Our Team, My Part: Planning a Business Project Where Every Contribution Counts

A 50-minute NBEA lesson plan for high school and early college business students. Topic: planning a team business project with shared responsibility and recognized individual contributions.

What students do: Write team and individual goals for a pet-bandana project, build an evidence map and dated commitments with backups, work the price figures alone, design a fair make-up task, and explain how the work will count.

Students will be able to

• Write a team goal and an individual goal for a business project, and name the evidence that shows each.
• Build a team plan with roles, dated commitments and a backup for absences.
• Calculate the price figures every member must be able to explain (margin, break-even, result at the forecast) and recompute them for one changed cost.
• Explain, in plain language, how the team's product and each member's contribution will be recognized separately.

The 50-minute lesson

• Hook: How Will My Grade Be Decided? (5 minutes)
• Direct Instruction: Goals, Evidence Map and the Numbers (12 minutes)
• Small Teams: Paw Print Pet Bandanas' Plan (13 minutes)
• Individual: The Numbers and the Paragraph (12 minutes)
• Quiz and Exit Ticket (8 minutes)

At a glance

• Grade level: Secondary (9-12) through Two-year Post-Secondary
• Time: 50 minutes
• NBEA standard: 3.3.1.69, Career Development: Demonstrate shared responsibility for collaborative work and the value of contributions made by each team member

What is in the Word file

• Instructor Version: objectives, materials, background with worked examples, the lesson outline, vocabulary and a teacher answer key.
• Learner Version: a printable worksheet and a five-question quiz.

Companion course: This lesson plan is used in the NBEA Learning Center course ASM-301, From Group Project to Proof of Individual Learning (learn.nbea.org). Teachers who take the course learn how to teach this topic.