Y5 How We Organize Ourselves: Our Choices as Consumers

Y5s are just getting started on this unit.   The central idea is understanding the properties and production of materials that enable consumers to make informed decisions. This can be explored from many perspectives: economical, environmental, and humanitarian. The major themes of fair trade and being a responsible consumer dominate this unit.

Students have their UOI-related books on material productions, like Journey of a T-Shirt and From Factory to Store.

Image taken from Overdrive.com

Image taken from Overdrive.com

They also have books that cover sustainability, activism, fair trade, and to a lesser extent, economics. One of the main goals is for students to appreciate what it means to be a responsible consumer.

To link the books to these concepts, I wanted to cover the basic definitions of human and material costs. Though many of the books conveyed the environmental cost of goods, they did not cover the human cost of exploitation that comes with pursuit of cheaper consumer goods. Visually, I felt this was best summarised through a video by Radiohead, All I Need.

Video taken from https://vimeo.com/105641769

This video depicts the lives of two boys similar in age.  One clearly living a privileged life in the developed world, another working in sweatshop in a developing or third world country, most likely in a child slavery or child labour situation. 

Video taken from https://vimeo.com/105641769

I asked students what this last scene meant to them in the context of their current unit:

• Give me examples of "some things cost more that you realise". 
• What do those costs mean in terms of human costs? 
• How are the two boys similar?
• How are they different?
• One conceptually-based question for future lessons is, who really pays for those shoes?  Besides money, how is this paid? 

Much of the discussion swerved to focus on what they considered as rights of child as some had already discussed this in previous grades and lesson. 

You can see the results of this lesson documented below.

The black indicates the Y5s' prior knowledge before the video was shown.  The new concepts after they watched the video are in red. 

As in all my lesson, I only have 30 minutes so this is only a provocation rather than a lesson. But, based on their vociferous discussions afterwards, it did get them thinking about fair trade and the consequences of their purchases. 

If something is really cheap, we need to ask why.  If something is too good to be true, it probably is.