The Resilience Kit — Teacher Answer Booklet

First time running this? Start here

This is designed as an introduction, not a revision exercise — most students playing it won't have met scarcity, choice or opportunity cost before.

Read the real Guardian story behind this game →

Before you start, put the three key words on the board: Scarcity, Choice, Opportunity cost. The setup screen on the console has plain-English definitions you can read out or display.
Open the teacher console on the board. Set up 2–8 team names before you begin — students can rename themselves live if they want their own team name.
Print one student workbook per team. Each round's scenario, prices and scoreboard are already laid out, with the three key words repeated at the top — teams write their answers directly on it.
Run the rounds in order. After each round, collect the sheets (or walk round and read them off), type each team's answers into the console, and hit Reveal. The console scores automatically and updates the league table.
Round 4 is spoken, not written — give each team 60–90 seconds to explain their choice before you rate how well they justified it.
After the bonus round, the console shows a podium and the final league table. The reflection questions are written at the beginner's level too — one word answers are fine for Q1.

50-minute run sheet

Time	What happens
0–5 min	Briefing: read the scenario aloud, set up teams on the console, hand out workbooks.
5–13 min	Round 1 — Know the Threat. Teams discuss and write; reveal and update league table.
13–23 min	Round 2 — Build the Kit. Teams choose items on paper; enter and reveal.
23–33 min	Round 3 — Panic at the Shelves. Announce the price rises before teams decide; enter and reveal.
33–43 min	Round 4 — The COBRA Briefing. Teams pitch live; rate justification quality on the console.
43–48 min	Bonus round — Real World Recall, quickfire.
48–50 min	Podium reveal and final league table.

Running a 65-minute lesson instead? Add 5 minutes to Round 2 and Round 3 each for fuller team discussion, and use the extra 5 minutes at the end for the written reflection questions rather than setting them as homework.

ROUND 1

Know the Threat — answer key

Situation	Correct key word
Supermarkets don't have enough tinned food for every household to buy as much as they'd like.	Scarcity
A household decides to buy a first aid kit instead of a portable power bank.	Choice
Because they bought the power bank, the household can't also afford extra bottled water.	Opportunity cost
There isn't enough money in the household budget to buy everything on the list.	Scarcity

5 points per correct match, 20 points total. Only three key words are used across all four questions, deliberately — the repeat on Q4 is there to reinforce "scarcity" rather than test a fourth new term. This round works well marked as you circulate — you don't need to wait for the console to know who's on track.

ROUND 2 & 3

Build the Kit / Panic at the Shelves — how scoring works

Both rounds score automatically from what you tick into the console — there's no separate answer key to mark against, because there's no single correct basket. Round 2 scores on your team's total kit coverage across five household needs (Food, Water, Power & Light, Information, Health & Safety), out of 20.

Round 3 is deliberately scored differently, and it's worth knowing why. It is not "how much extra coverage did you gain" — a team that built a near-complete kit in Round 2 would then have almost no coverage left to gain, capping their Round 3 score for reasons that have nothing to do with how well they spend their final £20. Instead, Round 3 scores each team against their own best possible move: given what they already own and their remaining £20 at the new prices, the console works out the best coverage they could possibly have bought, and scores them on how close they got to that. A team that already owns everything scores full marks automatically — there was nothing left to buy, so nothing to lose marks on.

Round 3's price rise is real: tinned food, bottled water and torches rise in price, while the radio, first aid kit, medication and power bank stay the same. The simple story worth giving students is that everyone tried to buy the same few things at once, so the price went up. If you want the fuller A-level version for the debrief: a sudden rise in demand, with supply unchanged, creates excess demand at the old price, and price rises until quantity demanded falls back in line with supply. The reflection questions push toward this fuller version already — see below.

Item	Round 2 price	Round 3 price	Mainly covers
Tinned food (10-day supply)	£11	£16	Food
Bottled water (multi-pack)	£7	£10	Water
Torch & spare batteries	£6	£8	Power & Light
Wind-up / battery radio	£10	£10	Information
First aid kit	£13	£13	Health & Safety
7-day medication buffer	£5	£5	Health & Safety
Portable power bank	£16	£16	Power & Light, Information
Reserve of banknotes at home	£9	£9	Food, Water, Health & Safety (small amounts each)

ROUND 4

The COBRA Briefing — marking guide

There is genuinely no single correct policy stance here — economists and policymakers disagree on this in real life. At this level, mark on whether the team gives a real reason at all, not on which option they pick or how technical their language is.

Rating	What it looks like	Points
Strong	Gives a clear reason and correctly uses "scarcity", "choice" or "opportunity cost" — e.g. "the government should ration it because otherwise richer households will buy everything and poorer households will go without."	20
Adequate	Gives a sensible reason but doesn't use any of the three key words — e.g. "it's fairer if everyone gets some."	12
Weak	States an opinion with no reason behind it — e.g. "because it's better."	5
Blank / off-topic	No usable answer given.	0

BONUS

Real World Recall — answer key

Question	Answer
Which government department announced the campaign?	Cabinet Office
Classic UK emergency advice recommends keeping supplies for how long?	3 days
Which extreme weather triggered the COBRA meeting in the real coverage?	Heatwave & wildfires
What does the government call its plan for a large-scale conflict?	War Book

5 points each, 20 points total.

Reflection questions — pointers

Written with command terms rather than mark allocations, at introductory level — accept answers in the students' own words, and don't expect exam-style vocabulary yet. Questions 3, 4 and 6 are a deliberate first taste of supply and demand, which the game hasn't formally taught — treat these as teasers to spark curiosity ahead of that topic, not a test of it. There's also a standalone reflection-questions handout with the same questions and a clickable link to the real article, for students to answer in their exercise books.

Define — any answer showing they understand "not enough for everyone" + a concrete example from the game, e.g. "not every team could afford all eight items."
Describe — names one item they bought and one they didn't; states that the item they missed out on is the opportunity cost of the one they bought.
Explain (supply and demand) — accept "because everyone wanted to buy the same things" as the entry-level answer. The fuller A-level version to draw out: a sudden rise in demand, with supply unchanged, creates excess demand at the original price; price then rises until quantity demanded falls back in line with what's available. Worth explicitly naming the gap between the two — "high demand made shops put prices up" is the simplified, slightly crude version; excess demand pushing the equilibrium price up is the accurate one.
Predict (water) — price would go up. The scaffolded hints are there to walk students from prediction to reasoning: a rush to buy signals to producers that people want more (their stock is selling fast); this gives producers an incentive to raise output or raise price to ration what's available; and when demand outstrips supply (excess demand), price is the mechanism that closes that gap.
Discuss — any reasoned answer either way. Look for one genuine reason, e.g. "government handing it out means everyone gets some, even if they can't afford it" or "letting people buy their own means the government doesn't have to organise it."
Explain (retailers) — in real coverage of similar past campaigns, retailers warned that telling everyone to stock up at once risks the exact pattern Round 3 modelled: one shopper sees empty shelves and panics, others copy them (herd behaviour), the shelves empty faster, and the people who couldn't get to the shops first — often the most vulnerable — end up worst off. A good answer connects "government advice → copying behaviour → shortage/price rise", the same logic as the supply and demand question above.

Scenario based on the UK Cabinet Office's August 2026 national resilience campaign, reported by The Guardian, 25 August 2026.