Sponsors
Week 1
Team name:
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we had a visit from our supporting company – Whitehaven Harbour Project. In this session we discussed what a business was and what a social enterprise is.
We looked at how the Whitehaven Harbour Project is structured, what they do and how they operate. Stuart talked to us about what he could do to help us as a business throughout the course of the project, and we asked him for help in certain areas.
We started to think about what kind of things we would like to do in our business.
What did you learn this week?
We learned how a business works, what is important to consider when creating a business and how important it is for us to work together as a team. We learned a lot about compromise - and how to value other people's opinions and ideas. We learned a lot about respect!
What did you find difficult this week?
We found it quite tricky to focus in on one idea because we had so many! So we had to have a class vote in order to find the best one, and then we talked about how we could do these in school
Researching our partner company
Brainstorming business ideas
Week 2 - half term
Week 3
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we split into our different teams, we decided we needed 4 teams for our business to be successful:
1. Marketing
2. Sales
3. Production
4. Special Projects
We discussed and decided what each team would be responsible for, and we talked about the importance of working together as a team, even though we have split into sub-teams we should keep sight of what we are trying to do together.
In this session we talked about how important teamwork is and we were able to practice working as a team through offering what we are good at as individuals and then deciding as a team who would b
What did you learn this week?
We learned about the different areas of businesses and how they all work together, we discussed what different skills people would need in order to succeed in their business. We have learned a lot about communication and how important it is that we all understand what we are trying to achieve.
What did you find difficult this week?
We found it difficult to make sure that everyone was working on the correct area the sub-teams needed to know exactly what everyone else was working on.
This is our class split into our sub-business teams.
Our class discussing the 'big picture'
Week 4
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we looked at what events we wanted to plan throughout the year, we had a huge class brainstorm then narrowed down our ideas…
Our initial ideas are:
Friday 24th November - red and green day, christmas movie night.
Friday 1st December - festive bake sale
Friday 8th December - christmas games
We needed to think carefully about the dates as we had so many events on in school already, so we had to discuss these with our school business manager to make sure it would all work.
We had to think about how we would get people to pay for these, and how much to charge.
What did you learn this week?
We learned a lot about organisation this week as we had to look in detail at the events we wanted to do and how we could plan them into an already busy diary! Communication was very important this week.
What did you find difficult this week?
We found it difficult to work out how we could actually plan the events into a working school day - as we did not want to miss out on too many lessons, so we had to think about this!
Week 5
Tell us what you have been doing this week
Today we discussed how we were going to bring our events to life – we needed to think about what our responsibilities in our teams were and how we were going to work together to create our different events. We looked at what we needed to get done and when it needed to be done by, we also considered where we could book in a meeting with our headteacher to run our ideas past him!
What did you learn this week?
We learned a lot about organisation this week, it was so important that we could meet our deadlines on time. The sales team learned a lot about budgeting and how to manage the £50 seed money (and how to put it to good use). Our marketing team have learned a lot about how businesses promote products.
What did you find difficult this week?
We found it difficult to decide on what we needed to buy to kick-start our business, as we needed to buy some products to sell in order to make more money - we had to prioritise what was important.
To do list for our session
Researching products and coming up with ideas
Researching products and creating a mood board
Week 6
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we have been planning our first event, we have been researching ideas for what we would like to do in our events and talking these through with our SLT team and headteacher! We had to be very careful that we chose products that pupils would want buy.
What did you learn this week?
We learnt a lot about market research and how to consider what children would want to buy so that we could make as much money as we possibly could.
What did you find difficult this week?
It was difficult to come to a decision as we had so many ideas but we needed to be reminded to consider our target market.
Week 7
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we started designing and creating some products to sell, we have to divide ourselves up to work on different products so that we could produce enough. Then we needed to plan out how much material we needed so that we could purchase this. We came up a plan and our teacher went to buy all our materials, then we got crafting!
What did you learn this week?
We learned how to use our budget sensibly, how to create a list of necessary items and the importance of looking after these materials so we had as little waste (and lost profit) as possible.
What did you find difficult this week?
We found it difficult to decide on quantities as we didn’t know how many of each item we would sell, so we had to do some market research and ask other classes what they would like to buy.
Week 8
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we continued making our products and we looked at the pricing of all of these, we decided how much we would charge for all our products and we discussed with our events managers - Lola and Jensen how we wanted the day to run.
We then made posters, price lists and advertised our event on Facebook and via our newsletter, we had lots of people interested!
We had a really tricky job of working out timings for classes to come to our event
What did you learn this week?
We learned how to work together as a team and how best to help each other in our smaller teams. We learned how to work out the cost of one unit and how to price products accordingly, we even managed to make our own rota for the event.
What did you find difficult this week?
It was difficult to organise the rota, we had 30 of us who wanted to be involved and so we had to produce a table with times for the event, and then look at who would work which stall and when.
Week 9
Tell us what you have been doing this week
The final event! We hosted our Christmas Cosy Day today, it was a great success. We worked extremely well as a team and managed to make £186.00 in just two hours! We loved hosting our event to our school, we put Christmas films on in different classes and creating a mini Christmas market in one class - we sold hot dogs, hot chocolate, Christmas crafts, handmade jewellery and popcorn. We each had a different stall to work at and we helped the younger pupils to spend their money wisely, all the other teachers commented on how helpful we were!
What did you learn this week?
We learned a lot about working as a team, speaking to younger pupils respectfully and how to create a good impression and be professional.
What did you find difficult this week?
It was difficult at first as we had so many orders to keep track of, but we managed to work out a system in our small teams which worked, we had lots of fun and are hoping to do more events like this.
For pupils to answer:
In one sentence please tell us what bright stars has meant to you?
Bright Stars has allowed us to work as a team, we really loved all working together and getting to see the other classes and help the younger pupils.
For teachers to answer:
Can you tell us the impact this programme has had on your school?
Bright Stars has allowed us to all come together as one school, it has been really lovely to see how far the pupils have come in such a short space of time, they have learnt so much!
Please provide your business plan.
Please provide your marketing plan.
Please provide your finance report/template.
Charity name/money donated to.
Oaktree Animals' Charity - Registered Charity No. 1169511 / SC048389
Final profit (minus the £50 seed funding).
£121
Selling our crafts!
Our hot dog stall
