As part of our PYP unit on 'Money Makes the World Go Round', my Grade 4s made Commoncraft videos. The central idea was "Marketplaces depend on the ability to provide goods and services which can be exchanged." My Grade 4 partner and I, wanted to expose the students to real news stories about factors that can affect the availability of goods. We found several news stories and simplified them for our Grade 4 students. Students explored such topics as how the Japanese earthquake and tsunami affected the production of the iPad2; how the post election conflict in The Ivory Coast affected cocoa production in 2011 and how Florida's orange crisis is making the price of orange juice rise.
To help us how to understand Commoncraft videos we watched this Behind the Scenes of a Commoncraft Video, (skip to 50 seconds to start!)
We also watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCl1zoxs3Zo which was a very useful guide.
The students had to write a script and create accompanying pictures to explain how different factors were affecting the availability of a product. We were so impressed with the results. The video below is one 3 of my EAL (English as an additional language) students made about how the availability of oranges is affecting the supply and price of orange juice.
Throughout this project which we probably spent 3 hours on in total, the students were all 100% engaged. They worked cooperatively and proved themselves to be thinkers in working out how to show and narrate their report. The students all said they throughly enjoyed the process and would choose to use it again as a means of presentation.
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