As a high school entrepreneurship teacher, you have the opportunity to inspire learners to pursue successful careers in business. You want to offer your students compelling, creative lessons, projects, and activities that will help them understand the role and challenges of the entrepreneur and prepare them for the opportunities of today’s business workforce.
As a provider of business education curriculum, teachers often tell us about the challenge of teaching subjects like entrepreneurship to high school students.
While our curriculum includes materials to help teach entrepreneurship, some teachers are looking for supplemental lessons to boost their existing curriculum.
In this post, we’ll explore four of the best entrepreneurship lesson plans available for high school students:
- Wharton Global Youth Program
- Entrepreneurial Expedition from EVERFI
- Entrepreneurship Full Year Course from Tech Twins
- Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle from Career and Employment Prep
We’ll take a closer look at each of these resources to help you understand which could be the best solution for your classroom.
1. Wharton Global Youth Program
The Wharton Global Youth Program is a service of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. This program helps high school students understand the business world and provide them with the skills necessary for success in the future.
The Wharton School has had a long reputation for cultivating tomorrow’s business leaders. The Global Youth Program builds on that success by providing free resources and entrepreneurship lesson plans for high school students.
Wharton bases its lesson plans on the standards of the National Business Education Association (NBEA). Within the overarching area of Entrepreneurship, the program lists nine different standards, with Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurial Opportunities being the most relevant area.
There are 16 unique lesson plans to adapt for your classroom within the Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurial Opportunities category. Wharton's entire library of lesson plans is free to use through their website.
When you access the materials, you can see this information for each lesson plan:
- Author
- Overview
- NBEA standards met
- Related articles
- Common Core standards met
- Objectives
- Required resources and material list
- Instructions
- Additional lesson resources
Wharton doesn’t include an estimated number of classroom hours for each lesson, but you can add up the time from each component.
On the whole, the Wharton Global Youth Program provides ample entrepreneurship resources with the flexibility to use as few or as many as you like in your classroom.
2. Entrepreneurial Expedition from EVERFI
EVERFI is a well-known provider of educational resources for teachers and students. Its mission is to help organizations address gaps in the educational system to ensure equitable learning opportunities for all.
EVERFI has partnered with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) to create a free digital curriculum called NFTE Venture - Entrepreneurial Expedition. NFTE is an international nonprofit organization that focuses specifically on providing entrepreneurial education to middle and high school students and beyond.
Students in grades 7-10 will benefit the most from the Entrepreneurial Expedition.
Instead of focusing primarily on terminology, this program leads learners to create a personal business plan with the help of case studies, simulations, and activities.
This curriculum includes four lessons to teach successively:
- Building a Balanced Budget
- The Entrepreneur in You
- Planning and Building a Business
- Your Business Snapshot
Students learn these essential entrepreneurial skills in each lesson:
- During the Building a Balanced Budget lesson, students will build connections between responsible management of personal finances and the proper management of a business.
- For The Entrepreneur in You lesson, students contemplate the qualities of successful entrepreneurs and take a personal assessment to discover entrepreneurial characteristics in themselves.
- In the Planning and Building a Business lesson, students apply business principles in a food truck business simulation and explain their decisions through writing.
- Finally, in the Your Business Snapshot lesson, students learn and practice the aspects of a successful business pitch.
According to EVERFI, the four lessons in the NFTE Venture - Entrepreneurial Expedition should take about 20 minutes apiece, or one and a half hours in total. The lessons align with Common Core standards for mathematics and English language arts.
EVERFI requires teachers to make a free account to access the lesson plans.
Overall, this program is a great option for instructors looking for a straightforward introduction to entrepreneurial concepts. Teachers who have a shorter time to teach entrepreneurship could benefit from this easy-to-implement program from a reputable resource provider.
3. Entrepreneurship Full Year Course from Tech Twins
Tech Twins is a notable provider of business CTE curriculum through the educational resources website Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT). They offer lesson plans ranging from individual activities to entire courses on business education and computer technology topics.
If you are interested in teaching a full-year high school course specifically on the subject of entrepreneurship, Tech Twins offers complete lesson plans suitable for students in grades 8-12.
