Year 7 Trading Game

Year 7 Geography Enrichment  – The Trading Game

On Wednesday afternoon, Year 7 took part in ‘The Trading Game’. Students were allocated to a team (country), these were UK, USA, India, Brazil, Cambodia, Kenya and Ghana. Students were greeted with a briefing, this informed them that their objective was to manufacture shapes, which they should then sell to the bank for money. Each country started manufacturing with a set of resources given to them. Wealthier countries had a wide range of resources such as scissors, a protractor, set square, pencils however not much paper. Less developed countries however such as Ghana had quite a lot of paper, a small amount of money, but no equipment. Students were informed that they must trade with other countries in order to be able to manufacture. The energy in the room was fantastic, Year 7 were frantically running around bartering, making deals and even buying people from other countries!

Staff were instructed to not help students for the first 5 minutes and this paid off! Without help, students used their own initiative and played the game impressively. As the game developed, various ‘game changers’ were introduced, such as being told that production in the UK and USA must halt for 3 minutes whilst they went on strike.

New resources were also discovered during the game with some less developed countries receiving aid in the form of scissors! Mrs Hills played the role of the banker and did a superb job. She was strict and the shapes had to be perfect, she would certainly not pay out for substandard goods!

Throughout the afternoon students gained a greater understanding of how countries need to trade globally and also considered how trade can help and hinder some countries. I would like to thank Year 7, Miss Lyons, Mrs Hills, Jerry Parr and Ben Wright (New Sixth student) for a great afternoon of fun and learning.

Mrs Helyar
Geography