Spotlight Activity: What is an Entrepreneur?

Our Thanks to Mizzen Education (and VentureLab!) for making this resource and so much more available to the out-of-school time community.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting companies; it’s a skill set and way of thinking. In this activity, students will watch a video from Kid President on what it takes to be an inventor to get them thinking about and discussing what an entrepreneur is. Then, students will make a poster representing themselves as entrepreneurs to start cultivating the mindset and thinking that they, too, are entrepreneurs. 

Activity Steps

1. Before you begin, write the word “entrepreneur” really large somewhere in the room for students to see (whiteboard, poster paper, etc.). To activate background knowledge, ask students if anyone in the class knows what this word is. Take ideas if students have them.

• Write this working definition for students to see: 
• “Entrepreneurs are creative businesspeople who work to make the world a better place with their new business or product.”
• Have students repeat the word several times. You can clap it out in syllables, have them sing it to you, or say it in a funny accent so they get used to hearing this word.

2. Tell students that they are going to watch Kid President learn more about what it means to be an entrepreneur. Let students know that we really want to know what it takes to think like an entrepreneur, so we’re going to be looking for keywords to write on the board from the video. 

• Resource: Kid President Video

3. Play the video. You can either play the video fully one time, then go back through to pick out key words, or pause throughout to discuss the key words we want students to capture, depending on how much time you have. 

• Note: Make sure to discuss with kids that entrepreneurs are often inventors (coming up with new ideas to help people) who put their ideas into action.

4. Whether you’re watching the video once or twice, pause several times throughout to discuss and write key ideas on the board or poster paper you’re using. These words should be large and you can write them in random order all over the board. 

Here are key ideas mentioned in the video that connect with entrepreneurship (try to have students come up with these based on the working definition and what they learned from the video, but add in the ones they might miss):

• dream
• ideas
• make the world more awesome
• solve problems
• create new stuff
• hard (challenges)
• help
• teamwork
• have a goal
• different
• okay to fail
• don’t stop
• keep trying
• change the world

These keywords are also in the optional handout. If your students aren’t writing yet or need the visuals added to these key ideas, you can pass this handout out to them and have them cut out the key ideas to glue to the poster they will make in step 5.

5. Now that students have an understanding of the entrepreneurial mindset, they are going to create a poster of themselves as entrepreneurs. 

• Pass out the Entrepreneur Poster Template and have students decorate it as a self-portrait, adding whatever they like and are interested in. 
• They will write their name on the blank line at the top. 
• Use whatever materials you have on hand – whether that’s letting students cut up pieces of construction paper to add to their paper, paint, and glitter, or just crayons, markers, or colored pencils. 
• Let them know to be creative! 

6. Have a final discussion with students on what they learned today.

This resource is provided as part of our monthly series highlighting impactful resources available to Florida-based pit-of-school time programs at no or low cost. For more resources, sign up for the Mizzen Education “app” for free and start planning today!