Lesson Plan:

Are You a Producer or a Consumer?

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November 1, 2015
by Susan Russell

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to identify the consumers and producers in a community and their functions.


Introduction (10 minutes)

  • Ask your students to list items that their families like to buy.
  • Discuss items that they buy to meets their needs for food, shelter, and clothing. Identify these items as goods.
  • Next, ask your students to name some services their families pay for, such as haircuts.
  • Review with students that goods are things people make or use to satisfy others' needs and wants.

Explicit Instruction/Teacher Modeling (15 minutes)

  • Tell your students that people who use services and goods are called consumers, and people typically pay money to receive goods and services.
  • Define producers as people who provide or make goods and services for consumers.
  • Draw 2 boxes on the whiteboard or chart paper.
  • Label one box Goods and the other Services.
  • Ask student volunteers to give examples of goods and services people pay for, and put their answers in the appropriate boxes.

Guided Practice/Interactive Modeling (10 minutes)

  • Ask your students to explain some of the chores they do around their house.
  • Discuss how parents provide many services around the house without pay, such as cooking and cleaning. Potential guiding questions include: What services do your parents perform to help you out? Do they cook for you? Do they clean?
  • Ask your students to further identify services that people use. Great discussion questions include: Why are the work or services people do in a family important? What are some other goods and services your families consume from outside of the family?

Independent Working Time (15 minutes)

  • Hand out construction paper.
  • Ask your students to draw a line down the middle and label one side Producer and one side Consumer.
  • Direct your students to list and illustrate 4 types of producers in the Producer column.
  • Ask students to write the services or goods provided by the producers.
  • In the Consumer column, instruct your students to list who would use or consume the services or goods listed across from them.



  • Enrichment: Direct your students to create a list of producers and consumers in a family community and in the school community. Ask them to write a paragraph comparing the similarities and differences from the two communities.
  • Support: Give your students one example, such as buying milk. Ask your students to identify who the consumer or producer is in this situation.


Assessment (5 minutes)

  • Collect independent work to assess.

Review and Closing (10 minutes)

  • Ask for volunteers to come up in front of the class to discuss what they wrote.
  • Create an imagined city, and ask your students to come up with a list of consumers and producers in the city.


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