Scarcity, opportunity cost and market failure are among the most important ideas students meet early on in A-Level Economics. They can also feel rather abstract when encountered only through definitions and diagrams. These two free interactive activities allow students to experience the underlying problem for themselves. Students make choices under pressure, see the consequences and then use economic concepts to explain what happened.

Survive the Walking Dead

Society has collapsed and the student is responsible for a community of 50 survivors. They have ten cans of food to exchange for a selection of potentially useful supplies, but cannot afford everything.

Students must construct a basket of goods, consider the trade-offs involved and discover how many members of their community survive the month. The activity provides an entertaining but rigorous introduction to scarcity, choice, opportunity cost and exchange.

Try Survive the Walking Dead

The Common: Classroom Edition

Split the class into four herding families that share the village green at Nethergrove. Each group decides how many animals to put onto the common land, knowing that the rewards from additional animals go to the individual family while the damage to the green is shared by everybody.

After five unmanaged seasons, students discuss and introduce a rule before running the activity again. The comparison helps them discover the tragedy of the commons, market failure, non-excludability, rivalry and the possible role of intervention.

Run The Common with your class

Both activities are completely free and require no login. They are particularly useful during the opening weeks of an A-Level Economics course, but can also be revisited when students study market failure, common resources and government intervention in greater depth.