....................bus
Something to see with friends at a theater...............movie
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use this content as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

Lesson 1 Part 2 Teach

Studying economics can help you in three ways. You can be a good student and pass tests if you study. You will learn things that you can use someday in your job or in your home. And you will learn things that you can use today.

You will learn about buyers and how they make choices. You will learn about workers and how they make products like clock radios, cheeseburgers, and even school books. You will learn about why people make trades using things like markets, prices, and money. You will even learn about economic problems that can come up and how the government can solve those problems.

But it all begins with choices. Can you imagine flying in a spaceship to a faraway planet? Imagine that your spaceship has a special machine that can make anything. If you walk up and say that you want ice cream, the machine makes ice cream. If you say that you want a hat, the machine makes a hat. Because of this machine, you can have anything that you want. You do not have to make choices. You do not have to pick one thing and give another thing up.

This is just imagination, though. Real life is not like that. There is no special machine to give you whatever you want. Has anyone ever said to you, "You cannot have everything you want"? It is true. You cannot have everything you want. So, you have to make choices. You pick some things and you give other things up. One of the things that economics studies is how you and other people make these choices.

There are many things that you want. You want to have good times with your family and friends. You want to breathe clean air. You want a good night's sleep every day. These are examples of wants that you can have for free. But you know that not everything you want is free. To get some of the things that you want, you have to trade something back. There are some important words that you need to learn.

Economic wants are things you wish for. Goods are things that you can touch and that meet your economic wants. When you trade for goods, you get back something that you can take away. Examples of goods are shoes, school desks, cars, and computers. Services are actions that meet your economic wants. When you trade for services, someone else does something for you. Examples of services are TV shows, baby-sitting, car washes, and trash pick-up.

You can meet your economic wants by trading for goods and services. But remember, you probably have many things you want. You probably want more things than you can have. So, you have to make choices about which goods and services you will trade for and which you will give up. How you and other people make these kinds of choices is what economics studies.

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Teacher's Notes

Making choices should be very familiar to students. Provide examples of choices that you made that day as well as choices that you know students typically make, such as what clothes to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what TV show to watch, and so on.

Emphasize the definitions of economic wants, goods, and services. Ask the students for examples to get a sense of student understanding of the difference between goods and services.

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COPYRIGHT © 2007 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use this content as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

Lesson 1: Making Choices About Things You Want

Part 1: Focus

Maria Lopez and Paul Brown had big decisions to make. The two friends had spent the day at their school fair. Maria had won the game where you throw a dart at a wall full of balloons. She had popped one of the red balloons. That meant that she could choose one of the best prizes. But she could choose only one prize. On the shelf was a stuffed monkey and a cool alarm clock with a radio. She really wished that she could pick both prizes, but she had to pick one.

Paul was standing at the food stand. He had played the game where you pick a plastic duck out of the water. His prize was a ticket for one free sandwich. The food stand had cheeseburgers and hot dogs. Paul really wished that he could eat both sandwiches, but he had to pick just one.

Maria chose the alarm clock with the radio. She really liked the stuffed monkey. But she knew that it would just sit on her shelf. She would use the alarm clock every day to get up for school or listen to her favorite music. She decided that the clock radio was a better choice. Paul chose the cheeseburger. He really liked hot dogs. But he had eaten a hot dog for lunch that day. The cheeseburger would be something different to eat. He decided that the cheeseburger was a better choice.
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Teacher's Notes

This is the first 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 make choices because they can't have everything they want.
2. Economic wants are desires that can be satisfied by consuming a good or service.
3. Goods are objects that can satisfy people's wants.
4. Services are actions that can satisfy people's wants.

Focus

Use the story about Maria Lopez and Paul Brown to encourage student interest in the lesson. If the local school fair is not an appropriate example, suggest some other event at which students win prizes. The first key idea to emphasize is that Maria and Paul are put into situations in which they must choose only one of two goods. The second key idea is that this choice does not depend on not having enough money. Money is not even a part of this story. Having to choose can happen whether money is involved or not. This fact allows discussion of basic economic principles even though money is not introduced until later lessons.
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COPYRIGHT © 2007 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use this content as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

List of Lessons (Table of Contents)

The following is the list of lessons and topics that I intend to cover in this blog. The parenthetical references to standards apply to the National Voluntary Standards for Teaching Economics. I hope that readers will comment on this list of lessons. What could be deleted? What should be added? Do the titles communicate the subjects? Are the topics age appropriate for elementary school? I would love to hear from you.


Lesson 1: You Will Have to Make Choices About Things You Want (Standard 1)

Lesson 2: When You Decide What to Buy, Things Happen (Standard 1)

Lesson 3: People Use Resources to Make Products (Standard 1)

Lesson 4: People Are Resources, Too (Standard 1)

Lesson 5: Decisions Depend on Payoffs and Costs (Standard 2)

Lesson 6: Who Should Get the Products? (Standard 3)

Lesson 7: Rewards and Penalties Can Change How People Act (Standard 4)

Lesson 8: Hey, Do You Want to Make a Trade? (Standard 5)

Lesson 9: Good Things Happen When You Become an Expert at Your Job (Standard 6)

Lesson 10: Markets Set Prices (Standard 7)

Lesson 11: High or Low Prices Change How People Act (Standard 8)

Lesson 12: What Happens When Sellers Compete? (Standard 9)

Lesson 13: A Bank Will Help You Save Money (Standard 10)

Lesson 14: Just What Is Money Anyway? (Standard 11)

Lesson 15: People Go to Work to Earn Money (Standard 13)

Lesson 16: Where Do New Products Come From? (Standard 14)

Lesson 17: Here Are Some Ideas for Getting More Work Done (Standard 15)

Lesson 18: Governments Are Part of Economics, Too (Standard 16)

Lesson 19: Sometimes Economic Problems Come Up (Standard 19)

Lesson 20: The Government Can Help Solve Economic Problems (Standard 20)
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COPYRIGHT © 2007 by Robert D. Sandman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use this content as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.

What This Blog Is About

Many states test school children for competency in economics. Teachers struggle to find and create materials to teach economics content, particularly to primary students. Content that will teach to the National Voluntary Standards for Teaching Economics will meet this need.

The National Council of Economic Education has developed 20 voluntary teaching standards. For the standards, there are benchmarks for grades four, eight, and twelve. This content is based on the grade four benchmarks. Coverage of these benchmarks leads to a table of contents containing 20 lessons, ranging from You Will Have to Make Choices About Things You Want to Rewards and Penalties Can Change How People Act to Just What Is Money Anyway to The Government Can Help Solve Economic Problems.

Some of the teaching standards have many grade four benchmarks and some have none for grade four. Therefore, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the 20 teaching standards and 20 lessons. The lessons cover no more than five benchmarks per lesson and, with the exception of Lesson 20: The Government Can Help Solve Economic Problems, cover only the standards for which grade four benchmarks exist.

Lessons are designed to follow the Effective Teaching Lesson Plan model. Each lesson consists of five parts. Part 1 has a hypothetical story to focus students on the topic of the lesson. Part 2 contains teaching narrative that defines terms and explains concepts. Part 3 presents exercises for guided practice and independent practice. Part 4 contains material for reteaching and for enrichment. Part 5 contains assessment questions in true/false and multiple choice formats. Accompanying teacher's materials explain how to use each part of a lesson.

Every 10 to 14 days, I will post new material. The table of contents will be next, followed by lessons.

Please share your comments. My goal is to demonstrate to a publisher that this content should be a text/workbook.
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COPYRIGHT © 2007 by Robert D. Sandman

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use this content as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.