Page 188 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

160 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
about allocating their time or money. During debriefing discussions of these experiences, the teacher leads them to see that economic decisions involve trade-offs—that when you allocate some of your time or money to one purpose, you simultaneously forego the opportunity to use it for a different purpose (ordinarily, the next best alternative). Appreciation of the opportunity cost concept will help them learn to approach economic decisions by considering not only the benefits but the costs of resource allocations (e.g., they can use part of their savings to buy a DVD today, but this will delay their opportunity to buy the bicycle for which they have been saving).
Economics Programs for the Elementary Grades
Most elementary school teachers do not have much formal economic knowledge (McKinney, McKinney, Larkins, Gilmore, & Ford, 1990), which makes it difficult for them to develop activities around sound content. It also leaves them susceptible to reliance on corporately produced materials that include questionable financial advice (Stanger, 1997). So, make sure that you acquire enough economic knowledge to create meaningful economic learning activities for your students.
Some economics educators advocate the use of technology as an instructional tool to facilitate students’ construction of meanings and economic relationships. Highlighting an activity comparing population patterns with locations of corporate polluters, Lucey and Grant (2005) encouraged the use of the NTeQ instructional model (iNtegrating TEchnol- ogy for inQuiry) (Morrison, Lowther, & Demuelle, 1999) to foster students’ collection and analysis of economic information and associated relationships. Such technology functions as more than glamorous tutors for students, by encouraging collaborative dis- course that fosters both working understandings of technology and discovery of economic principles.
A well-established and successful program for teaching economics in Grades 3–6 is Mini-Society, an experiential learning program that teaches students basic economic concepts and principles along with related information about government, careers, con- sumer issues, and values (Kourilsky, 1983). The program is intended to be implemented three times a week for 10 weeks, so it would require 25 percent to 50 percent of the time allocated to social studies in most elementary classrooms. It involves creating a Mini- Society in the classroom based on market mechanisms. The society includes a name, a flag, a currency system, civil servants (e.g., paymasters who are paid to distribute money to individuals), and mechanisms for introducing money into circulation (by allowing “citizens” to earn money by meeting criteria of good citizenship or accomplish- ment). Students then can use the Mini-Society money to purchase items from classmates who have established businesses that offer goods or services. In addition to consumption, incentives for developing businesses that will enable the students to acquire money include the need to pay various taxes and fees levied to pay civil servants for their work, pay the teacher for needed supplies and consultant advice, and pay the principal rent for use of space.
Once several businesses begin and a thriving market economy develops, students have experiences (e.g., business successes and failures, conflict between partners, indecision about how much to charge for one’s product or service) that provide grist for debriefing discussions, which are the main mechanism for highlighting and formalizing the concepts and principles taught in the program. Experiences followed by debriefing discussions are used to develop topics such as goods and services, supply and demand, advertising, keeping financial records, opportunity cost, cost-benefit analysis, shortages and the rationing function of price, and the function of banks. If the implementation incorporates the option of establishing a formal government, there also will be debriefings
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