Coal Mining Lesson

In Mark Nowak’s Coal Mountain Elementary there is a second lesson in the book that is about coal mining. The lesson is called The Cookie Mining Lesson in this lesson the students are asked to mine a cookie for the chocolate chips. The readers are implied to read inbetween the lines for the lines of the lesson to see something different that what the Coal Foundation intends for the students to learn. In Lesson 2 Students will learn how to buy land, pay employees hourly wage and more when coal is being produced, and buy equipment for mining. This will give the students the chance to see how the coal mining process works and how difficult it is to be a owner and a miner. The lesson in the book shows students how to buy land to start up a coal mine, tools, and how to pay the “employees”. As the lesson starts off the teacher gives the students play money to get them ready to start their purchases. Then she tells them how much each state’s land will be, this makes the students think about where they should spend their money to get the best outcome for their profit. Then she gives them a list tools that they can buy to start their build. Once they have all of the land and tools they need/ wanted to buy, they have to learn how much to pay each of their ‘workers’ who will be working for them and what the workers have to do in order to …show more content…
If they spend less time, their labor cost will be lower”(Nowak 115). This part of the lesson is one I believe is one that is easy to read in between the lines. When working in the coal mines workers have a certain amount of time to work and then they are to go home. When they work to longer in the mines the workers are faced with the long term effects that can harm them faster. Also if a worker does not work his full time in the mine they are losing pay; therefore they are losing their income, so the labor cost will be lower for those