Objective
Students will be able to:
• recognize the need to make economic choices.
• understand that scarcity makes economic choices necessary.
• understand opportunity cost as the cost of making a choice.
In this updated lesson from the CEE curriculum “Choices and Changes: In Life, School, and Work for Grades 7-8”, Mario has money in his pocket and can’t decide how to spend it. Students read about Mario’s three choices – a Nintendo Switch 2, a new Lego Set, and tickets to a basketball game – and decide what his choice and opportunity cost will be.
They then write their own “Scarcity Story” – a story similar to Mario’s story which shows a situation of scarcity in their lives or in the life of someone they know.