Originally designed to cover NH2's Let's Talk 4, but can work for any JHS shopping lesson.
Students complete the conversation and bargain over the price with their partners. I have them push their desk to face their partner and then the customers rotate chairs every round. After five/six rounds, they change roles and the new customers start rotating chairs.
Scoring:
- Students total the number of X's they received in each role and the total prices (A-D). Basically, it's their starting $400 plus their profit, minus the money they spent, with an additional penalty for any X's. The explanation is in the PowerPoint.
($400 + D - B) - 50(A + C)
Teaching tips:
- I didn't include the "Shall I show you a smaller one?" grammar but feel free to add it in if you like.
- Set a cap for the price at $500 or $1000. None of the items should be that high but they still do it.
- Make sure the students know that the shop keepers want to sell high, and the customers want to buy low. Some will just buy stuff for either $1 or $500 every round.
- The conversation is all spelled out in the PowerPoint, but it's fun to do another one with your coteacher as an example and get more creative with the bargaining. For example, ask for $400 for a sweater and when they object, tell them it's because it's a Gucci sweater.
- Only with my best classes could I actually get through 12 items in 50 minutes with the explanation. I usually capped it at five and then had them switch roles, since the clerk and customer need to buy/sell an equal number of items to score properly. For your first run through, do five and five and see how it works for your students.
- Be sure to save about five minutes at the end to explain the scoring since it's a little complicated.
- Feel free to change the items sold. To make it a bit more thematic, you can tell them that they're Christmas shopping for their teachers and assigning names/pictures to each item.