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4th grade · Social Studies · Unit 11 of 14

The Texas Economy

Free enterprise and Texas jobs

What your child practices

How free enterprise works (supply, demand, profit and competition) and its benefits, needs and wants, how Texans earn a living in each region, and how transportation, communication, immigration and limited resources shaped the Texas economy.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 4.10(A); 4.10(B); 4.11(A); 4.11(B); 4.11(C); 4.11(D) · the free enterprise system, how Texans earn a living, and what shaped economic growth in Texas

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. In free enterprise, people choose what to make and buy. Businesses compete and try to earn profit.
  2. Supply and demand: lots of a product and few buyers means prices go down.
  3. Goods are things. Services are work people do for others.

Example: A store has lots of pumpkins and few buyers. What will the price usually do? Supply is high and demand is low. Stores lower prices to sell more. Answer: go down

The Texas Economy in Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 11 of 14 in 4th grade Social Studies, after Maps & the Land and before Government & Citizens.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Supply means…

    • how much of something is for sale
    • money in the bank
    • how much people want something
    • the price of a house

  2. Question 2

    Why did Houston become a center for oil refining?

    • it has no water
    • it is near oil fields and has a port
    • it is far from everything
    • it is in the mountains

  3. Question 3

    A benefit of free enterprise is…

    • no new businesses
    • no trade
    • choice and opportunity
    • no choice at all

  4. Question 4

    Profit is…

    • a type of crop
    • the price of a good
    • money a business owes
    • money left after a business pays its costs

  5. Question 5

    Along the Gulf Coast, many people work in…

    • shipping, fishing and oil refining
    • mountain mining only
    • cattle drives
    • wheat farming only

  6. Question 6

    When a drought ruins many crops, the price of food often…

    • becomes free
    • falls to zero
    • never changes
    • rises

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