Second Visit

     We've just come back from our second visit to El Sol.  During our time in Mr. Cobos' classroom today, we once again used hands-on activities to teach the principles of entrepreneurship and business to our advanced 6th Grade students.  While during our last visit we focused on imparting a basic understanding of the meaning of entrepreneurship to our students, today we built upon the concepts that we taught last time, and focused on the applications of these principles to the students' lives.
     We used several activities over the course of the visit.  The first activity was an advertising workshop.  In this activity, students were asked to brainstorm a product or service that they believed would be useful to their classmates.  After this, they developed an advertisement and business proposal, complete with a sales pitch, slogan, and advertisement poster.  This activity allowed the students to envision how they could apply the principles they learned to their daily lives.  In a second activity, entitled supply and demand, students were given a variety of objects which were assigned different price points.  After trading with classmates for fake money and then participating in an auction, the students who had earned the most money and the students who had accumulated the most items were rewarded, mirroring the competing interests between manufacturers and consumers in the marketplace.  In a third activity, the students were challenged to, using a limited allocation of money, buy supplies from a "store", which they would then use to construct a tower.  Students who constructed the highest tower were rewarded.  The final activity that students participated in was focused on planning the future.  In this activity, students were given a chance to express their goals for the future, and there "dreams", and then were guided through a discussion involving the steps that would set them on the path to those dreams.  This activity allowed students to think critically in a broader sense, and synthesized knowledge gained throughout all the other activities.
     Overall, we believe this visit was highly successful, even more so than the previous visit.  Students were engaged and interested in the activity, and it was amazing to see the student's responses to the questions that we asked at the end of the class.  One student talked about her plans on starting a brownie-cookie business to sell to her classmates, and another spoke of his plans on developing a focused soccer practice schedule to further develop his skills.  We're highly pleased with the results of this program, and look forward to seeing how the students develop in the future!

Visit 2 Preparation

     Over the past few weeks since our last visit to El Sol Science and Arts Academy in Santa Ana, we've been in the process of preparing a new set of activities to be used in our next visit to the school, and we look forward to visiting the school again.  Although only a few weeks have passed since our last visit to the school, we are confident that the preparation we have put in will allow our next visit to the school to be even more successful than the previous one was.
    During the next visit and the subsequent visits to the school, we continue to seek to incorporate our mission statement into our curriculum, "promote the entrepreneurial spirit and stimulate inherent intellectual creativity in young students."  We believe that entrepreneurship can serve as a framework that allows students, besides gaining valuable entrepreneurial skills and knowledge, to develop their creativity and problem-solving skills that they can ultimately apply throughout their lives, no matter what they decide to do.
     We look forward to our next visit!

Visit 1

     

      Checking in after a highly successful visit working with the 6th graders in Mr. Cobos' class in El Sol.  Today, we made our first visit to El Sol Academy in Santa Ana. We taught entrepreneurship through a rotation of 6 activities, each designed to be relavent to a different aspect of entrepreneurship: negotiation, product design, product improvement, investment, and sales pitches.  At the end of the visit, we recieved feedback from the students in the form of anonymous surveys.  We're pleased with the results, and look forward to incorporating the constructive feedback from the surveys into our lessons in the future. Overall, we consider the visit highly successful, and we're excited as to what we can accomplish in the future.

Pre-Visit

     We've just finished cheking in with our Service Learning advisors, and we're excited to begin the day.  Today, we will perform our first visit to El Sol Academy in Santa Ana.  We will be working with the 24 6th grade accelerated students in Mr. Cobos' classroom, and will be guiding them through activities related to entrepreneurship and business.  We aim to teach our students not only the basics of what it means to be an entrepreneur, but also teach them to think about how to apply their passions and combine them with these skills to impact their community.

Post-Meeting Report

     Today we met for the first time with the teacher at El Sol Academy in Santa Ana after school.  Mrs. Zavala was very interested and receptive to our plans and ideas, and was excited to learn more about the program.  After looking over our syllabus and the other materials we had prepared,  Mrs. Zavala spoke with us about our future plans for the group.  She was very confident in the potential of this group, and was not only eager to speak with us about her students, but also eager to spread the word of our group to other teachers at the school who might be interested.
     We look forward to further tailoring our syllabus and curriculum to fit her individual needs, and also to keeping in contact with her over the next few weeks.  We're very excited about the future of this group, and we can't wait to begin our service visits at El Sol!

Activities

Here are the first few of the activities that we have formulated for our group

Activity Examples

1.   Supply and Demand

Group A

You have a pencil and need candy.  You have to trade your pencil for candy.  DO NOT TRADE YOUR PENCIL FOR LESS THAN 10 CANDIES.

Group B

You have 15 candies, but you need a pencil.  You have to trade some candies for a pencil.  DO NOT TRADE MORE THAN 5 CANDIES FOR THE PENCIL.  

2.   Product Design and Innovation

Students will be given an object(s), a time limit, and told to create something from it. This is basic activity that spurs excellent results and students enjoy.

3.   Sell me this pen

In groups of twos, students will engage each other trying their ability to “sell” their partner a given item. I.e. pen, pencil, binder, etc. Whoever thinks they have the best sales pitch can present to the class if they so choose.

4.   Marshmallow Activity

The purpose of the game is to teach the students the power of patience and conserving. The ability to be patient and conserve is valuable and in all realms of the business and entrepreneurial world.

Everyone in the class receives a marshmallow.

For every minute they wait, they will get double the current amount of marshmallows they have. (1 -> 2, 2 -> 4, 4 -> 8) At 8, we will stop.

The “Call” Option. For the last minute, the students will be presented an option. If nobody eats any of their marshmallows during the last minute, everyone will end up with half what they currently have. Any single student can decide to eat all of his marshmallows, but then nobody else will be allowed to eat theirs. Address that, in the end, all students might not be left with any marshmallows. This will further their temptation to eat them.

5. Budgeting activity

This activity involves building a tower from two types of blocks, each with a different price.

Students are given a starting amount of imaginary money, let’s say $100 dollars. With this budget they may then buy a certain amount of building blocks for their tower. One type, a domino, will cost $5. The other, a jenga block, will cost $10. The goal of this activity is for students to create

the highest free-standing tower while staying within their budget. To add another aspect to the game, students may be able to make deals with other students and alter prices as they come up with creative solutions.

6. Creation activity

Students must identify a problem with a toy, utensil, appliance, etc. of their choosing. They will list all of the problems with this particular object, and propose ideas for either a way to improve this object or a completely new object that fills the same niche as the previous object, but better. After all students have come up with individual ideas, they may collaborate and form groups. Students develop a prototype (drawing, sculpture) and hypothesize the materials needed to create this new invention, and then develop a pitch (poster possibly)  to present to a supervisor (a good way to incorporate art or other visual media into our presentation). The most important part of this activity is to get the students to recognize things that are wrong with the things they use on a regular basis.

Mission Statement

The following is our service group's Mission Statement

Entrepreneurship is not

-Magic

-Mysterious

It is a skill and can be learned

What are entrepreneurs?

They are people who see opportunities where others see chaos and confusion.

What do they do?

- Entrepreneurs are always looking for something new.

- Entrepreneurs have the ability to think big.

- Entrepreneurs try to do the impossible.

- Entrepreneurs love innovation.

- Entrepreneurs are tolerant of people who make mistakes.

What is good about being an entrepreneur?

You…

- Do what you enjoy

- Help your community

- Can even make a bit of money

Purpose: To promote the entrepreneurial spirit and stimulate inherent intellectual creativity in young students.