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Sixth Grade: JA Global Marketplace

JA Global Marketplace provides practical information about the global economy and its effect on students’ lives. Six required, volunteer-led activities. 

JA Global Marketplace was purposefully and strategically developed to align with academic content areas, specifically with world history, geography, and social studies disciplines. This program’s focus on reading, writing, and mathematics standards ensures relevance in all classrooms affected by high-stakes testing. 

JA Global Marketplace is a series of six activities recommended for students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. The average time for each activity is 45 minutes. Extended learning opportunities were developed to enhance and extend the learning of these core activities. JA Global Marketplace contains an optional CD-ROM supplement designed as an interactive, take-home piece for students. Materials are packaged in a self-contained kit that includes detailed activity plans for the volunteer and materials for 32 students. All JA programs are designed to support the skills and competencies identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. These programs also augment school-based, work-based, and connecting activities for communities with school-to-work initiatives.

 

JA Global Marketplace enhances students’ learning of the following concepts and skills:

Concepts
Trade, Market, Domestic trade, International trade, Exports, Trade barrier, Quota, Subsidy, Embargo, Tariff, Standard, Business practices, Culture, Franchise, Global trade, Immigrate, Emigrate, Entrepreneurship, Human resources, Productivity, Technology, Exchange rates, Currency

Skills
Interpreting maps, charts, and globes, Oral and written communication, Working in groups, Gathering and organizing information, Critical reading, Persuasion, compromise, and bargaining, Analyzing points of view, Brainstorming, Critical thinking, Math calculations

The key learning objectives listed beside each activity state the skills and knowledge students will gain.

Session One: What's Your Big Idea? Key Learning Objective
Students practice being entrepreneurs by turning ideas into businesses. They identify factors needed to create a variety of entrepreneurial ventures and design an advertisement for their product.
  1. Experience free enterprise and entrepreneurship.
  2. Identify the key factors in establishing an entrepreneurial business.
  3. Create an advertisement.
Supplemental Session: Business Organization  
Students further explore entrepreneurship by experiencing the three ways a business can be organized.
  1. Identify the three types of business organizations.
Session Two:What's a Resource?  
Students learn about resources and how they apply to technology, workers, and the needs of businesses and industries.
  1. Describe resources, particularly human and capital resources.
  2. Define scarcity and opportunity cost.
  3. Discuss technology as a capital resource in demand by most businesses.
Session Three: Job to Job  
Students examine the skills needed by jobs that are in demand by businesses in a free enterprise system, particularly the skills related to high-growth, high-demand jobs.
  1. Identify the skills that support high-growth, high-demand needs in the workplace.
  2. Analyze their own skills to see how they fit in the workplace.
Session Four: A Cluster of Skills  

Students learn about job clusters and the background necessary for each job. They are introduced to a simple resume that uses typical resume components.
  1. Identify clusters of jobs and the background required by those jobs.
  2. Create a simple resume.
Session Five: Worldwide Connections  

Students are introduced to specialization and competition. They explore how their nation is connected to the global economy. They see how specialization and technology have contributed to free enterprise and their effect on the global business world.
  1. Describe specialization and competition in business.
  2. Experience the global needs of many businesses.