SUBJECT: Civics/Economics
GRADE: Seventh
TECHNOLOGY: Spreadsheet
Global Shopping Trip
Target Grade/Subject:
Seventh grade/Civics & Economics. This lesson introduces
seventh graders to the basic principles of how the monetary systems
of different countries interact. This age group tends to be materialistic
and would be interested in learning about how much a good they
want costs in terms of a foreign country's currency.
Objectives:
- Students will be able to match units of currency with corresponding
country seven out of nine times.
- Given a chart of nine major foreign currencies, students
will be able to determine the rate of exchange per US dollar.govt.htm
- Using their calculated amounts, students will be able to
compute the amount of foreign currency required to purchase everyday
goods that students might want.
Materials:
- "Marketplace" section of current edition of The
Wall Street Journal.
- PC Terminal for each student, loaded with Microsoft Excel
for Windows.
Lesson Description:
- Teacher distributes the currency rate chart from the current
WSJ.
- Students set up a spreadsheet with the nine major foreign
countries listed vertically in the first column.
- Students will enter the name of each country's currency in
the second column.
- Students will enter the amount of currency per US dollar
in the third column, and determine the rate of exchange for each
currency per US dollar and enter the rates in fourth column.
- Students select five items for which they might save toward
purchasing and assign each good a whole dollar amount.
- Students calculate the amount of foreign currency required
for purchasing these items in each country.
Evaluation Procedure:
- Students correctly matched at least seven of the nine currencies
with the appropriate country.
- Students used the proper formula (1/currency unit per US
dollar) to determine the rate of exchange.
- Students selected the correct base value (currency unit per
US dollar) for each foreign denomination by which to multiply
for each of the five goods.