Shark Tank

This past year I was trying to think of a way to turn our school store into more of a learning experience.  I wanted to come up with a way that would teach my students lifelong lessons, while being interactive with the entire school.  This led to creating our school's own version of Shark Tank.

The creativity of our students always amazes me.  Shark Tank allows the students to invent their own product with the hope of selling it in our store.  The student inventors receive a loan that is paid out in real money.  At the end of the selling period, all money made is added up, the loan deducted and then the profits are split 50/50 with the school store and the seller.

The process is as follows:

1. Students complete an application that provides information such as the product's name, the sales price, and how much of a loan is required.  The students also have to obtain a parent signature on the application page.  Applications were due the 1st of every month to be considered.

2. My Shark Tank student committee meet and go through the applications narrowing them down to the top five ideas.  Letters are sent out to those students stating that the Shark Tank is interested in hearing more about the product and assigns the students a day when they are to present to the committee, which is made up of eight students, two parents, and one employee from our local credit union.

3. On the day of the presentations, the selected students are given five minutes to pitch their ideas.  Many students bring in samples for the committee.  We even had some students create jingles, wear matching shirts, and act out skits.  At this presentation, the Shark Tank committee is able to ask questions and see firsthand what the product is like.  The committee members fill out a rubric/information sheet while the presentations are occurring.  They then take the score sheets home and figure out the potential profit for each product.  Finally, the students vote whether or not they believe we should offer this in our store.  Each chosen item is sold for six days.

4.  Once the products are selected, the students are given their loan and assigned days to work in the store.  After the sales are over, the school store manager pays out the profits to the student sellers.

Some examples of items selected and sold are: mystery boxes (take out containers that hold a mystery prize), homemade tie-dyed socks, Glow Goo that never dries out, cake pops, duct tape and Rainbow Loom accessories.  The average price was $1, with the most expensive item being sold for $5.

The part of this that I enjoyed the most was seeing my students grow throughout the year.  At the beginning, the committee was not very open-minded about the products.  If they personally didn't care for the items, they would vote no.  As the year progressed, the students were always trying to figure out what product would pull in the most profit for the store and not worrying about it they liked it themselves.  Also, I had a guest speaker come in from the credit union to talk about how banks determines who can get a loan.  They discussed credit scores, high and low risk loans, as well as basic banking principles.

The school really enjoyed this process.  Student inventors were able to showcase their items and possibly earn real money.  The presentations also improved as the year went on because the competitive nature became greater.  This is one "project" I will continue during the upcoming year.

Here's to STEM!
Mrs. Giran