21 February, 2014

Our Trade Day

Yesterday, both Year 5 classes took part in what we called "Trade Day." This was an activity where learners picked a country's flag at random and then, withthe rest of their group found out as much as they could about those countries, such as who the leader is, where is it located, what commodities does it buy and sell.

On the day, the countries set up their displays, and prepared to deliver short promotional talks about why other countries should trade with them. Then, all the countries started buying and selling their imports and exports with other countries. In the pictures you'll notice 2D shapes. Each shape represented a different unit of commodity. For example, pink circles represented petroleum products.

To make the activity more interesting we provided an IMF table for countries which ran out of money too early, a WTO desk for countries which had a disagreement and a set of crisis which meant some countries had to stop trading for 3 minutes.

It was great fun, and LOUD! All th children enjoyed the experience and we had soem great reflective discussions afterward.











What did you learn from Trade Day?
What things did a country need to do to be successful?

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous21/2/14 14:55

    Trade day
    Last day l and my class was doing the trade day . Trade day is something like there is some country like China , DRC , south Korea. There is some money at first there is some country has many at first like China, Singapore ,Russia . We need to trade the staff our country need to have, like Russia need to import food . At last my country only got 950 , but we are all very happy about the trade day.

    by Ziyi

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    Replies
    1. This is a great effort Ziyi, your English is coming along nicely, I'm really proud of how hard you are working on it. I think one of the things you noticed is that it does not matter how much you start with so much as how well and carefully a country uses the monty they have. Of course, countries with only a little money are much worse off and have a hugely difficult time. However, countries with lots of money at the start found that without careful thought, they ended up being much worse off.
      You did a pretty good job negotiating with other teams Ziyi so you and your team should be proud. It was a tough game!
      Maybe you'll do better next year!

      Delete
  2. Anonymous24/2/14 14:36

    hello
    I really liked trade day and it was really fun!We have to go around to diferent countrys and buy things we need.We sold our things for the highest price andbuy things for the cheapest price.maybe next year We will have more fun

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do you remember whT the vocabulary words for things you needed to buy and things you needed to sell were? What did you notice about prices of things? Do you think it mattered that some countries got more money at the start than others?

      Delete
  3. Anonymous24/2/14 15:16

    This sound's like an interesting activity

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Ned,
      Thanks for visiting our blog, and more importantly, taking the time to leave a comment. This is a very interesting activity and the children really enjoy it although it takes a lot of work on their part to be ready.
      You can see earlier Trade Day events from a few years ago in earlier blog entries here.
      Thanks again for visiting.

      Delete
  4. Trade Day sounds like lots of fun!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Holly,
      Thanks for visiting our blog and leaving a comment. Thanks also for introducing our blog to your classes.
      Trade Day is always fun and it is interesting to see how hard they work and how much they learn and the connections they make and the questions they formulate.
      Thanks again for visiting

      Delete
  5. Anonymous24/2/14 16:48

    Dear Year 5,

    Trade day was really fun. I learnt how to negotiate prices until the fitted my idea of good payment.
    I know that when you needed to get money you would have to sell loads and try because most people will have lots of what need to get rid of. It gets quite annoying when that happens.

    Maybe we could do trade day again sometime?

    Happy Blogging!

    Esme NISS Year 5G

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous24/2/14 19:10

    Hello 5G
    I really enjoyed Trade day because we agociated with different countries.We had to go to many different countries and trade for the best price.We also had to be careful with our money.I learned that if you start with a lot of money you end up with less money.Also if you start with a small amount of money you end up with a lot of money

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  7. Beech Class26/2/14 20:13

    Hello we are Beech Class!
    Recently we've been looking at your blog and we think Trade Day sounds really fun. It sounded like you needed a lot of knowledge to understand how to participate in Trade day, did you complete a lot of research before? Who was the winning country and how much money did they earn? Why did you use shapes rather than pictures or actual objects?

    We look forward to hearing your reply!
    Beech Class

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous21/3/14 09:56

    The trade day was really fun but sometimes stressful because some people just didn't bother to buy but it was really exciting, I wish we could do it again but maybe not. If we have an exhibition like the year 6 did I'm all for it!

    Regards Doga

    ReplyDelete