Georgia SS5E1.a
The Standard
Describe opportunity costs and their relationship to decision-making across time (e.g., decisions by individuals in response to rationing during WWII).
Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies · Use the basic economic concepts of trade, opportunity cost, specialization, productivity, and price incentives to illustrate historical events.
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify the next best option a person gives up when making a choice. They explain how limited resources, such as wartime rationing, affect decisions in different time periods.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can name a choice, identify its opportunity cost, and explain why the decision was made. They can compare a historical decision with a similar choice people make today.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think opportunity cost means only money spent or every option not chosen. They may also confuse the opportunity cost with the benefit of the choice made.
How to Assess It
- Give students this exit ticket: “A family uses its ration coupons for gasoline instead of sugar. What is the opportunity cost, and why might they choose gasoline?”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups ration coupons and limited food cards, then have them choose purchases and record what they gave up.
Ask students to write whether a WWII family should save gasoline or visit relatives, then name the opportunity cost.
Play Choice Cards, where students draw two options, choose one, and earn a point for correctly naming the next best alternative.
Have students compare spending ten dollars on a movie with saving it for a class trip, including the opportunity cost of each choice.
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Printable SS5E1.a Worksheet
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Related Standards
- SS3E4
Explain the concept of opportunity cost as it relates to making a saving or spending choice.
- SS5E1
Use the basic economic concepts of trade, opportunity cost, specialization, productivity, and price incentives to illustrate historical events.
- SS2E1
Explain that because of scarcity, people must make choices that result in opportunity costs.
- SS4E1.a
Describe opportunity cost and its relationship to decision-making across time (e.g., decisions to settle in the west).
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