The Big Idea: Resources are a critical aspect in determining where and how people live.
The Essential Question: What causes a person or a group of people to need resources and how can they be fairly distributed?
The Challenge: After determining the collective resources available, identify the resources needed by another group of people and create a plan for acquiring and fairly distributing the needed resources.
Guiding Questions--
1. What are resources? Describe your available resources. 2. What is scarcity? 3. What causes scarcity? 4. How do people (individuals, families and communities) with limited resources make choices? 5. How can resources be used in different ways to produce different goods and services.
Guiding Activities—
1. View Simpson/McGyver Video clip and McGyver show segment
2. Ask -What are resources? Generate brainstormed list of ideas and suggestions. 3. Provide Vocabulary for Human (Labor), Natural, and Capital Resources
Human: the quantity and quality of human effort directed toward producing goods and services (labor).
Capital: goods made by people and used to produce other goods and services. (Intermediate goods).
Natural: "Gifts of nature" that are present without human intervention.
4. Students to work with their partners to try to categorize the generated ideas into the categories of Human, Natural, and Capital. 5. Students to share their categorizing decisions with another partnership and add 2-3 more ideas/examples to each category.
6. View Scarcity slideshow
7. Ask students “What is scarcity?" Have you ever experience a time when your wants or needs exceeded your available resources? Describe the situation to your partner. Did you have to make a choice? How did you solve your problem?
10. Students will work in partners to create something useful or beautiful out of a bucket of resources. They may identify and use 2 natural resources not found in their bucket in the creation of their product. (Jar, Fabric, Ball of String, Piece of Tin, 10 Nails or screws, 3 canisters of paint)
11. Students will write a reflection blog on KidBlog about their product. **What did you make? Describe in detail and provide a digital image. How could the product be used? Did you use all of your resources? What two natural resources did you use, if any? What were the human resources used in the design and creation of your product? How did each member contribute to the design and creation of your product? Would more, or different resources have improved your product? Explain.
Resources are a critical aspect in determining where and how people live.
The Essential Question:
What causes a person or a group of people to need resources and how can they be fairly distributed?
The Challenge:
After determining the collective resources available, identify the resources needed by another group of people and create a plan for acquiring and fairly distributing the needed resources.
Guiding Questions--
1. What are resources? Describe your available resources.2. What is scarcity?
3. What causes scarcity?
4. How do people (individuals, families and communities) with limited
resources make choices?
5. How can resources be used in different ways to produce different goods and services.
Guiding Activities—
1. View Simpson/McGyver Video clip and McGyver show segment2. Ask -What are resources? Generate brainstormed list of ideas and suggestions.
3. Provide Vocabulary for Human (Labor), Natural, and Capital Resources
Human: the quantity and quality of human effort directed toward producing goods and services (labor).
Capital: goods made by people and used to produce other goods and services. (Intermediate goods).
Natural: "Gifts of nature" that are present without human intervention.
4. Students to work with their partners to try to categorize the generated ideas into the categories of Human, Natural, and Capital.
5. Students to share their categorizing decisions with another partnership and add 2-3 more ideas/examples to each category.
6. View Scarcity slideshow
7. Ask students “What is scarcity?" Have you ever experience a time when your wants or needs exceeded your available resources? Describe the situation to your partner. Did you have to make a choice? How did you solve your problem?
8. “What are some possible causes of scarcity?”
9. Read article about William Kamkwamba at: http://www.speareducation.com/2009/12/a-lesson-in-resourcefulness/
10. Show TED Talk video:
10. Students will work in partners to create something useful or beautiful out of a bucket of resources. They may identify and use 2 natural resources not found in their bucket in the creation of their product. (Jar, Fabric, Ball of String, Piece of Tin, 10 Nails or screws, 3 canisters of paint)
11. Students will write a reflection blog on KidBlog about their product. **What did you make? Describe in detail and provide a digital image. How could the product be used? Did you use all of your resources? What two natural resources did you use, if any? What were the human resources used in the design and creation of your product? How did each member contribute to the design and creation of your product? Would more, or different resources have improved your product? Explain.
Guiding Resources—
CBS (1986). MacGyver - hunting for us. Retrieved April 7, 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7hDVD7ZTDU&list=SL.
iEarn Projects (2011). Six common objects, six billion possibilities. Retrieved April 7, 2011 from: http://media.iearn.org/projects/inventors .
Kehler, Abbejean (2003). You decide. Retrieved April 7, 2011 from: http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=396&type=educator .
Learning to Give. Making choices with scarce resources. Retrieved April 7, 2011 from: http://learningtogive.org/lessons/unit184/lesson3.html .
Macgyverthemovie (2009). MacGyver the new movie-trailer. Retrieved April 11, 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/user/macgyverthemovie .
Manji, Imtiaz (2009). A Lesson in resourcefulness. Retrieved April, 7, 2011 from: http://www.speareducation.com/2009/12/a-lesson-in-resourcefulness/ .
TED (2009). William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind. Retrieved April 4, 2011 from: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_the_wind.html.