Part of what we try and achieve at Oakwood School is to help the young people we support to gain practical life skills, that will help them become active and useful members of society when they become adults.
Learning about businesses and the ideas needed to create a successful business are certainly life skills that are relevant to today’s society.
To help our pupils achieve this each class was given the opportunity to create a business idea and then pupils from the other classes could go round and choose where to spend the money they had been given – each student was give £10 (in fake money). There was a competition for the overall winner – the class with the most money at the end of the day.
There were a variety of ideas….Class 4 held a Games based event. You had to guess where the easter eggs were, and on the back of each hand drawn egg it had a (Win a Prize) or (Unlucky) message. They also had some homemade cheesecake which had sold out after 15 minutes of the event opening.
Class 6 sold popcorn and held a guess the amount of sweets in a container competition. They also showed a movie where you could come inside and spend some time relaxing.
Class 7 chose to cook fresh Crepe’s, with a variety of toppings. They were all cooked on the spot by some of the pupils. The marshmallow and nutella option was particularly delicious . While you waited for your Crepe, they had the genius idea of offering you the option of having your trainers cleaned by one of the staff for 50p a time. You could also design your own shoes while you waited.
Throughout the event all our pupils were very engaged and proactive. There were lots of ingenious ideas and business like behaviour being shown.All the classes learnt what it takes to come up with an idea as a team, and follow that through to something practical and commercial. A really enjoyable day that imparted useable skills across a number of different areas.
