Looking for a way to teach marketing and business in elementary school, middle school or high school? Here are cross-curricular business math lesson plans with recycling connections. Use these business math lesson plans to teach environmental science in Earth Month. Students design, manufacture and sell inventions made from recycled materials. These marketing lesson plans are perfect for school, homeschool, 4H clubs, scout troop merit badges, Destination Imagination (DI) teams and Junior Achievement clubs. Plug business math lesson plans into a science unit on technology or simple machines. Tie in activities on inventors for social studies, history and biographical literature lesson plans. Of course marketing has plenty of business math and consumer math applications too. These marketing lesson plans include a component on advertising which addresses design, writing and public speaking activities. . Here is a scope and sequence for each content area. This lesson covers the higher order thinking skills of analysis, application, synthesis and evaluation.
Cross-curricular lessons plans: Graphic Design: The student will design and sketch a product or tool of his own invention.
Cross-curricular Science Technology: The student will plan, organize and build products or inventions using only materials found in a recycle bin. Make these in Earth Month to reinforce eco-friendly design. These may be primary inventions (for example, a hand can opener) or secondary inventions (a development or improvement on primary inventions, for example an electric can opener.) All inventions or products should be creative or unique in some way.
Environmental science: The student will create inventions using only found, reclaimed, repurposed or recycled materials. Students might clean up the playground or empty recycle bins for Earth Month.
Art: The student will decorate or embellish the invention to make it more aesthetically pleasing and marketable. She will also design promotional materials--posters, flyers, product commercials or bill boards. Promotional materials should be made from recycled materials for Earth Month.
Literature: The student will choose an inventor in history to profile. TSW read a biography or autobiography on his inventor and explore the inventor's background and body of work. Ideally the inventor would somehow be associated with the type of invention that the student is creating.
Social studies: The student will develop a poster, timeline or DVD or presentation showing how other variations of her products or inventions have been used in history or around the world.
Writing: The student will write a short one minute commercial advertising her product or invention. Commercial should demonstrate how the invention is used, how it will benefit consumers and why they should buy it.
Theater/Drama/public speaking: The student will perform her commercial and demonstration for the class or school. Teachers, give extra credit for costumes, make-up and scenery (a free standing cardboard box backdrop and props made from recycled materials ties in well with Earth Month.)
Music: The student will compose a simple musical jingle to advertise his product. The student should emphasize that inventions are made with recycled environmentally friendly sustainable materials.
Math: The student will calculate the costs of production, establish a retail price, develop a marketing strategy and sell the product at a student "Market Day." She will keep track of sales, discounts, extra costs, etc. She will fill out a teacher-made balance sheet.
Use as many or as few of these components of the unit as you wish. You might opt to take one or two pieces and expand them to fit another lesson or activity that you are doing. These business math lesson plans and activities can be tweaked to fit almost any age of student or size of group.
