Learning and growing as a business education student can be difficult without actually working on hands-on projects and activities. This is why many teachers are looking to incorporate project-based learning into their high school business curriculum.
As a business education curriculum provider, we’ve heard from dozens of teachers who want better business projects for their high school students.
In this article, we’ll look at five of the best projects for boosting student engagement in your high school classes:
- Food Truck Business Simulation Project from Business Girl
- Accounting Curriculum Resources from Utah Education Network
- Entrepreneurship Project Bundle from Tech Twins
- Finance and Capital Markets from Khan Academy
- Social Media Marketing Project Bundle from Business Girl
For each project, you’ll learn more about what’s included and the business education topics it covers. After reading, you’ll be able to choose which are best for your classroom.
1. Food Truck Business Simulation Project from Business Girl
Business Topics Covered: Economics, Management, Marketing, Finance, Social Media
Business Girl is a well-known and reputable seller on Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT), the website where teachers can buy, sell, and share curriculum resources. One of Business Girl’s most well-rounded projects is her Food Truck Business Simulation Project.
If you’re looking for a complete, semester-long high school business project that covers several of the most popular business education subjects, the Food Truck Business Simulation could be the right choice.
This project touches on a range of subjects often taught in high school business courses. It uses project-based learning to teach students about operating a food truck business. This includes skills like managing employees and finances, as well as marketing using social media.
Business Girl includes 217 pages of content with the project, including these 15 activities:
- Intro to Food Trucks Gallery Walk for Business Courses
- Food Truck Step-by-Step Business Plan Project
- Business Plan Note-Taking Graphic Organizer
- Food Truck Management Functions for an Event
- Food Truck Organizational Chart and Managerial Styles Project
- Food Truck Marketing Project
- Food Truck Marketing Research Project
- Food Truck Social Media Marketing Campaign
- Food Truck Design, Logo, Slogan, and Menu Project
- Food Truck Financial Plan Project
- Food Truck Budgeting for a Catered Event Project
- Food Truck Advertising Project
- Food Truck Sales Promotion Project
- Food Business Pitch Project
- Food Truck Employment Project
Between these projects, teachers have enough material to make the Food Truck Simulation a project their students work on throughout the entire semester or school year.
How Much Does This Business Project Cost and Who Is It For?
The Food Truck Simulation Project from Business Girl costs $30, which is fair for a large, semester-long project. You can also purchase individual assignments from the simulation for about $2.50 each.
If you’re looking for a significant project for your business education students that they could complete over an entire semester, this food truck simulation allows you to cover multiple subjects simultaneously. You could intersperse different elements of these projects as appropriate when you cover topics like budgeting, financing, and advertising.
However, if you’re looking for smaller projects to cover particular topics and don’t need an overarching theme, you might want to consider something that better suits your specific business curriculum needs.
2. Accounting Curriculum Resource from Utah Education Network
Business Topics Covered: Accounting, Finance
Accounting is one of the most in-demand subjects for high school business students. That’s why the Utah Education Network provides curriculum resources and professional development for teachers to help them teach this valuable topic.
The Accounting Curriculum Resources are a robust set of hands-on projects, activities, and lessons that you can use to build a two-course accounting sequence. However, these materials are appropriate for any business course that could benefit from project-based learning in accounting and finance.
In total, Utah Education Network offers nearly 30 exercises. Some of these projects include:
- Building Accounting and Finance Worksheets
- Practice Recording Adjusting/Close Entries
- Recording Adjusting/Close Entries
- Practice with Cash Control Systems
- Financial Statements for a Proprietorship/Partnership
- Journalizing Transactions and Payments
- Accounting Simulation
For the teacher focusing on specific aspects of accounting or banking and finance, there’s a lot to choose from to reinforce these subjects with your high school business students.
How Much Does This Business Project Cost and Who Is It For?
These resources are free to download and use from Utah Education Network’s website.
Overall, they are a good choice for teachers who want a selection of accounting projects and activities for their high school students. The selection here will allow you to pick and choose what’s most appropriate for your course.
However, if you’re going into less detail with accounting, you might find some of the projects too specific and might want to find resources that more generally apply to your students.
3. Entrepreneurship Project Bundle from Tech Twins
Business Topics Covered: Entrepreneurship, Marketing
Tech Twins is another prolific seller on Teachers Pay Teachers who creates projects for business and career readiness classrooms. Tech Twins’ Entrepreneurship Project Bundle introduces students to the knowledge and skills involved in becoming an entrepreneur.
