Dear Teachers of Grades 2 and 3:

What does international trade have to do with your students? And why should you, or they, care about what happens in countries on the other side of the world?

If you think about it, international trade isn't just an abstract concept reserved for adults and bureaucrats. It's something that touches all of us each and every day. Much of the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the computer games we play, even the cars and buses your students ride to school every day are products of international trade. But how can we make sense of international trade and the many trade-related complexities and challenges we seem to read about in the newspaper more and more frequently?

The Boomerang Box project was designed to help students around the world learn about geography, transportation, and international trade. Through the tangible symbol of the Boomerang Box - a brightly-painted, 40-foot long cargo container that travels from port to port carrying cargo for customers of APL Limited - students get a firsthand look at how trade works and how it affects them. They get to travel along vicariously over countries and continents as the Boomerang Box travels from the United States to Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and South and Central America. And they get to meet the people who make trade happen.

We hope you'll use the Boomerang Box web site on a regular basis to bring the world into your classroom. The "Journey Log," which is updated with each trip the Boomerang Box takes, is a wonderful tool to introduce your students to map reading and basic geography concepts. And the "Trade Topics" and "People Profiles," though written for somewhat older students, can be read aloud to your students to give them an eagle-eye view of each Boomerang Box voyage.

To help you get started on the project, we've prepared this "Introduction to International Trade" packet, specifically geared for students in Second and Third grade.

This packet contains four lesson plans, each of which engages students in hands-on activities as they explore geography, international trade and the Boomerang Box. They focus on the basic questions of trade:

Click on icon above to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software from the Adobe site. You can then view and print the 4 high resolution files in the Grades K-3 packet listed below. Click here for additional instructions on downloading acrobat files.

• Why do we trade?
• How do we trade?
• Where do we trade?

Each of the lesson plans has been designed to strengthen students' verbal and writing skills. Three of the lesson plans rely on everyday classroom materials; the fourth is designed to be conducted in a computer lab or with materials printed from the Boomerang Box web site. Three additional handouts for Lesson Plan 2 are listed below the Lesson Plan Packet link.

We hope you'll enjoy introducing your students to the world of international trade through the Boomerang Box project. Please visit the web site often!