4 Business Project Ideas for School-How to Teach Career Skills Through PBL

Ask any adult, and I would bet money that they would tell you they did not learn enough career skills when they were in school. As teachers, we should be teaching students skills that they will use when they are older. I’m sharing 5 business project ideas for school that will teach students entrepreneurship, life skills and career skills.

Want to learn more about project-based learning? Download the Beginner’s Guide to Project-Based Learning. It includes a guide, as well as a 2-week project on growth mindset for upper elementary students.

Business Project Ideas for School-#1

One of my favourite projects to do with students is to create a business. There are so many elementary business lesson plans out there for teachers to use! Teachers love using business creation as a way to teach students because it allows students to:

Get creative and create a business idea that they are interested in
Create something from scratch
Use multi-disciplinary skills throughout the project (math skills, reading skills, writing skills, STEM, etc..)
Allows for a variety of presentations for students to observe
Invites members of the community to participate. For example, you could invite a local entrepreneur to present to students or act as a business advisor to students

In the past, I had a class that was as obsessed with Starbucks as I was. Therefore, students created their own coffee shop businesses. The catch: they had to come up with a business plan that would make their coffee shop stand out to their customers. Check out The Student Business Project resource in my TpT store.

In this project students will:

Prepare questions and interview an expert from the field (a business owner)
Learn about what it means to be a business visionary
Create a vision for their own coffee shop business
Survey their ideal customers and create an ideal customer profile
Create a business story that attracts their customers
Name their business, create a slogan and design a logo (and staff uniforms)
Choose a charity that the business will help support
Present their business plan to a real-world audience (an investor)
Hold regular business meetings with the team
Write pre and post-project self-reflections

Students loved this project! It allowed for some healthy competition while students learned about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Click here to check out this resource!

Idea #2-Resume Writing

Resume writing is a skill that we learn, in my opinion, way too late in life. When you think about it, resume writing is simply positively writing about yourself and persuading others to think a certain way. As an elementary ELA teacher, you are already teaching students to write about themselves and to write persuasive texts. So why not teach young students how to write resumes at a young age?

One way to introduce a resume to students is to use a story that is familiar to students. For example, you could tell your students that they will be interviewing candidates from the story The One and Only Ivan for the position of the class pet. As the teacher, prepare resumes for each character from the story. As a class, review each resume and make a choice based on what they have included and how they describe themselves.

After this hook activity, students can begin to explore the parts of a resume, powerful words to include and the format.

Click here to download The Beginner’s Guide to Project-Based Learning. It’s free!

Business Project Ideas for School-#3

Do you love Shark Tank as much as I do? The show Shark Tank is where I began to learn about entrepreneurship. Turns out, kids love Shark Tank, too! My students always loved it when I would show them clips of Shark Tank to introduce a topic related to entrepreneurship. Chances are if I’m thinking of business project ideas for school, I’m going to find a way to include Shark Tank clips in the activities.

One way to use Shark Tank is to do a business follow-up. In this activity, students would pick one business that was seen on Shark Tank and research where they are now. Students could include research on:

Whether a shark invested in the company
What happened when their episode aired
How the business is doing now (how much they have sold)
Whether the company has expanded
How much profit the company has made
Whether they have expanded with other services/products

Idea #4-Invest in the Stock Market

One year, I decided to do a project on the Great Depression. As a provocation(hook), I wanted students to experience the steady climb of the economy before the crash. I used this resource to create a stock market simulation-type activity. This resource was created for high school students, however, I modified it to suit a 4th-grade level.

My students were so into this activity! They were thrilled by having “so much money”. However, by the end of the activity, they were actually upset about their losses. These strong emotions just show how engaged they were throughout the simulation. This activity gave students a taste of what the stock market is and how it is run.

Click here to check out my post about creating better student engagement!