Students were divided up into several different historic roles - ship builder, British Trading Co. Official, farmer, tax collector, smuggler, etc. - and were given a certain amount of "cash" and/or goods with which to trade. During the simulation, trading was stopped and the players had to react accordingly to changes in the market such as natural disasters, mandatory tax collections, flooding of certain goods in the market. Each role had an end-goal for which they were striving.
Once the fast-paced, and loud simulation came to an end, students enthusiastically counted up their fake money and the value of their goods. On a whim, I asked them to graph their total on the white board. Some of the players were quite crafty and used novel strategies (hello future entrepreneurs!), while in many cases, the results were enough to give the students a sense of mercantilism, and how it affected the colonists residing in the 13 Colonies.
Next time, I'll try to tighten up the simulation change factors and digitize the graph. I think the concluding data analysis could potentially be rich for more discussion. If you have any knowledge about a quick and efficient way of plotting the various student responses electronically, your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. BTW, if you make my students look like up-and-coming Hans Roslings, that would be even better! ;)
