Shark Tank Showdown

Standards

Enduring understanding and essential question

Big idea: You can stand in front of adults you do not know, with something you made, and answer a question you did not plan for. Six days ago most of you did not believe that.
Essential question: Which of these is most likely to actually work, and what is the evidence?

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. (Low) Deliver their part of the team's 60-second pitch with the five panels visible and the prototype in hand, staying inside 60 seconds.
2. (Mid) Answer at least one unplanned question from a judge in 90 seconds of team question time, giving a direct answer with a number or a piece of evidence from their own research.
3. (High) Score every other team on the audience scoring sheet against four criteria, and defend one award vote in one sentence naming the evidence they heard.

Vocabulary

Tier 2 (general academic): evidence, defend, criteria, professional
Tier 3 (FACS): pitch, investor, ask, prototype, margin, break-even, composure, adaptability, professionalism. See Vocabulary 07.md.

Materials and setup

• Handout 07.11 - Judge Sheet and Audience Scoring Sheet.md: one judge sheet per judge per team (four judges times ten teams is 40 sheets; print them stapled into four packets, one packet per judge, with the running order printed on the front), and one audience scoring sheet per student
• Rubric 07 - Career Readiness and Shark Tank.md, one for the teacher's clipboard with criterion 6 marked live
• The posters and prototypes, already on the counter in running order from Lesson 7.10 Day 2
• Team folders returned at the door with criteria 3, 4, and 5 scored, so teams know where they stand before they pitch
• A visible timer with a sound that the whole room can hear, run by a student timekeeper who is not pitching in that round
• The running order posted large at the front, and a second copy at the judge table
• Four award cards, printed and ready, in these categories: Most Useful. Best Numbers. Best Pitch. Most Likely To Actually Work. [Sal: print them on card stock. A physical card a student can take home costs nothing and is the thing that ends up on a refrigerator.]
• Water and a chair for each judge, and a one-page briefing for judges handed to them at the door
• Allergen card at the front, read aloud before any food sample is tasted, per the Unit 1 procedure. Judges only; no class tasting.
• Slides: Slides 07.11 - Shark Tank Showdown
• Setup notes: set the room before the bell. Judges arrive five minutes early and get the briefing, the packet, and the running order. [Sal: email the judges the one-page briefing two days ahead so nobody is reading it cold in front of students.]

The panel

Four adults is the target and three is enough: the teacher, an administrator, one other teacher, and one outside adult (a parent, a local business owner, a graduate of the school, a bank branch employee, a member of the school board). Ask them for 45 minutes, not a day.

What each judge gets: the one-page briefing, the running order, a packet of judge sheets, and three instructions said out loud at the door:

1. Score every team on the sheet, four criteria, four levels. The sheets are collected and read; they are not the grade of record, and say so to the judges, because it changes how honestly they write.
2. Ask one question per team, inside the 90 seconds. Good questions are the three on the briefing: what is your margin, who already does this, what is the first thing you would do with the money. A judge may ask something else; they may not give a speech.
3. Say one specific true thing to every team before the next one starts. Ten seconds. Not "good job." Something they actually saw.

Pre-assessment

Not applicable in the usual sense; this is the performance. The one pre-check that matters happens at the door in the first two minutes: every team confirms it has a poster, a prototype, and three speakers present. A team with an absent member takes the absent member's written part and one of the two remaining members reads it. Have that plan ready before the bell, because a missing student on pitch day is the most likely thing to go wrong.

Do now and hook (Time: 4 min)

There is no written do now today. On the board as students walk in: the running order, and one sentence: "Four adults are here to listen to you. Be the reason they come back."

The four minutes: the teacher's 60-second opening to the judges and the class, which does three things and nothing else. Names what the class did in six days (a resume, an interview, customer research with real interviews, unit cost and break-even, a prototype, a 60-second pitch). States the rules out loud so the judges and the students hear them at the same time: 60 seconds to pitch, 90 seconds of questions, the timer ends the pitch, every student in the audience is scoring every team. Then hands off to the first team by name. Do not make a speech. The students are the point.

