After the teacher has read books about trading and bartering and discussed situations in our history when bartering was extremely important for survival (for example when the Pilgrims traded with the Native Americans for survival/needs/wants), she will lead the higher level students in a game of bartering. 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 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.

Students learn that voluntary exchange is based on the fact that both sides expect to gain from trade and that exchange is made easier by the creation and use of money. Individuals and societies organize themselves to answer basic questions such as, How will goods and services be produced?

Students will use an online game to learn how bartering works and why people chose to use money systems instead.

In this lesson, students will use a checklist to find out more about the plants they depend on for food and fibers. They will guess which plants originated in the United States and check their guesses by researching individual plants. Students will then recognize that people move valuable plants around the globe through trade.

This inquiry engages students in expanding their understandings of our increasingly interconnected world. The inquiry allows students to uncover political, economic, and social connections across cultures and analyze the implications of those connections.

Students will learn about the remarkable travels of Marco Polo. They will consult maps to locate Venice and follow the routes Marco took to Beijing and back. They will learn about the challenges of traveling along the Silk Road, discover some interesting facts about China under Mongol rule, and find out how Marco came to produce his famous book.

In this lesson, students listen to a story about sheep that go shopping for a gift. Unfortunately, they don't have quite enough money and must barter wool to obtain the gift they want. The students discuss what barter is and suggest other solutions to the sheep's problems. Students earn cotton balls and pennies for work that they do. They use the cotton balls to decorate a sheep and use extra cotton balls and pennies to buy additional decorations for their sheep. Links are provided for SMART/notebook, ActivInspire/flipchart, and a Q&A pdf.

With this unit, students learn how specialization creates interdependence and that exchanging goods and services creates interdependence. Students describe examples of specialists in a community and the interdependence which exists between them. They also analyze a situation where interdependence exists between countries and explain what might happen if one of those countries chooses to become independent of the others.

This inquiry leads students through an investigation of economic systems by focusing on the context of trade among world communities. Trading is one of the oldest forms on economic interaction among humans, yet it is also among the most complex. In examining the reasons for international trade and the exports of world communities, students should be able to develop an argument supported by evidence to answer the compelling question "Why do countries need each other?"