High School Business Class Activities: 5 Top Options

January 5th, 2023 | 8 min. read

When teaching a high school business class, it can be challenging to find activities that your students will find interesting and engaging.

If you’re facing disinterested stares and ambivalent attitudes from your high schoolers, you may feel discouraged and frustrated. Worse still, if your students aren’t engaged in class, they won’t learn the skills they need to succeed later in school and their future jobs.

Thankfully, there are plenty of engaging high school business class activities you can use to get your students excited about CTE.

In this article, you’ll find activities for five of the most common subjects teachers cover in a high school business class:

Entrepreneurship
Business Ethics
Marketing
Business Management
Economics

After finishing the article, you’ll be more aware of the activities available to you as a high school business educator.

1. Entrepreneurship Activity

Example Activity: Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle from Career and Employment Prep

Career and Employment Prep is a notable seller on Teachers Pay Teachers, the digital marketplace where educators can buy, sell, and share instructional resources. Career and Employment Prep offers resources for several popular business education topics, including Entrepreneurship.

The Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle is a 26-page resource for students in grades 7-12. The bundle includes five different activities:

Entrepreneurship Business Game Escape the Start-Up Activity
Entrepreneurship Infographics Activity
Entrepreneurship Card Set Group Activity
Entrepreneurship Logic Puzzles
Additional Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship Puzzles

Each activity can be incorporated into your existing entrepreneurship lesson plans and used in a variety of ways.

For example, you could use the card set as an icebreaker at the beginning of class, as personal writing prompts, or as a group discussion. You can sprinkle in activities like puzzles and infographics throughout your instruction whenever you feel it’s appropriate.

Career and Employment Prep offers the Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle for $7.50. Overall, it’s a great value for a teacher who already has some material for teaching entrepreneurship but needs a few additional high school business class activities.

For additional entrepreneurship activities and lessons, read:

2. Business Management Activity

Example Activity: Business Management Activity Bundle from Business Girl

Business Girl is a well-known publisher on the Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) online education marketplace.

This business teacher has more than 230 products available on Teachers Pay Teachers, including a bundle of activities to teach business management.

The bundle costs $14.49 and includes eight resources about business management:

Business Management Terminology QR Code Scavenger Hunt
Business Management Functions Script Project
Business Management Theories Museum Exhibit Project
Motivational Techniques for Managers
Business Management / Supervisory Skills Gallery Walk
Business Leadership QR Code Scavenger Hunt
Business Leaders in Management Editorial Project
Business Management Scenarios Advice Column Project

Together, these activities will fill a week’s worth of classes while helping you teach basic management concepts, including terminology, functions, theories, and skills.

The bundle is an excellent option for teachers looking for engaging supplemental resources to break up their everyday management lessons.

However, these high school business activities may not be the best choice if you are looking for more robust lesson plans or a resource you can use for free. Independent lessons also lack some of the continuity you could get from a more extended business management curriculum.

For business management resources, check out the Top 5 Business Management Lesson Plans for High School.

3. Marketing Activity

Example Activity: Social Media Marketing Bundle from Business Girl

Business Girl also offers excellent resources for high school marketing lessons, particularly in the area of social media marketing. Her Social Media Marketing Bundle features a collection of projects students can work on to exercise marketing skills they’ve picked up in a high school business class.

These activities are centered around social media marketing, trends, platforms, and more. There are ten total projects spread across 107 pages of content:

4 C’s of Social Media Marketing
Social Media Trends Museum Exhibit
Social Media Platform Graphic Organizer and Infographic
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

Each activity includes additional resources, such as rubrics, activities, and graphic organizers. These will vary from project to project.

Because this bundle is so versatile, you can choose the activities and projects that are most appropriate for your classes. It’s available on Teachers Pay Teachers for $23.75, but you can purchase some projects individually for $3.50 or less.

These high school business class activities are appropriate for teachers who want to focus on social media marketing and need several small, engaging projects to assign.

If you want to cover other areas of marketing, check out these additional marketing projects for high schoolers.

4. Business Ethics Activity

Example Activity: Business Ethics/Ethical Dilemmas Chat Stations from Business Girl

Business Ethics/Ethical Dilemmas Chat Stations is another quality resource from Business Girl available on the Teachers Pay Teachers platform.

Students will inevitably face ethical quandaries as they enter the business world. It’s essential that they understand business ethics to navigate real-world scenarios where integrity is on the line. The Ethical Dilemmas Chat Stations help students do just that by providing a forum for conversations about common ethical issues facing businesses.

The chat stations are for grades 9-12 and feature seven ethical dilemmas on topics including:

Misusing company time
Employee theft
Romantic interest
Private information

The package includes individual prompts for creating discussion stations. Students navigate from station to station, leaving responses to each dilemma.

This high school business class activity is available for $1.99 or as a bundle with other business ethics activities. Overall, it’s a quick and easy way to expose your students to business ethics in a way that promotes classroom dialogue. However, this isn’t a complete lesson on business ethics, so you will need other instructional materials to round out the conversation.

5. Economics Activity

Example Activity: Economics Lessons from the Foundation for Teaching Economics

The Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE) is an American non-profit organization dedicated to informing students about the intricacies of the world economy. FTE offers seminars, programs, and training opportunities for teachers, making them an ideal resource for lessons on economics.

Although FTE offers many economics activities, their Right Start in Teaching Economics is the perfect place to begin.

These lessons and activities are designed for new economics teachers and cover these topics:

Scarcity/Opportunity Cost
Incentives and the Role of Profit
Markets and Prices
The Role of Government
Trade
The Banking System
Competition and Market Structure
Externalities and Property Rights
Factor Markets and Economics Development
The tragedy of the Commons

These economics activities are extensive, so you’ll have plenty of resources to fill out your CTE business curriculum and keep students engaged.

Some examples of activities you can use from the FTE lessons include:

Using each lesson’s key terms as flashcards
Roleplaying scenarios involving consumers, banks, and the federal reserve
Having students create a fiscal or banking policy for the class

As a nonprofit, the Foundation offers its resources for free. This makes these a great starting point to find high school business activities and extensive resources for building an economics class.

Engage Your Business Students with Activities and More

Without engaging lessons and activities, your high school students may be bored and unmotivated. As a teacher, this can make you feel like you’ve left them down.

But with a few interesting high school business class activities, you’ll be on your way to preparing them for exciting careers in the business areas of their choice.

However, the reality is that even with the most compelling activities, some students will still struggle to focus in your CTE classes. That’s why it’s critical to use multiple strategies to engage your students better.

For more ways to engage your students in CTE, download your free guide. You’ll discover how to boost motivation in your classroom and keep students learning!