Entrepreneurial teachings!

PGM

We're trying to come up with ideas for teaching entrepreneurial skills to secondary school children. Part of some of the youth things we do, and being in accounts I've been asked for ideas.

But what could do with a 20min quick lesson, I'm really not sure?!

Andypandy

My lot were placed into small groups & made to do a business plan with a small amount of start-up money (about a fiver). The groups competed against each other to make the most money. At the end of the year all the money made was used to fund a trip to Alton Towers. My son's group bought loads of sweets & stuff that had short sell-by dates & then sold them on at 100% profit, but the kids buying were still getting stuff for half price. Another good one is the 'virtual trader' game which used to be on MSN.

anniem

Much to my amazement my son (12) has a 'chewing gum' business going at school by last October!

We sat and did a p&l when I found out what he was doing;

Buying chewing gum 64p for 14 sticks; selling gum at 10p/stick, making 76p/packet of gum!

When I suggested that it probably wasn't the best thing to do, having just gone to secondary school in September, he just turned around and asked me if I was interested in 25% of his business!!!!!

I do let him carry on trading although it's probably against all the rules in the book, simply because he's dreadfully dyslexic and I think it gives him some street cred!!!

Sometimes they actually already know more than you give them credit for - he also watches Dragons Den.

Good luck with your lesson.

Andypandy

My eldest used to run a 'proxy server' business, selling names of 24 hour servers for 50p a day, so that kids could bypass web security (technology academy).

PGM

Thanks for the ideas. Problem is its supposed to be something you can get over in 20min. What you could do in that time is puzzling me a bit, I doubt there'd be time for any ideas, business planning, and trading. Have to be elements of each maybe..

*Jo

My daughter did a few business enterprises days last year and really enjoyed them. She did one where they had to plan a wedding. Each kid took a different part of the process and they had a budget to stick to. My daughter did the finances but others did designing menus, and invites and stuff.

When I worked at a high school there was a trading game played in a geography lesson. Each team was given a country and some basic starts to the game. Different countrys had different resources. The idea of the game isn't given to the kids, they have to work it out, all they are told is they have to use the paper to make different shapes out of the templates given (a set square, compass, pertractor sorry about spelling). Some have paper, some have pencils, some a shape, some rulers etc etc. If they are smart the ones with more of one comodity - paper for instance will trade with anouther "country" or beg or steal in some cases. Each shape is given a buying price from the teacher. This changes every few minutes. At the end the country with the most money wins.

Im sorry I cant remember the rules more precisely but Im sure it will be online somewhere. My daughters school did this as well and all the kids loved it.

anniem

I'e just remembered a task we did at college having read Jo's post.

A class of 12-15 students told to make widgets.

A widget was a triangle of paper a certain size stapled to a circle of paper a certain diameter.

One person was given a stapler, one person was given a ruler, one person a compass, two people were provided with pencils and two people were provided with scissors. The rest had nothing except a sheet of paper each. It was a timed exercise, I think we had 10 minutes to see how many widgets we could produce.

To begin with we each started trying to swap the scissors, ruler, compass and make our own widget. Until the brains of the bunch (me) set up a production line.

It was the first time in 15 years of teaching the lecturer had seen a class actually manage to produce some widgets, as previously everyone had tried to do their own thing instead of pulling together as a team.

PGM

Thanks for the ideas. Tricky thing is trying to squeeze it into the 20min, to do a quick taster and have them do much practical work is hard.

Although we could just concentrate on certain skills that an entrepreneur needs..