Economics and Geography Lessons

The Big Green Pocketbook

MCPS Status of Book as of 4/4/96:
Approved as Library Book for Grade 2

Title: The Big Green Pocketbook, by Candice Ransom (A Laura Geringer Book, an Imprint of Harper Collins Publisher, Mexico, 1993)

Lesson Developed by Barbara S. Yingling

Literature Annotation:
In this story, a young girl and her mother make a bus trip to town to do errands. They visit shops and businesses and stop for ice cream at the soda shop. Along the way, the little girl puts treasures into her big green pocketbook.

Grade Level: 1-3

Duration: 60 minutes. Note: The field trip will need to be preplanned. The time required for a business visit is 30-60 minutes.

Economic Concepts: Consumption, Saving, Goods and Services, Taxes

Geography Themes: Location, Movement

MSPAP Outcomes and Indicators:

Economic Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the historical development and current status of economic principles, institutions and processes needed to be effective citizens, consumers, and workers in American society.

Indicators:

• Make decisions about available goods and services and understand the consequences of those decisions.
• Examine the services financed through taxation.

Geography Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of geographic concepts and processes as needed to examine the role of culture, technology, and the environment in the location and distribution of human activities.

Indicator:

• Locate features of the school and community by interpreting and constructing maps using simple grid systems, cardinal directions, relative distances and sizes, and symbols explained in a key.

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Make a community map of the businesses visited by the mother and child in the story.
• Use cardinal directions to locate businesses on a map.
• Identify the goods and services consumed by the mother and daughter on the trip.
• Examine the services financed through taxation.
• Conduct an interview of a community worker.

Vocabulary: goods, services, consumption, consumers, bank teller, insurance

Materials:

• Book: The Big Green Pocketbook
• $20 bill
• poster paper
• crayons or markers
• 2" x 4" pinch cards labeled Goods on one side and Services on the other side
• Interview worksheet
• "Shopping Cards" worksheet, copied and cut so that each student gets 3 cards

Teacher Background:
As consumers, we choose goods and services to use to satisfy our wants. Private goods and services are purchased from businesses or individuals in the marketplace. Public goods and services are provided by the government and paid for with tax revenues. We use our limited income for consumption or saving.

Lesson Development:

Review/Motivation: Hold up a $20 bill. Say: "I got this $20 bill as a gift. Now I have to make some decisions. I have to make choices about what to do with the money." Ask for suggestions for ways to use the money. Group the answers on the board under these headings:

Buy Goods

Buy Services

Save the Money

Use this list to clarify the terms goods and services, consumption, and consumers.

Activities:

1. Tell the students you will be reading a story about a little girl and her mother who are going to a shopping area to do some errands. Point out to the students that the mother and her daughter will be making decisions about buying goods and services as they shop. Ask the students to watch the illustrations and listen to the story for the kinds of workers mentioned and the kinds of goods and services those workers provide. Read the story of The Big Green Pocketbook to the students.

2. Ask the students to name the workers mentioned in the story and list them on the chalkboard. Include the workers below: (An answer key is provided for your benefit. Just include the workers at this time.)

   (T) bus driver	(services)
   bank teller	(services)
   insurance agent	(services)
   secretary	(services)
   jewelry salesman	(goods)
   dry cleaner	(services)
   candy lady	(goods)
   drug store clerk	(goods)
   waitress	(services)
   cook	(goods)

   Discuss the job of each worker on the list. Encourage the students to explain whether the worker provides a good or a service.

3. Distribute the pinch cards. As you randomly point to a worker, have the students pinch their cards to show whether the worker provides a good or a service. Choose one student's pinch card each time to tape next to the worker to create an answer key on the board.

   Add the 10 workers below to the list, one at a time, and have the students pinch their cards each time. Continue taping a pinch card next to each worker.

   (T) teacher	(services)
   (T) mail carrier	(services)
   grocer	(goods)
   (T) police officer	(services)
   bicycle builder	(goods)
   bicycle repair person	(services)
   computer salesperson	(goods)
   car salesperson	(goods)
   (T) firefighter	(services)
   (T) mayor	(services)

   Point out that some of the workers are providing services for the whole community and are paid by the government of the community. Explain that the government gets the money to pay these public service workers by collecting taxes from the people who live in the community. Help the students to identify the public service workers in the list on the chalkboard. Write a "T" for taxes next to the workers who are public service workers paid with government funds.

4. Make a class map of the marketplace in the story: Divide the students into groups of 3 or 4 and give each group a piece of chart or poster paper no larger than 8_" x 11". Ask one group to draw and color a picture of the bus station and one, the home. Have each of the remaining groups draw and color a picture of one of the businesses visited in the story. (See the list of businesses on the Shopping Cards" worksheet.) Use the pictures to create a map of the marketplace on the wall of the classroom. Let the students make up road names for the streets. Add a map title, compass rose, and key.

5. Have the students use the map to practice locating the businesses by giving and receiving cardinal directions.

Conclusion/Closure:
Tell the students that they will be using the map to plan a route for a shopping trip of their own. Distribute 3 different "Shopping Cards" and a piece of lined paper to each student. Tell them to start at the home and write the directions for getting to the bus stop and traveling to town to visit each of their 3 businesses and returning home. Remind them to use cardinal directions and street names in their written directions.

Thoughtful Application:

1. This activity is best completed as a field trip to a nearby business area. (A mall would serve the purpose well.) Teacher aides or parent helpers will be needed so that each group of students is accompanied by an adult. Preplan the trip by asking merchants if a group of 3-4 students can visit at a set time to interview a workers about the type of goods or services offered there. (It is a nice reward to the businesses that cooperate to give them free advertising in your school newspaper.)

2. Distribute the "Interview Record" worksheet and practice interview techniques with the students. Instruct each group to make a map of the store they visit.

3. After the students conduct the interviews, have them report back to the class to share their new expertise, using their own map of the merchant's store they visited. (Their map should contain all the elements of a good map.)

4. Have the students write thank you notes to the businesses they visited.

Extension:
Working in small groups, students choose a business they would like to start to raise money for a class trip. Each group should identify its product as a good or service and identify the natural, human, and capital resources that would be used in the business they chose. They can share ideas and critique each other's information.

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Last updated on March 10, 1997
Maintained by John L. Day

<jday@umd5.umd.edu>