Dollars and Sense for Students

When most of us hear the word economics, we think of either our present precarious financial circumstances, or of world financial issues far beyond our own understanding, let alone the understanding of our students. But the fact is, a number of variables from economics (supply, demand, surplus, and profit) are important components of simple financial literacy which our students, comprising one of the largest consumer groups in the world, need to understand in order to function and succeed in society. If they can avoid even half of the mistakes adults have made, we'll be much better off!

Understanding Global Economies

A simple picture book such as One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference concisely illustrates how planning, hard work, and determination can equal success. At the story's start, young Kojo and his mother just barely survive by gathering and selling firewood. When Kojo is granted a small loan, he chooses to purchase a hen. The hen not only provides eggs to eat, but additional eggs to sell, With the profits, Kojo buys more hens. What's really wonderful, and only revealed at the book's end, is that Kojo is based upon real-life Kwabena Darko, a man who literally changed the economy of his entire village through a microloan. Katie Smith Milway's patient and informative narrative is perfectly matched to Eugenie Fernandes' bright, mural-like illustrations. Kids Can Press provides a free teaching resource for One Hen, and the Heifer Village game (see below) would be an excellent extension for this book.

Similarly, Cycle of Rice, Cycle of Life: A Story of Sustainable Farming (written and illustrated with photographs by Jan Reynolds) shows how people can interact with the environment, providing for their own needs while respecting natural resources. From the water temple system to the farmers' fields, the Balinese people rely upon predictable cycles for their survival. What happens when these cycles are threatened by nature's forces or human progress? Like One Hen, this book presents just a microcosm of world economy, perfect for a class study. See the three-part video series on the sustainability of rice farming at the Lee and Low Books site.

In looking at history through the eyes of economics, both The Silk Route: 7,000 Miles of History and We're Riding on a Caravan present child-friendly views of the complex economy of the Silk Road, which not only accounted for the livelihood of thousands in the Far and Middle East, but also largely drove European exploration efforts of the 1500s. If you're reading about Columbus or any of the other explorers seeking shorter routes to the Indies, it's important that students have perspectives from both sides. (It should also be noted that the latter book provides many wonderful details of Chinese cities through maps and descriptions. Now that China has pretty soundly reestablished itself as a giant in the world of commerce, this book couldn't be more meaningful).

Exploring Everyday Economics

How do economics work in our everyday lives? That question is answered through Lerner Publishing's excellent Exploring Economics Series. Do I Need It? or Do I Want It? by Jennifer S. Larson helps students see many of the variables involved in making budget choices. With sections such as Spending Money, Making Choices, Budgets, Wants and Needs, and Saving, this title is a perfect reading and comprehension level for elementary students. While it's as colorful and narrative as a picture book, it's also as organized and informative as a textbook. Larson's liberal use of questions, text boxes, and photographs will engage students from beginning to end. One recommended web site for extension of this title (found in the Additional Resources at the book's end) is the PBS's My Life feature on Money.

Who's Buying? Who's Selling? is another title in this series which helps students understand consumers and producers. This terrific examination of supply and demand is supported with a glossary and index, which can additionally be used to help students practice reference skills. Explore the entire series list at Lerner Publishing. Highly recommended if you're seeking to put a financial literacy program into place in the lower grades.

Finally, we can't talk with students about buying and selling without also discussing advertising. One of the best titles on that topic for upper elementary through high school students is Shari Graydon's Made You Look: How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know. Cartoon illustrations by Warren Clark, fab facts, quotes from the marketers themselves, charts, graphs, lists, and Try This at Home features make this book extremely attractive for this age group. The solid facts, delivered in a fun yet informative way, make it a winner with teachers. If you're looking for a consumer awareness title for this upper group, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Know, too, that if you're teaching persuasive writing to students, this book is equally valuable for that purpose. So many tricks of the trade that are used to "create demand" for products are reliant upon persuasive writing! This book would serve as an excellent sourcebook for any Language Arts or Tech teacher looking to design creative and original assignments for persuasive writing and presenting. (Be sure to check out the free lesson plans for this title at Annick Press; they'll also give you a good idea of the book's "look." Also, check out their cool thematic list, where you can click on a theme or topic to get related books, many of which also have free lesson plans).

Making Money is Kids Play!

The following web sites present simple simulations designed to help students understand the basics of any economy (supply, demand, capital, inventory, surplus, variables). While talk of economics may sound both complicated and intimidating, these sites make it easy! From the serious Heifer Village to the primary-level Bake Shop, there's something here for every student!

