ISM Spotlight – Economic Videos

T his year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

  Ms. Johnson is my teammate and our Writing and Social Studies teacher for Year 3 – Year 6 (2nd – 5th grade).  For this unit, she is teaching the students about economic concepts.  One of the ways she has made these concepts come alive for the students is through videos.  For each video students watch, they have their Social Studies notebooks out and they record key concepts and key vocabulary.  In addition to building note taking skills, this also gives her a chance to stop the video and explain the important pieces to the students.  This is especially important for the ESL students who may not catch every word in a video.  After showing a video in class, Ms. Johnson also shares the videos with the students on Edmodo, so that they can re-watch the videos and share them with their parents.

Here are some of the videos that Ms. Johnson has shared with the students so far:

The Kingdom of Mocha

 

Return to Mocha

 

The Story of Stuff

 

Buying Locally

 

Gasland Preview

 

Shipping TED Talk

 

Through these videos, Ms. Johnson has introduced the concepts of markets, supply and demand, government involvement, technology’s impact on an economy, sustainability, interdependence, environmental impacts, renewable and non-renewable resources, the power of the media, raw materials, processing, and word economies to students aged 7 – 11 years old. 

How do you use videos to bring concepts to your students?