The Trade Game
Bring a hands-on economics game to your classroom to create an immersive learning experience for your students.
The Trade Game is an easy to learn, fun to play, engaging classroom activity that fits easily into any social studies curriculum and is readily adjusted to classes of all sizes and ages.
Economists love to talk about trade. Why is that? The world is a chaotic place. Canadians want oranges in the middle of winter and have no way to efficiently grow them on their own. Trading is a way to encourage Florida orange grove owners to produce more than they, their family and friends could ever eat to give to people who are then able to do other things.
Using the Trade Game, teachers demonstrate some of the benefits of trade to their students and to think through questions like, “When is a trade a fair trade?” and “How can we increase the benefits that individuals in poor countries receive from being trading partners with rich countries?”
How To Play
To begin the trade game, take brown paper bags filled with a variety of items for your students (pencils, stickers, candy, a few bonus points, etc.) The more diverse the pool of items, the better! Each participant receives an item that is theirs to keep, looks in their bag, and is asked to rate how happy they are with the item on a scale of one to ten. These numbers are added together to get a “Happiness Score.”
As the rounds of trade continue, students observe that increased access to varieties of goods, services, and trading partner increases the overall happiness of everyone in the class. The activity includes additional follow up discussion questions where students explain their behaviors and experience throughout. The Trade Game is the perfect introduction to any lesson on trade, tariffs, economics, supply chains, prohibition, globalization, and more!
Watch Christy Horpedahl present the “Trade Game” activity to a group of Arkansas educators at a Teaching Free Enterprise in Arkansas workshop.
Thoughts from Arkansas Educators
“One challenge I often face as an educator is providing my students with meaningful experiences that will remain with them into adulthood. When planning my lessons, I often think about Albert Einstein's quote, ‘Knowledge is experience, everything else is just information.’ How can I create lessons that go beyond the walls of the classroom and inspire students to be world changers?… [The Trade Game] was just the activity I needed to make my “Globalization and Trade” unit complete!” -Michele Jackson
As a teacher you strive to create real experiences for your students to cultivate a deep understanding of subjects, a love for learning, and a well-stocked tool kit of skills they will use throughout their lives. You can read more about Mrs. Jackson’s experience with introducing the Trade Game to her class in her Ask a Teacher post here!
Arkansas Learning Standards in The Trade Game:
EM.3.E.1 Analyze the role of consumers in a market economy
EM.3.E.3 Evaluate intended and unintended consequences of government policies created to improve market outcomes
EM.4.E.1 Compare and contrast various degrees of competition in markets
EM.4.E.2 Explain how differences in the extent of competition in various markets can affect price, quantity, and variety
Request a Trade Game Kit:
We are happy to provide trade game kits to Arkansas teachers upon request. These kits include all materials you'll need to play the trade game with your classes! Please use the form below to request your resources.