Heifer Village is a somewhat serious simulation which follows a native girl's efforts to secure her own goat, and in the process, her own means of livelihood. Older students will instantly recognize and appreciate the realistic game play. This one requires a bit of time, but students will soon get the hang of it. This is a natural extension of the idea of self-sufficiency found in One Hen. Your students may also enjoy providing feedback to the game's designers, as this is a beta version for which they're seeking suggestions.

Coffee Shop is just one of several math games which can be found at Cool Math. Like the other sites here, it requires that you take a look at all the possibilities to see what best matches your students' abilities and your teaching needs

In the Coffee Shop simulation, students must use their knowledge of controlling variables to run a successful business. They use a base amount of money to purchase supplies (4 variables there), and adjust their recipe (at least 4 variables) based upon past sales and the predicted weather for the following day (2 variables). In my first attempt at the game, my coffee recipe needed more cream. Some old lady (who looked a lot like my second grade teacher) wasn't too happy and poured it out on the sidewalk.

Like coffee itself, this game is addicting! It's a great simulation involving real-world variables in a highly entertaining way.

The Bakery Shop is designed for younger students. While it has some elements of The Coffee Shop, it's not nearly as "math rigorous," uses fewer variables, and is a little less realistic (that is, brutal) than the more demanding and unforgiving Coffee Shop. (Students above third grade will likely find Bakery Shop too easy).

Online Interactive Learning

These sites contain interactive learning which is less game-like and more content explicit. (And for the record, sites for teaching financial education to students are some of the ugliest and most confusing on the Internet! It took me a while to separate the wheat from the chaff! But I think you'll dig the ones below!).

Sense and Dollars is an informative yet engaging set of games for older students. It challenges what they know about earning, spending, and saving money through three interactive games (Check It Out, DreamProm, and Charge). Charge, for example, lets students choose luxury objects and pick a payment plan. It then calculates the object's real, eye-opening cost once credit card interest is added on!

The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute-long video which pretty creatively and accurately portrays our obsession with "stuff." It's appropriate for older students, but isn't exactly "rainy day matinee" material. Check it out for yourself and decide if it's right for your purposes.

Two great books to present with this video? If America Were a Village and If the World Were a Village, both written by David J. Smith. Each book uses a the limited scope of a village to compare the larger scope of the U.S. and the World. If America Were a Village, for example, asks, "How wealthy are we?" The answer:

In our U.S village of 100:

• 5 people have more than half of all the wealth.
• The one wealthiest person (and remember, 1 person represents 3 million people in the real America) has more than 30 percent of all the wealth.
• The 60 poorest people share only about 4 percent of the wealth.

Analogies like this make both books excellent resources for helping students see world economics in a more mathematically comprehensible way. Be sure to visit Kids Can Press to get free downloadable teaching guides for If the World Were a Village and If America Were a Village.

Don't Buy It: Get Media Smart! is a PBS site that helps students "see the ads" when they're hidden in plain site. Advertising Tricks is the first of four modules, followed by Buying Smart, Your Entertainment, and What You Can Do. This site is a great extension activity for Made You Look: How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know.

Did You Get the Message? is just one of the lessons available at EconEdLink. Even if you don't incorporate these lessons into your teaching, you'll still find some awesome links offered there.

So, what did I miss? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Seeing Through New Eyes

The Seeing Stick
written by Jane Yolen
illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini

The Seeing Stick was originally written by Jane Yolen in 1977, and was a recipient of the Christopher Medal in 1978. The book tells the tale of young princess Hwei Ming, whose name, when translated to English, means “the lightless moon on the last day of the month...becoming luminous.” This is a fitting name, for the princess is blind, and enjoys none of what she is given due to the darkness of her world.

Hwei Ming’s father, the emperor of Peking, announces that if anyone can help his only daughter to see, that person will be rewarded with fortune in jewels. In rhythmic prose begging to be replicated the author writes:

"Monks came, of course, with their prayers and prayer wheels, for they thought in this way to help Hwei Ming to see. Magician-priests came, of course, with their incantations and spells, for they thought in this way to help Hwei
Ming to see. Physicians came, of course, with their potions and pins, for
they thought in this way to help Hwei Ming to see..."

but none can find a cure.

A solitary old man hears the emperor’s request, so he travels a great distance to Peking. “The sun rose hot on his right side, and the sun set cool on his left” provides the reader with the idea that the journey is long and not undertaken lightly.

When the old man finally arrives, clothes tattered and dirty from his travels, he is turned away by the city guards. But through cleverness and creativity the old man is brought before the emperor, and there he is able to show the princess a new way of seeing (no spoiler here!). Hwei Ming then becomes a teacher to other blind children of Peking. Only on the last page does the reader discover that the old man was blind as well.

