Virginia Agricultural Education 

This lesson is the culmination of the building the business plan for the ag program online store.  Students will be manufacturing a decorative iron gate while finalizing their business plan.  The business plan could be presented to school administration to gain approval for the establishing the online store, to request startup funding or groups can complete the long term entrepreneurial project by presenting their business plans to the class.  The gate project is fairly involved depending on the ornamental design of the gate so it may be the best use of class time and resources to consider having groups of students rotating through the Explore and Explain portions of the lesson.   

This lesson can be adapted to any product or raw materials you have available to use.  Be creative.  We were lucky enough to have grapevines donated from a local winery so we used them.  The students made grapevine wreaths and left the wreaths undecorated to be sold. 

Market research is very helpful when beginning a business plan.  Focusing on just one product can make the process easier for students to not get overwhelmed with the amount of information they can find.  The secondary market research requires internet searching to find any information that already exists about the product or similar product to what you have in mind.  Design ideas can be collected from what the students find online as well.  The creativity of the students can be interesting as well. 

Students will also try their hand and designing a survey, poll questions, interview protocol or similar tool to be used for primary research.  You may decide to stop at this point but the lesson includes having students do the primary research as well.  You can determine the timing or leave this up to the students.  Primary research can be done prior to production, during production or while the product is being sold.  This is a decision that depends on your market, timing and product. 

This lesson is the first of a unit that is designed to have students work toward developing a business plan for raising funds to support their horticulture program.  This project has students making concrete leaf castings.  The introduction design is very basic however students will research other designs and determine if those designs would be cost effective to produce and if they believe they would be able to find customers for their suggested designs.  This lesson includes working in pairs to make the initial leaf castings and then working in small groups to develop a detailed customer building plan.  The lesson concludes with groups presented their plans to the class.  There are at least three suggested formal grading opportunities included in this lesson guide.  The group presentation and the final individual plan submission are suggested summative grading opportunities.

This lesson has students working on preparing poinsettia plants for sale during the holiday seasons but the preparation and business planning can be used adapted easily for any other product line you are preparing to sale.  Students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge about the product and practice that information before facing customers that may have questions.  Customer service and sales practice is also provided during the lesson with role playing, discussion and writing assignments.