This is such a great starter activity that really gets the students thinking. I have just lifted it straight from the de Bono activity, ‘consider all factors’ and then applied it to Business Studies.
At the start of the lesson, I have a statement on the IWB and invite the students to carry out a C.A.P exercise on the statement. So, I might have a statement saying, ‘I am a business, why have I decided to use external recruitment?’.
This is far more powerful than simply asking students to list the ‘benefits’ of external recruitment. It requires them to think in a slightly different way. When I did this, the students came up with things such as, ‘maybe you are a small business and therefore have less people to choose from’.
I have just done this activity in a lesson today and I started with the statement, ‘I run a small business, why are my staff demotivated?’. You could really see the students thinking of all the possible reasons as to why my staff may be demotivated. There were some belting answers including:
Maybe they are on short-term contracts
Maybe you only pay them the minimum wage
Maybe there are few opportunities for promotion as you are only a small business
Maybe they are low skilled and you are trying to increase their level of responsibility and it is proving too much for them (wow)
There were loads more.....I then went back through them and linked them to motivational theory. In a roundabout way, this develops their skills of application, as they need to think of circumstances which could lead to demotivation.
When I taught location to my Year 10’s, I started off with the statement, ‘where should we locate a supermarket’ and asked to perform a C.A.P on this.
Excellent for revision lessons, introducing new topics and ideal for mini-whiteboards....
Enjoy....................
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This activity could also be turned on it’s head to get students to think about what factors they need to consider with certain topics. EG I’m a small business and need to recruit new staff. What method of recruitment should I use? Students are then given 20 questions to use to ask about my business and then have to answer my initial question about which method to use.
