We started our economics unit last week and it is always a class favorite! Every year my students create their own business, produce goods, offer services, make advertisements, create business cards, film commercials and set up their stores at our annual class market.
My 2nd grade students are the producers and the first grade students are the consumers.
Learning how to efficiently make goods requires a lesson on the assembly line! Take a look at what we did last week to learn about this old manufacturing process:
We watched this short video about Henry Ford and the Model T to understand the need and importance of the assembly line. They love black and white videos!
A lesson on assembly lines would not be complete without showing the clip below. My students could not stop laughing at the video and asked me to showed it again. Good, old fashioned humor!
After learning about the history of the assembly line it was time for us to try it out for ourselves by making greeting cards. I put the students in groups and gave them each a specific job:
Step 1 - Fold the paper in half.
Step 2 - Glue on the girl or boy paper.
Step 3 - Write Hello! on the front cover.
Step 4 - Write Love, on the inside.
Step 5 - Write Created by 2A on the back.
Step 6 - Inspect to make sure each job was done correctly & fix any problems.
Finally, each student created a flow chart showing each job in the assembly line.
They loved passing the card down the line to the next student as they raced to complete as many cards as they could. They are well on their way to becoming successful business owners.
Heather
