Lesson Plan: The High Price of Chocolate

Essential Questions

• What factors determine the cost of a product? 
• How does weather affect our food supply? 

Literature Connection

• Nonfiction: More Than Money: How Economic Inequality Affects . . . Everything by Hadley Dyer
• Novel: The Candymakers by Wendy Mass

Build Background Knowledge  (5 minutes)

As a class, view our informative video “The Sweet Story of Chocolate.” The video will prepare students to read by providing a quick step-by-step explanation of how the fruit of cacao trees is turned into the chocolate treats we buy at the store. After viewing the video, ask students to think of another type of snack or treat that they like. Do they know the product’s main ingredient and how it is made? In what ways might this information be useful to them?

Preview Text Features (15 minutes)

Have students open their magazines to page 4. Guide them to preview the text features by asking the following questions:

• Read the article’s title and subtitle (the text beneath the title). Make a prediction: What might be causing candy prices to rise? Answers may vary. Some students might guess that ingredients, such as cocoa, are becoming harder to get. Others might guess that candy has become more popular,  and companies are raising prices because people are willing to pay more.
• Look at the graph “Cocoa Prices Over  Time.” What does it tell you about the price of cocoa between 2008 and 2022? What does it tell you about the price of cocoa in 2023? Based on the graph, the price of cocoa went up and down a little between 2008 and 2022 and rose sharply in 2023.

Preview Vocabulary (10 minutes)

• Point out the vocabulary box. Read the words (extreme, devastated, climates, sensitive, demand, resistant) aloud and discuss their definitions.
• Play the Vocabulary Slideshow.

Make a Plan for Reading 

Before students start to read, walk them through a reading plan:

• Set a purpose for reading by telling students that the article “The High Price of Chocolate” will tell them why chocolate is getting more expensive.
• Point out the Pause and Think boxes. Tell students they can check their understanding of what they’ve read by answering these questions.
• Point out the activity at the end of the article and tell students they’ll complete it after reading. Encourage them to briefly scan the questions and to keep them in mind as they read.

Read the article. (Higher- and lower-Lexile versions are available on the Story page at Action Online. Click Presentation View to access an audio read-aloud.) Then discuss the following close-reading and critical-thinking questions.

Close-Reading Questions (15 minutes)

• What are cacao trees? (detail) Cacao trees are the plants that produce cacao beans, from which cocoa is made.
• What two countries produce most of the world’s cocoa? (detail) Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, located in West Africa, produce most of the world’s cocoa.
• Why don’t companies want to raise the prices of chocolate treats too much? (cause and effect) Companies don’t want to raise the prices of chocolate products too much because customers might stop buying the products, or might purchase fewer of them, if they become too expensive.
• How do supply and demand affect a product’s price? (cause and effect) When supply decreases or demand increases (so the product becomes less available than it was before), prices rise.

Critical-Thinking Question (5 minutes)

• Based on the article, many people are working to make sure the world doesn’t run out of cocoa. Why do you think this goal is so important to these people? Answers may vary. Students might say that candy companies employ many people and that these people’s jobs depend on cocoa. Some might say that plenty of people simply love chocolate and can’t imagine a world without it. 

• Have students work in pairs to complete the Spotlight Skill activity at the end of the article.
• Go further: Assign students to work independently on our Summarizing activity, available in higher- and lower-level versions. (Click here to view all your Skill Builders for this article.)
• Writing Prompt: The article says that scientists are working on ways to make cacao trees resistant to droughts and disease. Do you think this is a valuable way for scientists to spend their time? Is chocolate really that important? Write a paragraph to answer these questions. Include details from the article , from other texts, and from your own experience.