This week was our first full week selling, and it has been going very well for all of the teams, in terms of how much money they are making and what they seem to be learning about entrepreneurship. It’s been very exciting for me to witness all of their success and frustrations that continue to add to their learning.
The scholars filling out what I’ve dubbed their “business paperwork” each day is one way that they continue to learn something about how a business operates. With this, I might add that the worksheets for each role does not seem to be useful for each business team (for staying organized), but the sheets are rather an important learning experience, as filling out such paperwork relates to basic business practices. For example, most of the business team members know how much money they have made, how many bracelets and beads they have left, etc., without having to refer to their business records. Perhaps the paperwork becomes more useful for organizational purposes when both key chains and bracelets are being made and sold…
Unlike what was originally planned, the scholars have not been selling at recess for multiple reasons. The biggest reason for which scholars have not been able to sell at recess is because of the way our recesses are organized; third graders go to the field, while fourth graders go to the playground, and there are no parents nor new teachers that are their. Essentially, they don’t have a market at recess. Obviously, this is not the case for dismissal, when many parents and visitors come.
When the scholars are selling at dismissal, I’ve noticed that the seating arrangements required for the scholars (for example, for fourth graders to sit near the back of the entrace) are also influencing the sales. On several occasions, those business teams near the entrance of the cafeteria have sold key chains because they’ve been able to reach the parents first, who themselves, will not move further into the cafeteria if they don’t have to. Trying to encourage parents to explore the entire cafeteria and check out other business teams can be somewhat difficult.
To several of my scholars’ credit, however, some of them have gotten around this by coming up with the idea of creating flyers to hand out to parents. I was very impressed with this, since this is not really a lesson that was emphasized when I discussed marketing with the scholars. In effect, the scholars ran into a problem (having to sit near the back) and came up with a solution (passing out flyers to encourage parents to come to the back) ! J
I decided to turn the slogan challenge into an assessment quiz instead of an oral game. I thought that this would give me a better idea of “who is where” regarding what we’ve learned and what I might need to re-emphasize before next week. For the third graders, I had teams work together to come up with answers, and I awarded the team with the highest number of correct responses. In total, the two classes answered about 12 questions each. I intentionally avoided the questions on marketing and advertising, since these were two concepts that I really did not go into depth with the scholars.
To conclude, I’m continuing to have difficulty deciding what the other scholars can do while the makers of each team produce key chains during production time. What usually happens is that all of the team members end up making key chains because they’re all so excited and don’t want to run out of key chains during selling time (and I think that they want to do something with their hands!). The only thing then that distinguishes a maker from the other roles is that they fill out the “maker’s” paperwork. I suppose this is okay? To solve this, I’ve had the remaining scholars create “new” posters or design potential flyers, or even practice their jingle. The scholars have yet to complain about this set up, though I’m running out of options.
Looking forward to next week!
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