Teaching Activity | Economic Options and Choices (Scarcity and Opportunity Cost)

Here's a quick Powerpoint activity to support the introduction of the topics of scarcity and opportunity cost or could be used to discuss the nature of decision making.

The download resource asks 5 questions. Each question gives students a single option to choose - which of the choices on screen is likely to have the higher figure? The data for these questions has been taken from the most up-to-date trackers on Yougov.co.uk (August 2022).

Teachers can set the activity in a simple way (i.e. students can choose which figure is highest) or turn the resource into a class competition (with students keeping the score of their chosen option and adding them all up at the end of the 5 rounds).

The activity can be used to illustrate how people have to make choices when faced with a scarcity of resources, how decisions have an opportunity cost, how decisions may be influenced by value judgements or when discussing the differences between needs and wants.