Here is the standard that we would like one of your student groups to address as they build a game for
your class. They can either take one of the elements (letter a, b, etc…) a build a game around just that
element, or if they wish can try to build a game around multiple elements below. Bulleted points are
what the game should try to include. I have also included some web resources that may help them.
Let me know if they need any more information.
SS5E1 The student will use the basic economic concepts of trade, opportunity cost,
specialization, voluntary exchange, productivity, and price incentives to illustrate historical
events.
a. Describe opportunity costs and their relationship to decision-making across time (such as decisions
to ration goods during WWII).
 Building victory gardens
 Rationing of the following items: rubber, steel, gas
 Could incorporate a ration book
 Could include ration posters from the time
 Why rationing was needed (build more tanks, planes, give food to soldiers, etc…)
Web resource: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/homefront/life/activity/act.htm
b. Explain how price incentives affect people’s behavior and choices (such as decisions to participate
in cattle trails because of increased beef prices).
 Lots of cattle in Texas so the price was only $3 – 5 a head (supply/demand)
 Had to drive the cattle on trails to the railroads to make more money ($40 – 50 a head) and be
sent back East where there was a high demand
 Incorporate Chisolm trail and Great Western Cattle trail
 Try to incorporate the Black cowboys helped on these cattle drives
 Can incorporate how barbed wire ended cattle drives
Web resource: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ranchhouse/history.html
d. Explain how voluntary exchange helps both buyers and sellers (such as how specialization leads to
the need to exchange to get wants and needs).
 Include geography leading to the specialization in the area (flat land = farming, near the
ocean = fisheries, etc…)
 Product needing to go to different areas or supplies need to be purchased to eventually lead to
finished product (to make a car need steel from one area, rubber from another area, etc…)
e. Describe how trade promotes economic activity (such as how the Panama Canal increases trade
between countries).
 Incorporate location of Panama Canal
 Could even incorporate it being built, problems arising during its construction (malaria,
mountains), who commissioned it being built, and how it shortened trade routes
Web resource: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flash-interactive/panama-map/