Teaching economy can be boring. After all, it's hard enough to understand who the ancient Egyptians were and where Egypt is located in the world, but now to learn about Egypt's trade partners and what natural resources they imported and exported? Who cares, right?
(In all honesty, I find it all exciting, but I know that I am in the minority when it comes to a love for ancient history haha)
So I came up with a way that would appeal to my kinesthetic learners, which are basically all my students. After all, who wants to sit in a class all day?! Ummm...nobody!
After teaching a 5 minute lesson explaining what are natural resources, imports and exports, I divided the class up into groups of 5-6 students each. I labeled the groups by giving them names of cities in Egypt. I explained to the class that they are now ancient Egyptian merchants who will be heading out on an expedition to collect natural resources from Egypt's trading partners. I gave them a map of the school where I labeled different parts of the school countries that traded with Egypt. My classroom was Egypt.
The students had to stay in (or around) their boats, which were made out of brown butcher paper. They could not break off and go in different directions. If their boats tore, they had supplies to take with them on their voyage to repair the damages. They could not come back to Egypt with a broken boat, otherwise they drowned and are obviously disqualified.
On their expedition, they were to locate the hidden packages located around the 7 countries labeled throughout the school. In the packages, they found various natural resources. They had to work together, using helpful resource sheet to determine which natural resource came from each country.
The first group to find all 7 correct natural resources and make it back to the land of Egypt to present the imports to Pharaoh Hatshepsut (Queen of trade and the most awesome Math teacher, Mrs. Mobley by the way) won the competition and earned an In-N-Out Lunch with the Principal!
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