Let's go shopping! - Consumerism

As we move through our exploration of the grade 9 Social outcomes connected to economic systems, I planned two experiential opportunities to help students make connections between the content and their lives. The outcomes related to consumerism, values, and identity lend themselves well to this. With this in mind, what better place is there to think about and analyze consumerism than a mall? Our trip to Cross Iron and New Horizon Malls was successful and an enjoyable day of examining our consumer choices. (As always, a huge thanks to the parents who joined us as without them, we couldn't have gone!)

How does your identity influence your consumer choices, and vice versa? Find examples of a variety of advertising techniques. What demographic is this store targeting? How do you know? Social 9 outcomes, and more, while shopping with @connectcharter 9s today. pic.twitter.com/nBVSA6p8Ld

— Jaime Groeller (@missg_teaches) February 4, 2019

The second experiential activity we participated in was Tuesday's swap meet. After watching an episode of Tidying Up on Netflix, students were challenged to apply the KonMari method to some of their "stuff" in order to determine if they had items they could bring to the swap meet. The swap meet was an opportunity for students to think about the impacts of consumerism, as well as the big idea of economic systems being a way to solve the problem of scarcity and organize the three factors of production (land, labour, capital), not just "money for stuff."