Government decisions game
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Introduction
By playing a game, students develop an understanding of the trade-offs that governments make when they intervene in the economy and the complexities involved in deciding how to allocate limited resources to serve community needs.
This activity contributes to the following outcomes.
A student:
- applies consumer, financial, economic, business, legal, political and employment concepts and terminology in a variety of contexts COM5-1
- analyses key factors affecting decisions COM5-4
- evaluates options for solving problems and issues COM5-5
- develops and implements plans designed to achieve goals COM5-6
- works independently and collaboratively to meet individual and collective goals within specified timeframes COM5-9.
Related Stage 4 outcomes: COM4-1, COM4-4, COM4-5, COM4-6, COM4-9
Related Life Skills outcomes: COMLS-7, COMLS-13
Content descriptions
Core 1: Consumer and financial decisions
The nature of commerce
Students:
- investigate the scope of commerce, including the concepts of: consumer, needs and wants, goods and services, resources, scarcity and how these may impact on choice.
Core 2: The economic and business environment
The nature of the economy
Students:
- explain the interdependence between different sectors of the economy, for example the role of the government in protecting consumers.
The nature of markets within the economy
Students:
- examine the reasons for government intervention in the market, for example energy pricing, prevention of environmental degradation, conservation of natural resources
Teacher resources
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What is the government Budget?
Government decision cards
Government decisions game
Writing paragraphs in Commerce
Student learning resources
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Government decisions game
Writing paragraphs in Commerce
Suggested activity sequence
This sequence is intended as a framework to be modified and adapted by teachers to suit the needs of a class group. If you assign this activity to a class, your students will be assigned all student resources on their 'My learning' page. You can also hand-pick the resources students are assigned by selecting individual resources when you add a work item to a class in 'My classes'.
- Play: What is the government Budget? This video explains how the government prepares a Budget each year to show how the tax collected will be spent.
- Discuss with students key terminology and as a class define each term. If possible, write these on the board for students to copy.
Key terms
- Australian Government Budget
- Tax revenue
- Tax spending
- Budget categories
- Organise students into groups of 6.
- Give each group a set of cards.
- Each group will also need one recording sheet.
- Use the game instructions to explain to students how to play the game.
- When students have finished playing the game, decide on the winning team.
- Debrief with students. Possible discussion prompts include:
- Was it difficult to make decisions on how to spend taxpayers’ money?
- Which budget categories did you spend more money on? Why did you choose these categories?
- When governments make spending decisions, there are trade-offs. What were your team’s trade-offs? What did you spend less money on? Why?
- Which teams ran out of money to spend?
- What does this tell you about the decisions governments have to make?
- Why can’t citizens have everything they want?
- Students write a paragraph explaining how tax revenue is spent and the trade-offs associated with government decisions. If necessary, refer students refer to the writing paragraphs in Commerce model, or teach them explicitly using writing paragraphs in Commerce visualiser.