This Little Biz Went to Market

Today in Social Studies Methods for Childhood Education, my class and I continued to explore the education of economics at the elementary level. We were split into groups of 3-4, each of which received a kit for BizWorld, BizWiz, or BizMovie. Once in groups, our teacher also had us decide whether we wanted to create an animated movie from a  debate, conversation, or commercial view for our kits. My group and I were given BizWiz and chose to do this program through a conversational viewpoint. We did this by creating an animated film using GoAnimate.com. 

GoAnimate offers a variety of themes, scenes, graphics, sounds, and animations to really bring your video to life. However, you are limited to a 30 second video run time if you create a video as a free user. In order to get past this rule, I created a long draft video without saving. I then recorded the draft video using iMovie. Overall, I found GoAnimate very easy to use and think that I might buy it in the future. It is a very engaging way to teach anything, and my group and I had a blast creating a knowledge filled, humorous movie about parents being concerned with their son's teacher using BizWiz in the classroom. I hope that the video below teaches you all about BizWiz while also showing you how wonderful GoAnimate is when it comes to engaging students. ENJOY!

                                    

Engaging Economics Throughout Education

Children get introduced to the concept of money at a very early age. We give them toy cash registers and piggy banks, and allow them to play games like Monopoly. Children love money, but do not understand its limitations. They do not grasp why mommy can't buy them everything in the store or how money earned compares to money spent. This concept of monetary value is usually something that children begin to grasp in school through such topics as career education, geography, history, community studies, and consumer education.

How is Economic Education integrated throughout the Social Studies Curriculum through these topics? 

Career Education: Explores career choices by comparing the cost of a degree or certification, school time, salary, and benefits to other careers. For instant, how much money and time does it take to become a doctor? Does the salary and benefits outweigh the time, energy, and money put into creating this career for oneself? 

Geography: Promotes an understanding of how geography plays a major role in economics by providing examples of the benefits and limitations of different locations around the world. This focuses on aspects like natural resources, biodiversity, natural disasters, climate, human interactions, transportation, mobility, international trade, and globalization and how they affected the economical development of a particular area. 

History:Gives the knowledge of what life was like without money in order to get students to really understand how money facilitates production, distribution, and consumption. History also provides information on how monetary value influenced culture,religion, recreational activities, and more throughout the world. 

Community Studies: Provides examples of community, city, country, continent, and world interdependence within economics in order to understand the importance of working together in order to achieve an overall stability throughout all aspects of life.

Consumer Education: Discusses the importance of consumers by providing information of how these consumers create the economic system of a nation. Within Consumer Education, it is also discussed that the main goal is to make the consumer happy in order to ensure that they will continue to buy the products of a particular individual or company. 

Example of Economics being taught through History

                                               

Geography and Economics

Money from around the world does not hold the same value. Many different factors go into deciding the worth of money within different locations. This is known as currency. (click link for currency calculator)

Why is it that $1.00 of USA money equals $1.08 of Australian money?

Interactive Ways to Teach Economic Education 

Consumers Win Game

Interactive way of understanding how consumers win because of  the competition of producers. 

Remains of the Past

Most people think that there is no way to making Social Studies interesting at any age level. The people that think this way are sadly mistaken. Though Social Studies might not be everyone's highly taxed cup of tea, there are certainly many ways to offer a more engaging way of teaching this subject. For instance, you might want to learn about how to create artifact bags!

In order to create your own artifact bag, you must first explore some of these questions:

-What is an artifact?

Artifact: An object produced or shaped by human craft, especially a tool, weapon, or ornament of archaeological or historical interest.

-What artifacts will I put into my artifact bag?

-Do these artifacts have significant meaning to the topic that I am going to explore?

-Will my students be able to figure out the who, what, where, when, and why  for each artifact in order to come up with a conclusion for their artifact bags?

-What am I looking for in a conclusion? What is my BIG question?

A computerized version of my Artifact Bag

Artifact Bag Topic: Thirteen Colonies, One Country

BIG Question: Who am I? (Tell students before giving them the artifacts) 

Artifact List:- Students should figure this out on their own. You might want to give them books or computers to use for research. 

1) Map of Boston, Massachusetts 

2) Horse Figurine 

3) Hat 

4) "No Britain" Sign

5) Fireworks

6) Silver Teapot

WHO AM I? ... PAUL REVERE 

Justification: Paul Revere was born in Boston, Massachusetts (Artifact #1) on January 1, 1735. After his father died, he took over the family's silversmith shop (Artifact #6). After seeing how unfairly the British were treating the colonists, Paul Revere wanted to help the colonies pull away from British control (Artifact #4). He took part in the Boston Tea Party (Artifact #6 can also apply here) , where the colonists poured all of the British tea into the harbor in order to rebel against the tea tax. The British were so angry that they decided to attack the colonies, but Paul Revere rode on horseback (Artifact #2) throughout the night to warn the colonists that "The British are coming, the British are coming!" He continued to play a significant role in American independence and we were able to create an independent nation, which we celebrate with firework displays (Artifact #5) every 4th of July. (Artifact #6 can be justified in pictures or by researching colonial clothing). 

The Dynamic Diné

Today,our Social Studies methods class once again explored the idea of Cooperative Learning. We went back to our original groups and each decided which Native American tribes we wanted to research. I chose to the Diné tribe and was put into an expert group with Julie, Julia, and Jean. 

When researching our tribe, we were supposed to really put an emphasis on how geography influenced the tribe. 

A distinctive Diné, also known as Navajo, culture came into play around 1100-1500 A.D. in the four corners area of the Colorado Plateau. On this Plateau, the Diné suffered from periods of drought, and wind and water erosion. They were also hit with undependable Summer rains, which often arrived as severe thunderstorms, and undependable Winter snow, which they relied on as a water source. However, the Diné people never backed down, so we gave them the following slogan:

"When the going gets tough, we get tougher."

With such unpredictable weather, the Diné tribe heavily depended on family ties to survive. They were an extremely unified group of people, who worked together to deal with all aspects of life. Though the land did not always work to their advantage, they still held a very high value of it because it played a big role in their survival. In fact, many games and traditions have emerged from their love of the land and their attachment to it. On top of this, they also have many typed of ceremonies that are focused on land and family.




We concluded that the geography of the Diné tribe promoted a love for their land and family. Though there were often harsh conditions, it is clear that this geography led to a highly unified, traditional, and loving group of people who who knew that working together created the amount of strength needed for survival. 

After teaching our classmates about our tribe, we then tested their understanding by taking a quiz on Kahoot. This was highly engaging and interactive and I will definitely be exploring this website more in the future.