My first concern as a teacher is to ask, "Does this book's treatment of blindness minimalize or stereotype that condition?"

In researching that question, I came across an excellent article in the Future Reflections, a publication of the National Federation for the Blind. In the The Lack of Insight in Children’s Literature Regarding Blindness by Merry‑Noel Chamberlain, the author takes to task many authors' rather contrived treatments of the topic of blindness. Their books, she argues, fall prey to nine stereotypes. But in speaking of The Seeing Stick, Chamberlain says:

Like Knots on a Counting Rope, this folk tale is successful in avoiding the nine stereotypes about blindness... While there were earlier ‘hints’ that the man was blind, that fact was not truly revealed until the end of the book. Thus, the young readers, who may not know much about blindness, would probably think of this character as simply an ‘individual’ and not a ‘blind person.’ The author showed that a blind individual is quite capable of traveling without a sighted escort, and she did this without suggesting that he had miraculous powers. By the same token, The Seeing Stick did not portray blindness “as total tragedy.” The book did show the grieving of Hwei Ming’s father, but this was later turned around when Hwei Ming learned some alternatives. There might have been a touch of Dr. Jernigan’s themes of “Blindness as a perfect virtue” and “Blindness as purification” in the characterization of the princess. She seemed to be disconnected with the world around her or somewhat shy. Apart from this, however, the book educated its readers about blindness in an accurate and dignified manner.

So the wonderful narrative of Jane Yolen not only stands the test of time, but it stands the test of current theory and practice. But understand what's equally cool about this new edition are the incredible illustrations by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini. Like the original version, the first pictures are monochromatic; color is slowly introduced as the old man enters Peking. But in this new edition, the full color pages, (reminiscent in their flowery detail and complexity of medieval manuscripts and Chinese calligraphy), are printed on glossy paper, with many elements of each illustration raised off the page, so the images can be almost read with the fingers. I've read an incredible number of picture books, but the beauty of these pages was a surprise even for me. I was, quite literally, seeing the story in a new way.

This book would make a wonderful addition to any well-rounded collection of international tales. It should also find its place into any unit or discussion on disabilities, perhaps better called differences (see this lower grade unit on Studying Differences through Literature for some ideas). If you're looking for some other picture books on differences, this list from the ESSL Children's Literature Blog is a good start, as is A Guide to Children's Literature and Disability.

Some 300 books into her career, Jane Yolen continues to be an incredible agent of change for children's literature. Be sure to visit her site to view her other titles, as well as the great collection of resources and interviews collected there.

Lee & Low Books: Globally Aware Picture Books

Here in New Jersey and in many other states across the nation, educators are encouraged to focus on 21st Century Skills, and with them, global awareness.

Teachers often lament, "How can I teach students about the world when they barely know about themselves, their families, and their own community?" I think this is answered beautifully through multicultural picture books, and one of the preeminent publishers of multicultural titles is Lee and Low.

I've been a fan for a while now; Ken Mochizuki, author of Heroes, Baseball Saved Us, and Be Water, My Friend (a biography of young Bruce Lee) publishes with Lee and Low. I recommend those three titles highly, but a fourth, Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story, is especially recommended to those readers of this blog who wrote in to thank me for the Holocaust books featured in a recent post. In this little-known true tale, Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara makes the difficult decision to help thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust through Japan, against his government's orders. This books truly speaks to children about doing "the right thing" for others, no matter how little we seem to share in common with them.

What I didn't realize (until visiting their website and reviewing other titles) was that Lee and Low's specialty is multicultural children's books. Once again my job as a teacher and a blogger of picture books is made easy because the site features well-written, in-depth teaching guides for their titles. For the above-mentioned Passage to Freedom, for example, you'll find an Author Talk as well as a Teacher's Guide available either on the site or as a separate pdf download. The Guide features readability scales, themes, a summary, before and after reading questions, writing activities, ESL ideas, and extension lessons across the curriculum. So even if you're not studying the Holocaust or World War II, this Guide would help you understand how to use in the book in several other meaningful ways with your class.

What else will you find at their site? Homeschoolers will find several project and fundraising ideas. Teachers and homeschoolers alike will discover ideas for teaching current events by visiting the Calendar page. And finally, unpublished writers of color can enter to win the New Voices Award, which recognizes promising new authors.

I look forward to including Lee and Low titles in my future posts, but for now, do yourself a favor and head to their site. You'll be impressed by the diversity of their titles, as well as the resources they offer teachers and parents.