The Teacher's CornerPuzzles and Activities
I was fortunate to spend the summer of 2000 in the United States. Being at a loose-end, I decided to go take some graduate classes at a nearby University. "Mini-Society" for Elementary Teachers was being offered. Economics has always terrified me but I thought "What the heck, if it's geared to 4-6 graders hopefully I might be able to understand it, too!" My, my, was I in for a treat.
Mini-Society
Mini-Society is a totally hands-on experience-based instuctional program that provides a safe and supportive environment where children are encouraged to be creative (brainstorm and design), risk-takers (entrepreneurs) and be successful while striving to be ethical in the market place. The first few weeks are spent in preparation for the final goal of establishing your own classroom society.
Scarcity
Many lessons can be found on the web which deal with scarcity issues. Students ultimately have to know that scarcity is the condition that exists when WANTS exceed natural resources. We live and play in Okinawa, Japan. It's hot. For our scarcity lesson I used 4 ice cream bars. My class has 24 students. How was I going to hand out these 4 ice cream bars before they melted? was the question posed to the students. The kids did a lot of brainstorming: cut them in piece, teacher picks the best students, put the names in a hat and draw four, play a game and the winners get to pick the ice cream, etc. We wrote them on the board and eventually the students decided to award the winners of "Four Corners" the prize of the ice cream bars. The discussion followed. How did we feel? A lot of emotion was tied into their experience.
Another Scarcity
Each group was given 12 items (one ruler, one piece of construction paper, one marker, one yard of one color of yarn, one square of origami paper, a styrofoam oval, glitter, glue, one pair of scissors, one small bit of cloth, one tongue depressor and cotton balls) in a bag and asked to come up with a unique creation that would capture the flavor and essence of our class. All creations would be displayed at Open House. The students could not add anything to the 12 items from their desks, but they didn't have to use everything either. This was a wonderful lesson in scarcity of resources. We have a job to do and this is what we have to do it with. After their initial reaction that nothing could be made from this terrible assortment of "junk" they'd been handed, they suddenly saw one group pulling together. All at once it was like a switch had been thrown - competition was on. Now the hum of activity heard was the murmuring of the collaboration and creation. It was very inspiring.
Bartering
In order to explain bartering I filled 24 paper bags with various amounts of candy (Hersheys kisses, jolly ranchers, sprees, etc) They were passed out sealed. I invited the children to open their bags but not to allow other eyes to see what they got. I then asked the kids to evaluate their bags on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best. The ratings were written on the board. I allowed trading to be done at their group tables. They re-evaluated their satisfaction level. Then I allowed them to travel anywhere in the classroom to trade. They re-evaluated their ratings once again & we discussed why there were some surprising fluctuations in the numbers (i.e. Some people who had originally had rated their bag a ten were now at 8's or below because they felt pressured into trading even though they really didn't want to do it.)
Opportunity Cost
In order to teach the kids that every decision has its own price (regardless how slight or burdensome) we talked about what we did in our free time. If we went roller blading what else could we have been doing? Bike riding. Well that becomes our opportunity cost. When we have to make a choice between two items the one that doesn't get chosen is the cost we've paid for the decision we made. Mom says we can have a friend spend the night - only one friend. But we've got two best friends. WE finally choose one, the other is our opportunity cost. WE go on a trip and Dad says that we've got to travel light. Here is your backpack. Whatever fits can go. This is a lesson that involves scarcity (of space) and opportunity cost because inevitably something you want to fit in that backpack just isn't going to get in. There is a video called Econ and ME that goes over these concepts and you should be able to get them from your district library.
