In conjunction with the National Council for Social Studies Annual Conference, Nina's piece on teaching perspective and Economics through simulations was published here . Please read and let us know what you
As part of our Social Studies curriculum, Gabby and I teach Economics to 5th graders (although next year, we are moving to 3rd grade and are developing a brand new geography curriculum this summer - stay tuned!). We are often asked how we do this and how we expect 10 years olds to understand something so complicated that many adults don’t understand fully. Our response: laying a groundwork in elementary school will help our students understand more as adults. Also, challenging and countering previously held beliefs only gets more difficult as students get older so it is essential that we explore the realities of money, poverty, and class while our students are still in elementary school and remain somewhat open-minded. Many of the activities we use in this unit sprang from our students’ misconceptions or desires to learn more. When we start this unit, we often hear variations of “people
The cards we used for "life twists" that different students received throughout the simulation. “I don't understand why other companies treat their factory workers inhumanely if you can still be successful if you treat people like people.” Economics 101 is in full swing in 5th grade! We tried out a BRAND new simulation today and were reminded how difficult it is to check all of the details for experiential learning activities. Whew! That being said-- we are pleased with what our students experienced and how they are now thinking about different types of work, wages, and the many levels and layers of circumstances that can alter people's financial stability. SET UP: This one is complicated to set up. We have three groups, and each group had different tasks and varying working environments: Office workers (5 students) Task: read news articles and created a presentation Could takes breaks
"I learned that the small population of the upper class have more money than the huge population of the middle class. I do not think it is fair because a small amount people get a huge advantage over the massive amount of people in the middle/lower class." That's right, today in class we talked about the very agreeable subject of…. Money! We started our Economics unit yesterday with a simulation. In our activity we had the students do IR (independent reading) in spaces that simulated how wealth is distributed in the US. For example: 1 student has 11 chairs (wealthiest 1% has 42% of US wealth) 3 students have 9 chairs (next 9% has 36% of US wealth) 22 students have 6 chairs (bottom 90% has 22% of US wealth) This part of the simulation was all fun and games for us. We squealed and giggled and playfully whined about our legs being squished trying to cram onto those 6 chairs. But then… We