The Entrepreneurship Full Year Course is a comprehensive solution designed for educators teaching the subject for 90 or more class periods of 75 minutes each. The course includes over 350 pages of materials and is adaptable to traditional classroom instruction or online learning. Tech Twins’ package features over 40 activities, 21 projects, and nine exams and review games.
The course covers a broad range of topics related to entrepreneurship, including:
- Entrepreneurship Basics
- Turning Ideas into a Business
- Economics and the Market
- Market Research and Product Development
- The Marketing/Advertising Plan
- Business Designs/Branding
- Business Finances
- Operating/Management
- Creating A Business Plan
The Entrepreneurship Full Year Course content consists of 11 topical units, along with a class introduction and a final exam. Tech Twins includes a unit plan for each.
These are the 11 course units:
- Business Terms Activities
- Entrepreneurship Basics
- Turning Ideas into a Business
- Ethics and Social Responsibility
- Economics and Marketing
- The Business Plan Basics
- Market Research and Product Development
- The Marketing Plan and Strategies
- Advertising
- Final Business Decisions
- The Business Plan Project
Along with the unit plans, Tech Twins includes all the materials and projects you need for the course in the Entrepreneurship Full Year Course package, including course objectives and academic standards.
The Entrepreneurship Full Year Course could be a great fit for teachers searching for an abundance of materials to keep their students learning throughout the year. However, this resource package comes at a significant price. Teachers Pay Teachers lists the course for $262, but it is currently on sale for $222.
Teachers spending an entire year on entrepreneurship could find the Entrepreneurship Full Year Course more than worth the price. But instructors who have less time to spend on entrepreneurship or teach other business topics may want to look for another solution.
4. Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle from Career and Employment Prep
Career and Employment Prep is another provider of classroom resources through Teachers Pay Teachers. Career and Employment Prep offers lessons and activities to engage students in business and career and technical education.
Unlike the Entrepreneurship Full Year Course, the Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle is intended to supplement classroom instruction with fun activities for learners in grades 7-12. The bundle introduces students to the basic concepts of entrepreneurship in memorable ways that inspire classroom conversation.
The Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle includes 25 printable PDF pages and features five different adaptable classroom exercises.
These activities come included the package:
- Entrepreneurship Business Game - Escape Start-Up Activity
- Entrepreneurship Infographics Activity
- Entrepreneurship Group Activity or Writing Prompts
- Entrepreneurship Logic Puzzle Activities
- Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship Puzzle Activities
Students learn these skills in each activity:
- In the Business Game Activity, students solve a logic puzzle to escape a scenario in the start-up phase of a business.
- In the Infographics Activity, learners must think through and visually display skills, knowledge, benefits, and challenges of running a business.
- For the Group Activity or Writing Prompts, students answer up to 40 questions related to creating and managing a business. Teachers can adapt these questions into class discussions or writing prompts.
- The Logic Puzzles Activity inspires students to think critically about challenges facing entrepreneurs based on their business type, structure, and other factors.
- Finally, the Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship Puzzle Activity teaches students about the accomplishments of entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds through a series of puzzles.
Career and Employment Prep delivers the Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle in a Zip file. Your students can also use each activity through the Teachers Pay Teachers’ new, free Easel by TpT interactive platform.
The bundle is modestly priced at $7.50. Educators can also access it on a subscription basis through TpT School Access.
While not a complete curriculum, instructors wanting fun activities to add to their entrepreneurship lessons can look to Career and Employment Prep for exercises to help students contemplate business questions and ideas.
Save Time With Entrepreneurship Lesson Plans and Teaching Business Concepts
Each of these materials can help you teach entrepreneurship as part of your business education curriculum. Some of these resources can assist you in creating individual entrepreneurship lesson plans for high school students, while others can help you create an entire course on the subject.
Building your own business curriculum is an effective way to make sure your lessons suit your academic standards and instructional style. However, you may not have time to construct a curriculum from scratch between the time you spend planning, teaching, and grading.
If you want a balanced option that handles entrepreneurship lessons along with other business topics, consider looking at the business curriculum from iCEV.
Teachers like you use iCEV to teach students many skills and concepts to prosper in the modern work world. As a comprehensive curriculum system, it helps you save time creating lesson plans and evaluating your students’ work while assisting learners in retaining and understanding course content.
For more on how iCEV can help you teach dozens of business education subjects, see our entire business, marketing, finance, IT, and media curriculum catalog:
