Alabama Social Studies SS24.E.2a
The Standard
- SS24.E.2
- Compare marginal benefits and marginal costs of an action, using rational decision-making.
Analyze how changes in opportunity costs impact the rational decision-making of individuals, businesses, and governments.
2024 Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify the best option given up when someone makes a choice. They explain how a change in that option's value can affect a person's, business's, or government's decision.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given two uses for a fixed hour or budget, students name what each choice gives up. They use a change in value to explain why the decision should change or stay the same.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may count only money spent and miss the value of the option given up. They may add up every rejected option or assume any change in opportunity cost must change the decision.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: A bakery can earn $120 making bread or $90 making cakes in one shift. If cakes would now earn $150, what happens to the opportunity cost of making bread, and which choice makes more sense?
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs payoff cards for tutoring versus work, bread versus cakes, and buses versus parks; change a value and compare what each choice gives up.
Ask: After flooding, road repairs become more valuable. Should a town still fund a park first? Explain what the town would give up.
Run a three-round bakery game: teams choose bread or cakes, reveal a new profit card each round, and score points for explaining changed opportunity costs.
Show a city budget page listing roads and parks; ask what park work might wait if the city moves $10,000 to roads.
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Printable SS24.E.2a Worksheet
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Related Standards
- SS24.E.2b
Illustrate and explain how rational decision-making involves the consideration of trade-offs and opportunity costs.
- SS24.E.1
Investigate and share information on how scarcity can impact factors of production and the decision-making of individuals, businesses, and governments.
- SS24.E.2
Compare marginal benefits and marginal costs of an action, using rational decision-making.
- SS24.E.8a
Analyze how spending and production decisions made by households, businesses, and government determine overall levels of income, employment, and prices.
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