Hi everyone,
I hope any of my followers who are also working well on their Junior Entrepreneur project are almost there. We are getting ready for our own showcase day soon. It promises to be a great day.
There are a variety of steps towards Junior Entrepreneur.
Step 1: Exploring the world of Entrepreneurs.
Step 2: Exploring Ideas including Dragon’s Den
I have explored these steps in previous blog posts.
Step 3: Business Visitor to the Class
This was a fantastic opportunity for the children to learn about one entrepreneur and how they set up their own business. The business visitor explored their role in setting up the business and the steps involved. The children also got to ask questions about their own business and asked for ideas in relation to marketing and who their target audience is.
Step 4: Market Research
Market Research is a key component for the children to ensure their idea will work and will generate sales and more importantly PROFIT!
This year we used Google Forms as a platform for conducting market research, having generate the questions as a class, with my help the children created their own survey using Google Forms. We then sent the link via email to all parents in the school.
I really like using Google Forms as it analyses the data and represents it in a pie chart. The Market Research element of Junior Entrepreneur is a fantastic example of Real Life Maths, the class could watch the responses coming in and how it was represented on the pie chart. The children can explore a real life data set and we also wrote a report on the information.
Step 5: Teams
The next step was to divide the class into the teams, as a precursor to the teams the children completed the treasure trove activity to identify their talents, I also encouraged the groups to work together to identify the talents of their peers.
We then discussed the different groups and what areas the groups focus on, finance focused on money and Maths, marketing was a creative group. Again in their class groups the children had the chance to discuss the groups and identify groups that they themselves wanted to work in. After a general class discussion the groups were formed and the real work began.
Step 6: Making it Happen
Now it was the busy part of Junior Entrepreneur, we placed orders online for all the materials we needed. Once the packages began to arrive the excitement started to build. We spent one afternoon organising our products and getting them ready for production and packing. This really brings the Junior Entrepreneur programme to life. Each team has specific roles to do and jobs to complete, ensuring we have enough ordered, watching our spending in finance and making posters to advertise our products. The class have really taken ownership of this project now and have taken so much pride in it also.
Indoor breaks have been spent completing forms and doing the sums for profits. Once order forms went out the sales team spent time computing the profits we expect to make. The classroom was a hive of activity on wet days as each group used their time wisely to get on top of any tasks they had to do.
Junior Entrepreneur has really brought my class together as a team, while there are smaller teams and team leaders appointed in each one, they also are one large team with teams working together to ensure the products will be ready on time.
Now we have the final task to complete, our showcase day and my story telling team are working busily behind the scenes to document our progress. They also want to do an online diary of their work using video interviews with the Project Managers and individual groups.
Watch this Space, we are nearly at the submission stage!
A.M.
Aistear Múinteoir 