Teach Primary Issue 18.5

I NS I DE TH I S SECT I ON 42 | www.teachwire.net Make the end of termmemorable for Year 6 by sending them into the dragons’ den... Down to BUSINESS A s we approach the end of term in our schools, thoughts of sandy beaches and holiday adventures in far-flung lands may occupy our thoughts. But a quick look at the calendar to see that you still have four teaching weeks left can bring you back to Earth with a bump. There’s a false perception that teachers spend the last few weeks of term handing out colouring sheets, playing rounders and showing their classes films. I know this, thanks to the outpouring of fury that I once unleashed from the online anti-teacher brigade when I joked on Twitter that not only was I showing my class a film, but that it was the director’s cuts of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy…back to back. The truth is that balancing new curriculum content with sports days and end-of-year productions is tricky. Bright ideas When I was a Year 6 teacher, this annual problem was magnified by the fact that in ‘final year’, you’ve all worked your proverbial backsides off to get to SATs week – and then comes the post-SATs lull. To fill this void, my school devised an enterprise scheme. The idea was that the children would be put into groups, and their task would be to create a business. Each group had to come up with an idea. This could be a service industry business, or you could buy or make a product and then sell it. Once all the groups had decided on a business model, they would work out their costs and profits, and make an appointment with the headteacher to pitch for a fifty-pound starting fund. The plan was that all money made would return to the school to cover costs, and if there was any profit, it would go to charity. Once our groups were formed, they excitedly got to work planning their budding business ideas. Profit margins Lessons were quickly learnt by both pupils and teachers. I still remember the sadness of a group who thought they’d discovered a hack to becoming millionaires, when their plan to buy 5,000 comics for a penny each on Amazon was ruined by me asking if they’d checked the post and packaging costs for these ‘bargains’... (It was £3.95 a comic!) We had numerous groups work out that they could make milkshakes, cakes and smoothies for just pence and sell them for over a pound, only for us to tell them that taking all the ingredients from home for free isn’t how a business works. We soon realised that we needed to teach pupils about costings, profit margins, Celebrate the year gone by with this sticky note art project... Get children looking forward to the autumn term, with all its possibilities... p50 Kevin Harcombe on waving goodbye to Year 6... p47 Don’t miss the assessment special in our next issue! Available from 2 September. The Big Summer SEND-OFF Our favourite end-of-term activities from teachwire.net and plazoom.com. .. p45 p48 ENTERPR I SE PROJECT STEPS l Choose a business idea l Give a starting fund of £50 l Teach pupils the business basics l Limit the businesses they can order their stock from to known school suppliers l Run it over two weeks, with each group given two chances to sell