Current resources

Trade Aid is excited to present a new collection of free online innovative and inspiring teaching resources. The resource supports teachers and students to explore the economic world, and trade in particular. It takes a concept and issues-based approach, using critical thinking and actions to consider people’s participation in trade relationships, and the challenges of economic disparity. View these resources here>

A Social Sciences Unit adaptable for levels 3 – 8

This unit attempts to take students through a process where they evaluate basic aspects of global trade based on their individual values, and how they interpret the word ‘fair’.

Linked to key competencies and achievement objectives, these lessons can be modified for students of all ages.

• The unit (pdf)
• the Cookie Game part of lesson 2 (PowerPoint Presentation)
• images for screening or printing during lesson 3 (PowerPoint Presentation)

A Social Sciences Unit adaptable for levels 1 – 5

Do your toys have a good or bad effect on the people who make them and on their environment and what can you do?

Ideal for all ages as the activities use toys to guide thinking about where things come from and explore the larger story behind the toy. Extension activities aim at extending the scope of the topic and encouraging deeper thinking for older or advanced students. Why not use a product such as a mobile phone throughout the unit for older students?

This unit aims at developing the following understandings:

• toys we buy in NZ are made all over the world
• toy production can have a positive or negative (polluting) impact on people and the environment
• the poor have less opportunity to make decisions about the environment they live in than we do
• the poor are more vulnerable than the rich to environmental changes
• our behaviour in NZ impacts our global community
• how we act can positively impact the global community.

• The unit (pdf)
• A book of stories created from interviews with child jewellery labourers (pdf)
• Chaga and the Chocolate Factory (pdf)
• Environmental justice brochure (pdf)

A Social Sciences Unit adaptable for levels 2 – 5

This unit aims at developing the following understandings:

• the poor are more vulnerable than the rich to environmental changes
• what we choose to buy affects our carbon footprint
• how we choose to act can positively impact the global community
• why does being rich or poor alter how you may be impacted by environmental degradation?

• The unit (pdf)
• Stories created from interviews with child jewellery labourers (pdf)
• Environmental justice brochure (pdf)

Use these resources to stimulate ideas for creating units or individual lessons encouraging students to think critically about issues of trade and poverty. Adaptable for students of all ages. Colourful and packed full of information.

• Teacher activity booklet on trade
• Teacher activity booklet on poverty

Resource designed for teachers of Year 7 to 8 students and easily adapted for older and younger students.

Children of the World contains chapters on children’s rights, poverty, global trade, a case study on India and a book of stories from child labourers. It uses activities, stories, facts, poems and recipes to introduce useful and interesting ways to teach global education issues to students. It aims to make a connection between NZ students and similar aged children in developing countries using information directly from Trade Aid producer partners.

• The activity book (pdf)
• Stories created from interviews with child jewellery labourers (pdf)

Also see our list of publications