Module 5 - Taking action

Learning outcomes:

• Students explore the values and conventions of consumer spending and protection in the wider school community.
• Students practice being active, critical, and enquiring consumers by taking a social action approach to consumer learning.

Key concepts:

• Consumer
• Rights
• Responsibilities
• Goods and services
• Market
• Choices
• Financial decision-making
• Laws and regulations
• Consumer protection

Conceptual understandings:

• Both consumers and retailers have rights and responsibilities
• Financial decision-making is influenced by local and global markets and advertising and affects the community.

So what? Now what?

Students consider ways they can deepen their learning and increase community awareness of consumer rights and responsibilities. The class may decide on one joint action or students may choose to work in groups on a range of actions. This table includes some possible actions. However this phase of the unit will be most effective when it is driven by students’ interests and needs.

Possible Actions

Whānau day: Students could host a whānau day where they invite their families to school to share their learning about being confident and informed consumers. Students could share the information through role plays, slideshows, songs, and posters, or they could organise a series of information stations that parents and family members visit in rotation.

Home learning: Students can ask whānau and friends what they would like to know about consumer protection and base their whānau day information on answering their questions in ways they think are most appropriate for their audience.

Role play: This is a variation on the game, Two Truths and a Lie. Divide the class into two teams, consumers or retailers. The students, individually or as part of their team, create fictitious characters. Each character presents a consumer-based scenario that contains two true statements and one statement that is not true. If the other team accurately identifies which of their opposing team’s character’s statements is not true, they get a point. The winning team is that with the most points after every character has presented their scenario. This game could also be played for a parent audience, or to share learning with another class.

Consumer information evening: Students can organise a school information evening to inform the wider community about consumer protection. Mobile phone companies could be invited to have an information stall, as well as local retail associations and consumer advocates, such as the Citizens Advice Bureau. Students will need to decide to plan their roles as as hosts and organisers.

Make a video: Students can produce a video, aimed at an audience that they feel needs to learn more about consumer protection. This may be their own school community, a refugee or migrant group, or other young people. This clip Getting the best mobile phone deal(external link) [0.35 mins] could be used for inspiration.