Year 7 and 2 work together to pitch ideas at Dragon’s Den-style event

13/03/2020

At Westbourne House School there are many different leadership opportunities, at age appropriate levels, which develop the skills children will need in the future. Young Enterprise has a competitive element for Year 7, which encourages creative ideas, planning and ace teamwork.

At the start of the year, pupils in Year 7 were briefed about Young Enterprise: they were instructed to form a team of three and to come up with an idea or innovation which would benefit the community.

I asked the children to form their own teams of three as I was keen that the children felt comfortable and confident with their group, especially as they would need to create songs and dances together.

Mr Cousens

After kick off, the teams worked together once a month in pastoral time. They brainstormed ideas, selected one and developed it before submitting a written pitch which described the product, why it was needed and defined the target market.

From the ideas generated, Mr Cousens chose six that proceeded to the next stage. These included:

A walking boot with inbuilt technology such as sat nav and waterproof Siri (Angel, Lucy and Anna)
A sensor device for the blind (Dominic, Archie and Alex)
An electronic device to prevent children losing their favourite teddy (Amalisee, Carys and Alice)
Glasses that display holograms of translated English text when you hear a foreign language (Evie, Daisy and Safia)
A gym in a plane that people use which helps contribute towards engine efficiency reducing carbon footprint (Rosa, Olivia, India and Honor)
A series of high tech devices for the modern kitchen (George, George and Gabriel)

Mr Cousens briefed the final six teams on the next stage: Year 2 children would be representing their product to the ‘dragon’s den’ audience. This meant that the teams not only had to create an ‘ad’ with a catchy jingle, they also had to train up their team of Year 2s to perform it on their behalf.

The Year 2 children enjoyed working with the Year 7s and did a very good job of performing the adverts in front the friendly audience. We saw some amazing adverts: children sweating with the exertion of running on treadmills on the eco aeroplane, confusing foreign language being translated by hologram glasses in a cafe (“ah, cheesecake”) and the relief of children who had found their lost teddy bears. The jingles were catchy and the ideas inventive. The audience voted on their favourite product: the hi-tech kitchen won the day with its fridge that scanned sell by dates, the microwave that prevented you from burning yourself, and kitchen crockery shelves with an inbuilt dishwasher mechanism.

Well done to all the contestants and the Year 2 children, who worked hard to bring the ideas to life. Congratulations to George, George and Gabriel on their winning idea and advert. They deserved their huge round of applause.