In this interactive web lesson, students are introduced to the economic concepts of producers and consumers. Students choose multiple choice answers or type in short responses tp questions about earning money, goods and services, and producers and consumers. New vocabulary is defined for students and appears in bold print.

Now that we’ve spent time talking about what a community is and then exploring them, the conversation of this chapter is focused around the compelling question “How do people work together in a community?” On the one hand, this question appears rooted in civics, but the content we cover is rooted in economics. Students have already learned about needs and wants, and consumers and producers in earlier grades, and now we introduce an economic term “scarcity”. You may choose to review the concepts of needs vs wants before introducing this term.

A cowboy rides into a ghost town and decides that it needs to be rebuilt. Students will select the necessary things that a town needs in order for it to function and grow. Students will identify 10 different types of services that are necessary to have in every community. They will identify the differences between a want and a need.

For this lesson, students learn the difference between goods and services, consumers and producers and ways scarcity affects the choices people make in everyday situations.

In this lesson, students will learn the concepts of goods, services and community. Homework: Interview an adult about his/her job. Two questions to be included in the interview are, ?What do you do at your job?? and ?How does it contribute to the community??

In this lesson, students use data from visuals and graphs to make inferences about places. Students discover that human characteristics of places depend upon the natural resources found in environment in their community. Natural resources also affect jobs that are available in the area as well.

In this lesson, students learn about how natural resources become products. Students also learn that people are both producers and consumers of goods and services.

In this lesson, the book, Charlie Needs a Cloak, by Tommie dePaola, is used to teach students about productive resources, labor and income.

In this lesson, the book, Arthur's Funny Money, by Lillian Hoban, is used to teach students about about business, price, and labor. Students complete worksheets on projected income.

In this lesson, students listen to the story, Little Nino's Pizzeria and identify the inputs in a pizza, categorizing them as intermediate goods, natural resources, human resources, or capital resources. Students use a Venn diagram to sort attributes of each resturant mentioned in the story and the attributes they share.

Students will take a trip together to explore a locally owned business in their community. Children and adults will use the suggested questions to learn more about what it takes to run a business while thinking about the business history of their hometown.

Students use data from visuals and graphs to make inferences about places. Students discover that human characteristics of places depend upon the natural resources found in environment in their community. Natural resources also affect jobs that are available in the area as well.

In this lesson, students become immersed in the economic process by participating in this Market Day project. Students produce goods, market goods, and earn “money” to buy goods. They are engaged as both producer and consumer while exploring basic economic concepts.This lesson follows, Eco the Gecko and the Story of Economics.

Needs and Wants vary based on setting.  Students need to be aware of this when discussing needs and wants.

Students learn about how natural resources become products. Students also learn that people are both producers and consumers of goods and services.

After the teacher has read books about wants versus needs, managing money to buy wants and needs, bartering, trading, producers and consumers, resources, and scarcity, she will lead a discussion with the whole class about identifying local businesses in the community, how a market economy works, and how businesses both pay out and make money. Then higher level students will work on a R.A.F.T. project. They will assume the “ROLE” of a business owner, a producer, or a consumer, and they will write to a particular “AUDIENCE” (ex. business owner, consumer, producer) with a particular “FORMAT” (business letter, friendly letter, poem) about a given “TOPIC”. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

In this lesson, students share one chapter from Henry and Beezus, by Beverly Cleary, to learn about exchange, market, price, and spending. They complete a worksheet on checking accounts and analyze the costs of using a credit card.

In this lesson students learn how they and family members fulfill the roles of consumer and producer at home and in their community. They begin by exploring the goods and services that people use and they identify those that are businesses and require the payment of money. An interactive is provided for students to identify the goods and services that have to be purchased.

This inquiry is an initial exploration into the concepts of interdependence through the lens of community economics and the idea of an economy as a diverse, mutually supportive web of needs and wants, workers and consumers, and problems and solutions. This inquiry challenges students to understand that through businesses, town organizations, and local governments, a community meets the needs and wants of its people, finding strength in collective efforts to address problems.