Name: Capitalism, Socialism & Communism – Compare Activity
SKU: 62cce3e5f3760144f8d8a71e
Price: 39.99 USD
Availability: InStock

About this resource

What's inside this resource

Discover an engaging and immersive Comparing Capitalism, Socialism & Communism Activity designed for educators looking to deepen their students' understanding of different economic systems in various historical contexts, such as the Cold War and Industrial Revolution Units. This versatile digital resource offers both traditional and Google formats, ensuring a seamless fit with diverse teaching styles.

The activity package incorporates:

1) Warm-up Activity (Infographic Chart): Students explore key distinctions between each economic system and summarize their comprehension.

2) Video Activity: A 15-minute informative public access video paired with a supportive worksheet.

3) Primary Source Excerpts: 15 fascinating excerpts from well-known authors, accompanied by stimulating questions that encourage critical thinking in pairs or individual settings.

4) Comparing Perspectives: Student pairs delve into assigned viewpoints through structured graphic organizers based on the primary source excerpts.

5) Exit Card: Creative cartoon completion exercise for summarizing lesson insights.

Brought to you by 'Learning is a Passion Store', which takes pride in embracing student-centered teaching methods backed by 20 years of experience across grades 6-12. Enhance your lessons today with this comprehensive, interactive digital resource that includes a total of 20 ready-to-print pages, display slides, and Google versions!

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Students will compare capitalism, socialism, and communism across business ownership, pricing, employment, and consumer choice.
Students will identify which economic system a primary-source excerpt describes and justify their answer using textual evidence.
Students will argue, from an assigned viewpoint, how a given economic system affects specific individuals or groups such as business owners and laborers.

Teaching tips

Use the teacher directions on page 3, which suggest using all activities together or mixing and matching individual pieces (chart, video, excerpts, perspectives, cartoon).
Assign the Socialism or Capitalism 'Comparing Perspectives' page to different small groups so the class can compare both viewpoints during share-out.
If assigning the Google Slides version in Google Classroom, use 'Make a copy for each student' per the file's own reminder, or all students will edit the same shared copy.

Skills covered

Primary source analysis — reading 15 lettered excerpts from historical and economic authors and identifying the economic system each describes.
Perspective-taking and synthesis — explaining how an economic system affects specific roles (business owner, laborer) from an assigned viewpoint.
Comparative reasoning — completing a structured chart comparing ownership, pricing, employment, and goods availability across three systems.
Visual synthesis — completing a cartoon with captions and speech bubbles to summarize understanding of a specific economic system.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

Which authors are excerpted in the primary-source activity?

Excerpts include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (The Communist Manifesto and Principles of Communism), Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments), and Albert Einstein (Why Socialism?), among others, lettered A through O.

What does the 'Comparing Perspectives' activity ask students to do?

Working from an assigned viewpoint (e.g., arguing as a Socialist about Capitalism, or as a Capitalist about Socialism), students explain how the system affects specific individuals or groups, such as the business owner and the laborer, citing evidence from the excerpts.