Students learn entrepreneurial skills through a series of 11 hands-on projects and activities that explore concepts related to creating and marketing a product:
- Business Plan Project
- Shark Tank Project
- School Marketing Project Choices
- Kickstarter Research Project
- Businesses That Changed the Game Research Project
- Successful Entrepreneur Research Project
- Business Product Creation Infographic
- Market Research Project
- Marketing Plan Project
- Business Advertising Project
- Final Business Decisions Project
Each of these projects includes its own set of step-by-step instructions, ensuring that your students will be able to get the most out of each activity.
How Much Does This Business Project Cost and Who Is It For?
If you purchase the entire Tech Twins bundle, you’ll pay $57, a savings of $15 over buying each project separately. If you envision yourself using many of the projects, the bundle can be a good value for your money.
This project bundle is a good choice for teachers who want to cover both marketing and entrepreneurship through project-based learning. Plus, if you don’t think you need to use every project, many of these activities make for excellent stand-alone lessons to keep students engaged.
4. Finance and Capital Markets from Khan Academy
Business Topics Covered: Finance, Economics, Accounting
Khan Academy founder Sal Khan made a name for himself in the early days of web-based education, offering free educational resources that learners could readily access through the internet.
Today, Khan Academy continues to offer high-quality educational resources and hands-on projects for students and adult learners alike. One Khan Academy class that’s particularly relevant to high school business education classes is the Finance and Capital Markets course.
Finance and Capital Markets is oriented towards providing high school students with the information they need to make sound business and personal financial decisions.
The Finance and Capital Markets course covers these related topics:
- Interest and debt
- Housing
- Inflation
- Taxes
- Accounting and financial statements
- Stocks and bonds
- Insurances and retirement
- Money and banking
- Options and derivatives
- Current economics
Using this material, you can cover several interrelated topics across multiple business areas.
How Much Does This Business Project Cost and Who Is It For?
Khan Academy and its resources have always been free for teachers, students, and anyone who wants to learn.
Finance and Capital Markets is an excellent resource for teachers looking for free, hands-on projects that they can use to teach a variety of sought-after business skills. It’s also great to use in a flipped classroom since students can easily watch the videos before class and come prepared to discuss the main concepts.
On the other hand, Khan Academy isn’t for teachers who want to avoid large amounts of video content or who may be teaching a more general course and aren’t covering some of the more complex topics in the projects.
5. Social Media Marketing Project Bundle from Business Girl
Business Topics Covered: Marketing, Social Media
The Social Media Marketing Bundle is another project bundle from Teachers Pay Teachers seller, Business Girl. The bundle includes extensive resources that can help you teach marketing and social media in your high school business classroom.
In total, this bundle includes 107 pages of content divided between 10 projects:
- 4 Cs of Social Media Marketing
- Social Media Platform Graphic Organizer and Infographic
- Social Media Trends Museum Exhibit
- The Future of Social Media Marketing
- Social Media Campaign Meeting Brief
- Creating a Social Media Campaign Proposal
- Social Media Posting Guide
- Influencer for a Day Project
- Social Media SWOT Analysis
- Consumer Privacy Practices
Compared with other hands-on projects, most of these activities are shorter. You can combine them with your existing curriculum resources to enhance student engagement.
How Much Does This Business Project Cost and Who Is It For?
If you purchase the entire Business Girl Social Media Marketing Bundle, you’ll pay $23.75, a decent value considering you’ll receive ten projects. Alternatively, you can buy assignments individually for prices ranging from $1.25 to $3.50.
This project is a solid option for the high school business educator who wants the flexibility to go in-depth with social media marketing. If you want to teach an entire unit on the subject, this bundle will provide you with plenty of resources for your students.
On the other hand, if you want to use project-based learning in an entire marketing class, you can incorporate these marketing projects alongside others from different subject areas.
Use Project-Based Learning in Your High School Business Education Program
Introducing project-based learning to your high school business classroom can make the difference between your students mastering concepts like management or marketing, or instead failing to grasp what’s really at stake when working in business.
Depending on the subjects you need to cover, any of the projects and activities in this article can help you enhance student engagement and prepare your learners for business careers.
However, cobbling together a few high school business projects might not provide the best learning experience for your students.
If you need to cover a range of different business education subjects in your classes, consider Business&ITCenter21 from AES. AES is a comprehensive curriculum that includes projects and activities that you can use in courses throughout the high school business pathway.
To learn more about how you can use Business&ITCenter21 throughout your classes, check out our article: What Business Courses Can I Teach with AES? You’ll receive detailed information about how you can use AES to meet your learning goals.
