Virginia SOL VS.4.f
The Standard
describing ways people exchanged goods and services in Colonial Virginia
Virginia Standards of Learning for History and Social Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify barter, money, and credit as methods colonists used to make trades. They explain why tobacco and other goods often replaced scarce coins.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can match a colonial trade scenario to barter, money, or credit and explain their choice. They can describe how a service could be traded for goods.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think colonists always paid with coins or that barter only involved objects. They may also confuse credit with receiving something for free.
How to Assess It
- Give this exit ticket: “A farmer receives a tool now and promises tobacco after harvest. Which exchange method is this, and how do you know?”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs cards showing tobacco, coins, tools, food, and services, then have them negotiate three colonial trades.
Ask students to write which payment they would accept for repairing a fence in colonial Virginia and explain why.
Play a scenario sort where teams label each exchange as barter, money, or credit and defend one answer.
Compare a colonial store account with a modern credit card purchase, focusing on receiving goods now and paying later.
Keep exploring
Related Standards
- 1.8.d
describing goods produced and services provided in Virginia; and
- VS.3.b
describing the economic and geographic influences on the decision to settle at Jamestown
- VS.2.d
describing the relationships and interactions of Virginia’s Indigenous People and their environment, circa 1600; and
- USI.5.b
explaining Virginia’s importance as one of the most populous and wealthiest colonies
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