Goods and Services

Our first graders learned about goods and services last week.  The lesson started with the question, "Why do people work?"  The students brainstormed in pairs and every pair came up with the same main reason:  MONEY!  We talked about why we need money and what our families' spend their money on.  We made an idea web.  Then I told them that all of these ideas can fit into 2 categories:  goods or services.  After writing the words goods and services on the board, I labeled some of the items on the idea web with a "g" for goods or an "s" for services.  I asked the students to predict what a good was based off of which items were labeled with the "g".  We did the same thing for services.  Here is our idea web.....

Next, I showed them a Venn Diagram.  I had families send in coupons and hand picked which ones would work best for this lesson.  I game each student a coupon and asked them to figure out what the coupon was for, if it was a good or service and why.  Each student had a chance to explain and/or defend where their coupon should be taped on the Venn Diagram.  The students discovered that some things could be a combination of a good and a service such as restaurant food since the restaurant provides the food (a good) and the service to your table (a service).  This was a great assessment tool!

Finally, the students pulled out the community maps they had created the day before when we discussed community changes.  They had a chance to tell one location they put on their map and what you could purchase there (of course I made them state if their purchase was a good or service).  They did awesome!

Here are some examples of the community maps they created!

                           

 The next day, the students created posters to show me if they understood the difference between goods and services and some examples of each.  Here are a few examples.....