Sixth Grade Students Experience Business Concepts
(Press Release 02-24-06)
Hank Mooney, Office of Public Information

The “Wheel of Business” spun for Wilburton sixth graders as they took part in the Eastern Phi Beta Lambda business club’s American Enterprise Project. Eastern business students designed a workshop to help middle school students understand the basic concepts of operating a business.

The workshop began with students identifying famous business people and listing reasons why someone would want to own a business. Participants then matched various business terms with definitions.

The hands-on portion of the workshop involved students drawing to see which one of five businesses they would operate; a lawn mowing business, a lemonade stand, a dog walking service, a home car washing business, or painting house numbers on curbs. Students then went to a table labeled with their business to receive the beginnings of a simple business plan. They identified the cost of supplies needed to operate their business, planned the advertising, and estimated sales. After discussing these items, students were given a sheet with average costs and sales for their particular type of business. To introduce the concept of risk and to illustrate that not all goes as plans, students then took turns spinning the “wheel of business” which contained both negative and positive situations that would affect their business with an assigned monetary amount. The young entrepreneurs then entered the information on a business operating sheet, which was divided into four weeks, to determine if they had made a profit or lost money that week.

Summer Studeman, a student in Mary Atkinson’s sixth grade class, said “The workshop was fun and I enjoyed spinning the wheel to see what would happen to my business.” Evaluations completed by the participants overwhelmingly stated that they enjoyed learning about operating a small business and had fun playing the games and spinning the wheel.

Eastern PBL students conducting the workshop were, Jayme Darragh, Krista Kendrick, Amanda Mayhew, Mandy Atkinson, Karen Rogers, and Phylicia Karch. PBL co-advisor, Estella Bennett-Mask, who helped the students in preparing for the workshop said, “The students all worked hard and the developing and presenting of the workshop was a learning process for them as well.” The PBL students will write a report about the project and submit it in competition at the state FBLA/PBL Spring Leadership Conference in Tulsa at the end of March.

Caption info: Eastern PBL Students participating in the American Enterprise Project include from left: Krista Kendrick, Wilburton; Mandy Atkinson, Wilburton; Jayme Darragh, El Reno; Phylicia Karch, Canadian and Karen Rogers, Wilburton.