Business Math in Changing Times
By Jeanette Voss, 6th Grade Class Teacher
Five weeks into our distance learning, the 6th graders embarked on their second block of business math. We were faced with the challenge of how to make this a meaningful experience while trying to meet the needs of our rapidly changing times. My intention was to allow the students to work off screen as much as possible and to also begin to understand the challenges that businesses are facing in our current time of living at a distance from each other.
All students had become quite facile in the use of the computer as a teaching tool. My challenge as their teacher was how to reduce screen time as much as possible but also to allow for a certain common experience that was not just related to a Zoom lesson. Therefore, I decided to challenge my class to choose a “business”— either product or service-based—and to develop individual business plans. We had talked about the development of economic principles through history in the fall. The students were all familiar with the concepts of barter, trade, and money economy. While we practiced a few percent and interest calculations, also supported through an ongoing track math class taught by a Math Specialist, the students learned that business math involves a lot of planning, thinking, and presentation skills.
Each student was asked to think about:
A logo and a name for their business or company.
A prototype of their product.
Who their customers would be?
Pricing?
Profit possibilities?
Cost of raw material and or shipping?
Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats (SWOT) for their business.
Some students also applied for a business loan to the “6th Grade Waldorf Bank of Lexington” by writing a formal business letter.
We were fortunate that a number of parents in the class were willing to act as “business advisors” who met twice with groups of 5 or 6 students for 30 minutes to discuss the business proposals of the fledgling entrepreneurs. All students wrote up their plans and neatly presented them in either longhand (Waldorf style) or in a typed format such as a slide presentation. Each student completed a Zoom presentation to the class and answer questions from their classmates.
Ms. Voss challenged each student to develop a business plan for a product or service of their choice. From product prototype creation to SWOT analysis, students gained insight into the careful research and planning that goes into building a business. Here are three examples of the business plans created during this Main Lesson:
