The Big Question for this Daytrek:

EXPLORING ISSUES for teachers

Intro: Gold is a metal that has been hard to find and to mine, yet it is beautiful and something a lot of people want to own.  This activity will let students discover why some items are more valuable than others.  Further, it will create a discussion about how people have worked and will work hard to obtain things (both material and nonmaterial) that are valuable.

Ask students to name items that kids their age are trading today, such as favorite action figures or dinosaurs. Ask them the following questions about these trading items:

• Why do you like these objects?
• What would happen if you found out that your best friend had the one you really wanted?

What if you learned there was a big room full of these things on the other side of the school?

Have your class do the following trading activity to discover that some items are more valuable than others because they are not as common or available.  Also, you want them to realize that individuals may be willing to work harder or give more for items that are rare and more valuable.

You can organize it in this way:

• Cut out small strips of construction paper, or use different colored blocks, crayons, or other items. Make the colors available in different levels of abundance (e.g., yellow can be the most scarce, red can be the most abundant, and the others can fall in-between those two).
• Distribute the objects at random throughout the class so that each student has the same number of items in varied colors.
• Ask students to trade with one another to try to get one item of each color. You can have students trade within the whole class or within smaller groups.
• Stop the activity after about ten minutes. Discuss the trading process with the class. Which colors were the easiest to get? Which were the hardest? Why do they think this was the case?

Explain to students that, as they have learned from this activity, things that are less abundant tend to be more valuable. Can they think of any other things that are very valuable because they're hard to get? What about the trading fad they discussed at the beginning of this lesson? Are some types of this item (e.g., a particular trading card) more valuable than others?

MINING FOR INFORMATION

Go to: http://www.minerals.org.au/education/primary/primary_resources/rockfiles/gold

and read about gold, it’s history and uses.  Answer the following questions:

What is gold?

What has gold been used for?

Explain why people have always valued gold.

What have people done to find and mine gold?  Has this been risky or has it required hard work?

Go to:  http://www.eduplace.com/kids/socsci/ca/books/bkd/sources/bkd_template.jsp?name=balloum2&state=ca and find out what people have done to find, mine or own gold?  Were there rewards for working hard to get gold?

PROCESSING INFORMATION

There are other items or goals in life that might be just as valuable to you as gold and that you might be willing to work hard to have?  As a class make a list of valuable “things” like a picture of your grandfather or “things” like getting good grades or being someone’s hero.  When you add something to the list, explain why it is valuable to you and how hard would you work to have it.

Draw a picture of yourself or write a story about yourself working really hard to have something of value to you from the list your class put together.

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