HASS · Year 3

Active learning ideas

Making Economic Choices

Ever wondered how a pile of flour, tomatoes, and cheese becomes a delicious pizza? This topic uncovers the secret life of everyday objects and the amazing journey they take to get to us.

• ACARA Content Descriptions
• Australian Curriculum: HASS - Year 3 - Economics and Business - The difference between needs and wants and why choices need to be made about how to use limited resources

• 30–60 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 3 activities

Activity 01

• Think-Pair-Share
• 45 min · Small Groups

Pizza Production Planners

In small groups, students create a flowchart on a large sheet of paper showing how a pizza is made. They must draw or write the natural resources (wheat, tomatoes), human resources (farmer, delivery driver, chef), and capital resources (tractor, oven) needed at each stage.

Justify a choice you would make if you had $0 to spend on either a book you want or a ticket to a movie.

Facilitation Tip

Provide a word bank of key terms to help scaffold the activity for all learners.

What to look for

Use an exit ticket where students must list one natural, one human, and one capital resource needed to make a simple good, like a glass of orange juice.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

Activity 02

• Think-Pair-Share
• 60 min · Individual

The T-Shirt's Tale

Students create a comic strip or a digital story that illustrates the journey of cotton from a farm to a finished t-shirt in a shop. Each panel should represent a key step in the production process, such as harvesting, spinning, weaving, and sewing.

Explain the concept of 'opportunity cost' using an example of choosing how to spend your afternoon.

Facilitation Tip

Show a short video of the cotton-to-clothing process first to give students a clear visual reference.

What to look for

Students choose a familiar good and create a labelled diagram or flowchart that illustrates its production process from raw materials to the final consumer.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

Activity 03

• Think-Pair-Share
• 30 min · Whole Class

Who Made My Book?

Using a familiar picture book, the class works together to identify all the jobs involved in its creation. Roles like author, illustrator, editor, printer, and bookseller are written on sticky notes and placed on a large chart to visualise the human resources required.

Evaluate the factors a family might consider when choosing how to spend their weekly budget.

Facilitation Tip

Check the book's publication page for clues about printers and publishers to make the activity more authentic.

What to look for

Students use a 'two stars and a wish' reflection to identify two things they learned about how goods are made and one question they still have.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

A few notes on teaching this unit

Begin with a concrete object students all recognise, like a wooden pencil. As a class, break down its components and trace them back to their origins, introducing the key vocabulary of natural, human, and capital resources. Use visual aids like videos and flowcharts to make the abstract concept of a production chain clear and engaging. Regularly refer back to these three resource types so students become confident in categorising them.

By the end of this topic, your students will be able to look at an item like a book or a lunchbox and explain the different resources and jobs needed to create it.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• Goods just come from the shop.

  Shops are the final step in a long journey. A product like milk starts on a farm with a cow (natural resource), is collected by a farmer (human resource), processed in a factory (capital resource), and then transported to the shop.

• You only need money to make things.

  Money is used to buy the resources, but it isn't a resource itself. To make a wooden table, you need wood (natural), a carpenter (human), and tools like saws and sanders (capital).

• Making things is a simple, one-person job.

  Most goods are the result of many people working together in a process. From the person who grows the raw material to the person who sells the final product, many different jobs are involved.

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Methods used in this brief

• Think-Pair-Share