FOCUS: THE LOCAL COMMUNITY AND COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD
Proficiency Statement and Indicators Students should be able to:
Explain how people make choices about using goods, services, and productive
resources to satisfy their economic needs and wants.
Describe how people must work in order to provide goods and services in the community.
Identify productive resources (natural, human, and capital resources) in the community
that are necessary to produce goods and services.
Give examples of how economic resources in the home, school, and community are limited
(scarcity) and how people must make choices about how to use these resources.
Explain why people specialize in different jobs, and how this causes people to engage in
trade and to depend on each other(interdependence).
Explain that both parties benefit from voluntary trade.
Identify the opportunity cost of various consumer and producer choices (the most
valuable alternative a person has to give up to get something he or she wants).
Explain how tools and machines (capital) make people more productive.
Sample Student Activities Students might:
Brainstorm a class list of goods and services used since breakfast;list the jobs required
to produce or provide each good and service.
Design a brochure advertising the natural, human, and capital assets of the community
to encourage business and people to locate there.
Ask each student to compile a birthday "wish list" and then to cut the list by a specified
amount. Assist in developing a list of classroom resources to be purchased with limited funds.
Survey community members about their jobs, why they chose specific kinds of work,
the skills and training needed, and job satisfaction.
Make models of goods out of play dough. Then trade to get the goods they want most.
Simulate a city council making choices. List the opportunity costs of various choices.
Conduct a "math productivity contest," comparing the number of math problems
completed with and without calculator.
