As a teacher, when given a new class at the start of the academic year that are just about to start their Cambridge International AS & A Level Business course, I like to try and find out how much of an understanding the learners already have about business, as well as any misconceptions they may have about the subject.
To do this, I present the class with a creative task that allows them to show me what they know about business already. Here are three examples of activities that will help to find out learners’ level of business knowledge (both real world and theoretical) at the start of the course.
‘Developing a pitch’
Time: 40 minutes group work + 5 minutes per group for presentations + feedback and discussion
What you will need:
- Large sheets of paper (A3 or A5)
- Colouring pens/pencils
Present the class with a business brief, for example ‘to design a new soft drink’. Split the class into small groups and ask them to work together to create and design the new soft drink. They need to pitch to you and will be given 5 minutes to present their ideas.
When working on the task, it is important that you do not give any further help or guidance. This is because the purpose of the task is to see what the learners include in their presentation. Use it as an opportunity for them to show what they already know about business, business vocabulary and about developing a new business idea.
Each group should then present their ideas to the class, where you could decide on a winning group based on who has presented the best product idea or shown the best use of business knowledge. If you have some learners in the class who have already completed the Cambridge IGCSE™ Business course, you could use them to ask questions to those doing the pitches and to judge the presentations.
Feedback following the group presentations could include:
- Highlighting key vocabulary that was used in the task (either correctly or incorrectly)
- Highlighting where pitches showed consideration of business areas including the current market trends, USPs (Unique Selling Points), costing information, market research etc.
- Suggestions of areas of business that could have been used to improve the pitch
- How well the group worked together on the task
‘Who am I?’
Time: 15 minutes + discussion time
What you will need:
- Paper (to write answers on)
Print out a selection of images of well-known and less well-known entrepreneurs. Allow learners time to walk around the room and write down on their paper the names of those people displayed. Once they have done this, go through the answers with the class and explain more about the people in the images as well as their business activities. Alternatively, you could ask learners to research into the entrepreneurs and present their findings back to the class in a future lesson.
This activity also works well with having brand logos on posters placed around the classroom so the learners need to identify the name of the company from the logo displayed. This activity provides a way of identifying entrepreneurs, brands and logos that the learners are aware of, which is useful when you start to discuss case studies in lessons and gives you an idea of suitable case studies to reference within your teaching so learners can make links between theory and its real-world application.
‘Business categories’
Time: 10 Minutes
What you will need:
- Paper (to write answers on)
This is a game that should be straightforward for you to run and offers some challenge to learners. It is an activity that can be used throughout the teaching of the course as learners develop their knowledge.
Give learners a letter from the alphabet and ask them to write down one answer for each of the following categories:
- A business term that starts with that letter
- A type of product you can buy that starts with that letter
- The name of a business/company that starts with that letter
- The name of a famous business person whose first name or surname starts with that letter
For example:
Once all learners have written down their own answers, they should share these one by one with the class. Learners will be allocated zero points for an incorrect answer, one point for a correct answer if someone else has the same answer as them, and five points for a correct answer if no one has the same answer as them.
If you have a large class, split the learners into smaller groups and ask them to share their answers within the groups, keeping the same scoring system.
If a learner gives an answer that is incorrect, explain why it is incorrect, and if an answer is given that you are unsure of then it can be researched within the class, so everyone can learn from the results.
As the business course progresses, the answers given to this activity by learners should show greater variation as they learn more business vocabulary, names of companies and entrepreneurs. It can also be used as a research task where each learner is given a different letter from the alphabet and has to research answers for each of the four categories.
To discover more activities that you can use in your classroom, explore our new Cambridge International AS & A Level Business series. Featuring a coursebook with digital access, workbook with digital access and a digital teacher’s resource, we support learners to study the syllabus with confidence and save you valuable lesson planning time with worksheets, lesson plans and more.
Meet the Author
Kelly Chalk currently works as a Business and Economics teacher at a Grammar School in Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom.
