Georgia SS3E2
The Standard
Explain that governments provide certain types of goods and services in a market economy (schools, libraries, roads, police/fire protection, and military) and pay for these through taxes.
Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify services that local, state, and national governments provide. They explain that tax money collected from people and businesses helps pay for them.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can classify examples such as a fire station, public school, highway, and military base as government-funded services. They can explain why communities share these costs through taxes.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think public services are free because families do not pay when they use them. They may also think taxes pay only for services used by the person who paid.
How to Assess It
- Ask: “Name two services a town provides and explain where the money to operate them comes from.”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups play money and town service cards, then have them create a tax fund and choose which services it will support.
Ask students to write: “What might happen if a town collected no taxes for one year?”
Play a card sort where students match schools, roads, firefighters, and other services with government funding or private payment.
Use a local map to locate a school, library, road, police station, or fire station supported by community tax money.
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Printable SS3E2 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to SS3E2, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- SS6E4.b
Explain that countries have a mixed economic system located on a continuum between pure market and pure command.
- SS5E2.d
Describe the government function in taxation and providing certain public goods and public services.
- SSKE3
Explain how money is used to purchase goods and services.
- SS3E3.b
Describe how goods and services are allocated by price in the marketplace.
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