UOI - Trading

The Crow and the Pitcher   

  

Today the class read the fable “The crow and the Pitcher”. They learnt about scarcity, and how entrepreneurial ideas, managing natural resources and trading can help lessen scarcity. They then participated in a trading activity to obtain crayons, and colour a picture relating to the story.

This lesson focuses on scarcity, decision-making, trade, specialization, and entrepreneurship.

They learnt that scarcity is when a person (or in this case, an animal) wants more of something than is available. Because of scarcity, people have to make choices. They must give up some things in order to have others. Scarcity exists all around us--money can be scarce if you don't have enough to buy lunch, natural resources can be scarce, such as oil used to make petrolium. Before making a decision, everyone should balance the additional benefits against additional costs of each alternative. When someone uses specialization, they focus on producing the things they do best at the lowest cost. They then trade those things with others to get what they want. Trade only happens when everyone's benefits exceed their costs. 

Here are some thoughts the class had after the activity:

It would have been easier for me if

• I had started off with another colour at the start (pink was hard) (W)

Now I need to

• Think about what colours I need in advance to trade (G)

The most challenging part of this was

• Nobody wanted pink (K)
• Not a high demand for some colours (O)
• When we were trading when nobody wanted your colour (L)
• Talking english to the class and making sure they heard me (being loud) (R)

I was surprised by

• How the pink crayons could still trade with other people even though it was not a popular colour (L)
• How there was not a  lot of yelling going on even when they didn’t get the colour they wanted (V)
• How popular yellow was so popular even thou not needed (SY)

Something I learned

• When  you are trading it is good to have lots of friends as it is easier to trade with your friends even though it maybe an uneven trade (J)
• You have to be careful with the colours you trade. You have to think (P)