Council for Economic Education
The Silk Road
The Silk Road connected the European, Middle Eastern, and Asian worlds. It also helped create the modern trade world. An analysis activity makes the importance of this Chinese innovation clear by asking participants to evaluate trades...
Federal Reserve Bank
Potato: A Tale from the Great Depression
There are so many ways to use a potato: bake it, fry it, or barter it. The lesson explains the concepts of bartering, money, and goods and services with a story that takes place during the Great Depression. Academics complete group...
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Bartering Through the Seasons
Fifth graders explore bartering. In this bartering lesson, 5th graders investigate bartering between the American colonies. Students study the climate and geography of neighboring colonies and investigate crops native to each area.
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Battering Through the Seasons
Students define bartering and barter to investigate supply and demand. In this bartering lesson, students read A New Coat for Anna and recall how they exchanged merchandise in the story. Students complete a sequential graphic organizer....
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Saturday Sancocho
Students barter with each other in order to get ingredients to make chicken sancocho. In this trading lesson plan, students read a story about a family in Central or South America who have to barter to get their needs. Then students try...
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A Rooster and a Bean Seed
Young scholars hear a folk tale and participate in a simulation that helps them recognize problems with barter and benefits of monetary exchange.
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Market Simulation
Students explore the role of markets in Asian countries. They bring items from home to barter with to simulate markets. They discuss the advantages and problems of exchanging and how price is determined.
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Interdependence: A Colonial Example
Students complete a variety of activities related to Colonial America and how people lived at that time. They conduct research on a selected colonial trade and present an oral report as role-playing that craftsman, and participate in a...
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I Have No Money, Would You Take Wampum
Students engage in a discussion about their experiences with goods, services, and money. In this bartering lesson, students read The Wampum Bird story and brainstorm their personal experiences with economics.
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We're in the Money
Young scholars study money and its place in the economy. In this middle school Consumer Math lesson, students explore the barter system and the need for money. Young scholars explore how money works in society and explore modern money...
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Learning Economics through Comics
Students summarize the historical development of money. In this economics lesson, students describe the process of bartering and explain how money facilitates trade and exchange. Students also define and describe inflation and a modern...
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Jamestown's Economy
Students identify items made in Jamestown and draw conclusions about their economy. In this Jamestown economy instructional activity, students use the internet to complete a worksheet which required them to look at photographs of goods...
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Barter and Trade
Students explore the concepts of bartering and trading. In this algebra activity, students barter with each other for different items. They use special cards to designate ownership of an item as they explore the complexity of bartering.
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The Wonders of Ancient Civilizations
Bring excitement and interest to your social studies with a unit on ancient civilizations.
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Trade Along the Silk Road
Students do a jigsaw activity that will enable them to understand the dynamics of the Silk Road trade.
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Emissions Trading
Students produce manufactured good, barter for sales, encounter government officials, make choices about emissions, trade carbon credits and share findings in order to understand how carbon trading could affect industry from an economic...
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Ancient Egypt: Domestic Life: Bartering
In this ancient Egypt instructional activity, students read about bartering in the marketplace. Students find the value of 4 items and draw the things you could barter them for.
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Basic Trading
Students review the basic ideas of exchange. In groups, they discover the incentives for trade and participate in a simulation. They are given a packet of stamps which are worth varying monetary amounts. They discover the concepts of...
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Why We Trade: Exchanging Goods and Services
Learners conduct simple bartering and trading activities and consider how product value can be altered by the market.
Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
Colonial Tobacco Economy
Tobacco as money? Middle schoolers investigate how eighteenth-century Virginia farmers used tobacco as a cash crop to buy tools, livestock, and household goods. They also examine the connection between tobacco production and the slave...
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Why Money?
Students participate in a trading simulation to learn about barter and the benefits of using money. In this barter lesson, students participate in a trading simulation and learn about coincidence of wants. Students then use money cards...
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Money as a Means of Exchange
First graders discover the term bartering as used to pay for wanted items. They play a bartering game to discover exchanging goods for wanted items and play the computer money game on the "Show-Me Economics" web site.
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A Lesson to Accompany "Benjamin Franklin and the Birth of a Paper Money Economy"
Students investigate the role of money in the colonial economy. For this colonial economy lesson, students participate in a trading activity, read the booklet "Benjamin Franklin and the Birth of a Paper Money Economy," participate in an...
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Why Use Money? Getting What We Need
Middle schoolers learn the difference between purchase, barter, and payment for service, then explore how the Akan and North African people used a barter system to exchange gold and salt. They identify the most efficient ways of...