Money - what's the value of money I did a lesson in the history of money and brought in old confederate bills and pictures of money/currency issued by the colonies. If you live in the St Louis area, the Federal Reserve bank of ST Louis can recommend a REserve Money Historian who will come to your school and talk with your class (He is wonderful and was truly fascinating) Contact Dawn Griffins at the FRB STL. If you want her info email me direct. In preparation for the establishment of our own society we took an indepth look at money - just why was it of value? In some societies cows were used as currency. What would be some of the disadvantages of using cows (it was hard to make change for one!) WE finally decided that we needed to recognize the worth of money (the store would certainly not take their pokemon cards for currency), you needed to be able to take it with you (portable), it needed to be divisible, it needed to durable (couldn't be made out of paper - what if it went through the washer?) and finally it needed to be fairly hard to come by (you mean you had to work for it? Oh my!) Finally we were ready to talk about our own society. Please know that all of this takes far longer to actually do than it seems. It is all student led and directed. The lessons are their discoveries. You are only the guide and return their questions with, "Well, what do you think?" It's very frustrating initially because they've never been given the role before and they feel out of their depth. Leaders arise and the dynamics in the classroom change. it's totally amazing. I'll never go back to teaching economics the old way. Too many of life's little lessons would be lost. The class votes on the name of their society, designs a flag and could create their own Bill of Rights and Constitution.
Money
We needed to decide what kinds of behaviors/activities we wanted to be paid for so that money would be infused into our system. (Be careful that your behaviors are very OBJECTIVE! That's very hard for the students to get. They wanted behaviors like having your homework - I was more worried about the quality of homework I'd be getting.) List options generated by the students on the board and vote. My class eventually chose being physically in their seat when the second bell rang, having their pencil sharpened, homework out their desk, math materials on hand, clean areas at the end of the day, etc. WE limited our payment to 5 behaviors.
Behavior Value
Once we defined the behaviors we had to assign monetary value to them. Again we took a reflection time, small group discussion and then allowed the small groups to pose values. Did a discussion on the values offered. Voted.
Denominations
WE voted on what to call our money. Since our society was called the Haynes Hurricanes, we went with 'whirlwinds' as our currency name. In our class this year we had 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 114 whirlwinds. We ended up with the 114 because that's how much they'd earn if they were successful with their behaviorseach day. It seemed to them an easy way to be paid. WE selected civil servants to be paymasters, money cutters and treasurer. These students had to fill out a job application, get it signed by another teacher who would recommend/certify this person's honesty and integrity. After the application due dates, the applicants were interviewed by my fellow 6th grade teachers (who by the way thought I was insane) as to why they thought they'd be good for the job, what skills or knowledge they'd bring to the job. After the interviews we voted on the applicants. The names were removed and the applications were numbered. Pertinent information was shared with the class (whether the person apply for the treasurer's position had passed the math portion of the application/ what they said about their intentions in the job, etc) and the class determined who was going to get what jobs. We then had to assign money values to these jobs. :-)
Discussion, reflection, proposals, and votes.
The money cutters prompty were sent home with the money and the paymasters were given the names of the people they would be responsible for monitoring. Money was infused into the society. Paymasters reported to the treasurer. Children began testing the market place for the kinds of business items they thought would sell well. One girl brought in pumpkin pillows. The girls thought these were cool to give to their mothers or to decorate around the house. One of the boys made homemade finger boards and paper footballs. The other boys flocked to his desk and he had orders before he opened his shop. WE spent two weeks talking about different kinds of businesses, brainstorming, discussing, stretching and groaning (literally!) They had so many questions and so much ambition. I didn't squelch any of their ideas. I simply returned their questions to the establishment of a business plan. I made up applications for business licences that included the need for a parent signature on the bottom before their business could operate. This was to ensure that Mom or Dad knew what the child was engaged in and that nothing sold was a valuable heirloom. Parental receipts needed to accompany the business licence appication - the students had to pay their parents for any kind of labor (like driving to the store or any materials used from home)If a student said that they didn't use anything from home they still had to bring a signed affidavit from their parents stating that. Donations were solicited from parents for a warehouse. This made things a little sticky (where do you store the stuff and how do you make it available to the kids?) The children are charged a fee (in whirlwinds in my class) for anything they take from the warehouse. This is to help them learn the very frustrating fact that everything has a cost. :-)
Finally it's our first business day. We invited parents and had a ribbon cutting ceremony. Some parents had been paid by their children in our currency of whirlwinds and actually shopped - which delighted the kids to no end.
Mini-society is a lot of work but the benefits and on-going lessons (especially the self awareness) make it a life long learning and growth opportunity. If you haven't tried it, consider it for next year.
Submitted by: Judy Haynes im4ewes@email-removed
