Salutations on this lovely June day!We are nearing the end of our fun together, working step-by-step through a real-life classroom project. If you’re not entirely sure what the project is and are very confused, feel free to catch up below. This is the perfect year-end project when testing is over and you’re not sure what else to do. Use this time to have some fun, teach your students a lot of real-world skills, and be truly amazed at how awesome your students are!Got It?Awesome! Now for Week 5 of this awesome year-end project! So far, your students have learned about goods and services, completed their business plan or plans, decided what specific types of flowers they will be selling and how to obtain them, completed a brand board and marketing plan, created drafts of marketing materials, decided which students will fulfill which working roles, and worked to get their store or stores ready for the Grand Opening. This is the exciting part. Your students will be actually selling this week!! To review, there are two ways you can proceed with a fairly authentic sales process.
Approach #1: Student consumersCreate a store that only serves the students within the school. There are a couple benefits involved with this: 1) You don’t need to reserve space on a special night for parents to buy and 2) Students can sell over a longer time period, adjusting where they feel the need, and documenting their experiences. If you’re trying to raise money for a cause, have students bring in allowance or money from home and purchase flowers at some point during the school day. If you’re simply using this as a learning opportunity, just give each participating consumer a certain number of tickets. Those tickets are worth a certain amount per ticket.Approach #2: Adult ConsumersHost the students’ store at the school on a special night. Parents, friends, and neighbors can purchase flowers from your students again either through the ticket method, or using actual money.At the end of each sale day, or the end of the sale night, have your students record their experiences in their journals. Make sure each student specifically references his or her working role, how he or she was important to the company’s success, what he or she did well, and what he or she would have done differently.
For beginning writers: You can simply ask each student to answer the questions in list form.Backtrack…How to PrepareYou may be thinking, how will my students measure their success? Great question! Remember those finance experts you selected last week? One of their jobs was to assess how much money the company spent. They also need to determine how much money the company needs to make in order to have a profit. The profit is what the company makes, or gross income, minus all expenses.
Next, your executives need to get together and decide how much profit they want to make. Executives must take into account the salaries they have to pay to everyone in addition to regular business costs.
In the interest of keeping it simple for our year-end project, tell your executives that half of the money the company earns in sales, or gross income, goes to employee salaries. You can read the article HERE, and adjust as you see fit.
Once your executives have decided how much they want to earn personally, and how much they want the company to earn, they need to meet with the finance specialists to figure out how to price flowers and how many the company needs to sell. Based on the amount used for employee salaries, tell your finance advisors that the price of each flower needs to be the cost of each flower times 4. This accounts for 25% cost, 50% employee salaries, and a 25% profit. According to the article above, your executives can take the price of each flower and divide it by 10. That is their salary. The business makes what is left over.
For younger guys: I admit this can get very complicated. To simplify, don’t worry about what employees or admin are making. Simply have them subtract the costs of the flowers and the shop from the gross income to find a profit. This means if they want to make $20, and each flower costs $0.50, they would need to sell 40 flowers at $1, 14 flowers at $2, etc.If the cost is really low…If your students aren’t paying very much for the flowers, they can change the above numbers around. Maybe your executives can give more money to employees or to themselves. Maybe they want to add the extra money to the business to help it grow. Or, maybe they want to pass the savings on to the consumer and price the flowers lower. It is their choice.
Note: Again for little guys, this part won’t really factor in.Once your executives have decided on how much money they want the company to make in gross income, they need to share the sales goals with store managers. The store managers need to then share the goals with employees. Explain to your students that store managers are responsible for meeting the goals, not employees. It’s the managers’ job to make employees want to work hard so the store will do well.Prepping the StoreThis part is pretty self-explanatory. Have students set up tables, chairs, and a place to collect money. They can decorate the store how they choose and then set out their product for sale. If they don’t figure it out on their own, you may want to encourage them to create signs, brochures, flyers, or something else that customers can take to share with friends. They also need to have flower prices displayed somewhere.Not Enough Time?Your students may work like Tazmanian Devils and finish all prep in a day or two. If they don’t, no worries! Extend Week 5 over two weeks or a week and a half to make sure your students are ready.Your work is complete for this week. Next week will be the final wrap up week. I’ll be giving you tips on how to incorporate grades and how to set up final assignments for your students. As always, if you have questions or suggestions, feel free to comment below. We always love hearing from you about how things are working in your classroom.
Until next time, have a great week!