Our fourth grade students have an annual project that directly ties to benchmarks we identified as essential in the areas of math and social studies. This project has come to be known as the annual business sale. This year, we tried to adjust and make this project more "real world" for students by incorporating design thinking. While in prior years, student groups just chose an object to make, market, and sell, this year we approached things differently. Before deciding on an item, we introduced the fourth graders to the concept of "market research" and made this research a big part of the process this time. We had all of the students go out and talk with possible customers about what they would like to see available.
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| Market research with potential customers |
Following the market research, students wrote up a business proposal and presented those proposals using newly acquired technology training. Side note: Again, we must note how important it is to backwards design these projects to ensure the students are skilled-up on essential functions prior to them applying those skills in a more public manner. In order to craft a successful proposal, students learned Keynote as well as learning basic modeling to project costs and revenue streams. Both of these elements were brand new to the project this year. They were highly successful additions!
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| Creating a business proposal presentation |
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| A student shares their business proposal with peers |
The next step was to create print advertisements in their art classes, and then going back to their technology learning to create a green-screen oriented commercial. As part of the research on marketing, students studied about various sales and marketing techniques, and those techniques had to be evident in their materials.
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| Creating advertisements for the sale |
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| Learning about why some products sell and some don't in library |
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| Creating Prototypes |
Students then made prototypes and iterated designs before settling on the final design. This led right into the sale itself. Sales were on par as years past - perhaps just a bit higher than average but still robust. Students sold their items like small stores, including having a "season end" sale time a couple of weeks later on to finish selling all products.
After the sale, the students then researched where they'd donate their proceeds and they also wrote a narrative persuasive essay about why funds should go to that cause. All in all, the project was very successful, and we had higher involvement of our specials and core classrooms. The student engagement was very, very high. On the other side, the vision for this project was probably less sharp than we would have preferred - it could have been more cohesive because of the meshing of content and product creation and we missed some key opportunities to more seamlessly integrate the many moving parts. This is something we will take into consideration when we approach the business sale next year.
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| Production day |
