Potato+A+Tale+from+the+Great+Depression+Reinforcing+Activity

The teacher could break students up into groups of five. They would then pass out a card with a job on it to each student (the same five jobs should be delegated to every group, but each person within a group should not share the same job with one of their group members). Example: Group one: Student 1- Owner of Potato company, Student 2- Owner of plastic company that creates the bags for potatoes, Student 3- Farmer that owns potato farm, Student 4- Owner of Fertilizer Company, Student 5- Grocery store owner. Group two, three, etc. will be broken up just as group one was. Explain to the students that each of them will have a specific job and it is their goal as a group to make sure that every single group member makes a profit. Then the teacher would explain the jobs of each student:

“Owner of the Potato Company: You are the owner of a factory that sells potatoes to various grocery stores throughout the country. In order to be successful you need to think about the quickest, cheapest, and most efficient ways to produce and distribute your product. There are three of your group members that you must negotiate with: the farmer, the Plastic Company owner, and the grocery store owner. You need to negotiate how much you are buying the potatoes for and how much you will sell them for. You obviously want to have a profit so in order to do this your production cost added to your purchase price from the farmer and the Plastic Company must be less than what you sell the potatoes for. The farmer, the Plastic Company owner and the grocery store owner also want to make money, so you will all have to come to a reasonable conclusion on how you will solve this problem. Keep in mind that you will need to also save money to hire workers and run your machinery. These are the things you need to consider: you buy 10 boxes a day of potato bags, you buy 10 boxes of potatoes a day from the farmer, and you spend $3,000 a day on labor and machinery. Assume that this number of bags and boxes gives you 500 bags and 5000 potatoes. Negotiate in such a way that you make a profit.”
 * Owner of Potato Company: ** This student must negotiate with three of the other group members. The card for this character will read as follows:

“Owner of the Plastic Company: As owner of the Plastic Company you create the plastic bags that potatoes are packaged in. You have many workers that you have hired at your company that help create the bags. You need to negotiate with the Owner of the Potato Company in order to make money off of your plastic bags. In order to make a sufficient profit you need to sell your bags for $10.00 a box, but you may want to sell them for more. Negotiate so that you make a profit.”
 * Owner of the Plastic Company: ** The card for this student will read as follows:


 * Farmer that owns the Potato Farm: ** This card will read the following: “Potato Farmer: You are the potato farmer who sells the potatoes to the potato company. In order to get as many potatoes as possible you hire workers and get fertilizer. You need to make sure that you make a profit when selling you potatoes to the potato company. You need to negotiate with two of your group members: the Potato Company Owner and the Fertilizer Company Owner. In order to make a profit the price of your production must be less than what you sell your potatoes for. Keep in mind that you buy 10 gallons of fertilizer a day and it costs you $300 per day to pay for other production costs.”


 * Owner of Fertilizer Company: ** This card will read the following: “Owner of the Fertilizer Company: You are the Owner of the Fertilizer Company and you sell your fertilizer to farmers. You have many workers you have hired to help produce your fertilizer. In order to make a profit you need to sell your fertilizer for $10.00 per gallon.”


 * Grocery Store Owner: ** This card will read the following: “Owner of the Grocery Store: You are the Owner of chain of Grocery Stores. In order to make a profit you must make the price you sell your potatoes for higher than the price you buy those potatoes for. You need to buy 500 bags of potatoes each day (each bag has 10 potatoes in it). You need to find out how much the Potato Company Owner is selling his bags of potatoes for. Then decide how much you will sell those bags for at your stores.”

You can click on the documents below to print out the different cards for each job! // This activity should take them the entire period, and may take even part of the next period. Some follow-up questions may be: Who was the entrepreneur in your group? (the students should notice that technically every member in the group was an entrepreneur and that every entrepreneur had to negotiate with another entrepreneur), What characters used technology to make their job more efficient?, etc. //