Procedure

Do now 4 (inside Step 1) plus 25 plus 4 plus 7 is 40.

Timing math, so the period actually holds

Decide the per-team time from the team count the night before and write it on the judge briefing. Do not decide it live.

Questions to ask

These are the teacher's questions, used only if a judge asks nothing or if a team's 90 seconds stalls.

Monitor understanding:

• What is your margin on one unit?
• Say your break-even as a sentence.
• Who told you they would buy this? What exactly did they say?
• Which unit's skill did you use to build that?

Deepen learning:

• Somebody in this room could copy your idea by Monday. Why would a customer still pick you?
• Your interview said three dollars and your price is six. Talk me through that.
• What is the first thing you would do with the money you just asked for?
• What did you get wrong when you started, and how do you know?
• If this does not work, what is the reason it will not work?

Check for understanding

Rubric 07 criterion 6 is marked live on the teacher's clipboard, one team at a time, in the twenty-second swap and never during a pitch. Mark four things and nothing else: did all three speak, did it come in at or under 60 seconds, did the money get said out loud, did somebody answer a judge question with a number or a quote. Those four marks plus the judge sheets are the evidence for criterion 6. The audience scoring sheets are the check on the audience: a sheet with four criteria scored for every team and one sentence of evidence is the "got it," and it is scored complete, partial, or missing for daily work.

Closure (inside Step 4, 2 min)

The two sentences, said the same way every year: "Six days ago most of you had never said a price out loud to an adult who was not in your family. Today every one of you did it in front of four of them, with something you made, and answered a question nobody warned you about. That is the job. That is what the job actually is."

Then: "Tomorrow we put all of it in a folder with your name on it and you tell me what you can do now that you could not do in September."

Differentiation and supports

• ELL: the picture panel version of the deck is fully acceptable and is not scored lower; criterion 6's descriptors score whether the six parts are present and understandable, not the fluency of the English. A student may deliver their part in the home language with a one-sentence English summary from a teammate, and the judge briefing says so, so a judge does not mistake it for an error. The judge sheet and the audience scoring sheet both use the four traits from Lesson 7.3, which are already in Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish in Vocabulary 07.md. Judge questions are read aloud slowly and may be repeated once on request without penalty; that instruction is on the briefing.
• IEP and 504 (general): an index card with the student's part on it, read from, is allowed and does not lower the score; a student may deliver seated or from beside their team rather than in front; the order can be arranged so a student who needs to go first or last does; a student who needs to leave the room after their pitch may; extended question time is available and a teammate may take a judge question on behalf of the team, which is a real business practice and should be named as one, not excused; noise-reducing headphones for the audience portion for any student who needs them, since 25 minutes of applause in a hard-surfaced room is a lot.
• Grade 6 support: 45 seconds instead of 60, three panels instead of five, and a fixed judge question that the team is told in advance ("what does it cost you to make one, and what do you charge?"), so the unplanned question is a stretch rather than a requirement. Grade 6 teams may pitch second or third rather than first; going first is harder than it looks.
• Grade 8 stretch: 60 seconds with no card, and one team member designated to field every judge question. Grade 8 teams also take a second judge question if the clock allows, and their sixth panel (the competition) has to be defended out loud.
• UDL checkpoints used: multiple means of engagement (a real audience of adults who chose to come, an authentic deadline, and four award categories so more than one kind of excellence gets named) and multiple means of action and expression (spoken, read from a card, seated, in a home language with a summary, or written and read by a teammate, all scored on the same descriptors).
• No-presentation accommodation. This is the lesson where it matters most and it has to be arranged before today, in writing, on the Lesson 7.10 planner sheet. Three routes, all at full credit: (1) the student writes their part of the pitch and a teammate reads it aloud while the student stands with the team; (2) the student presents to the panel in the hallway or at the judge table before or after class, with no audience; (3) the student records the pitch part as audio or hands in the written pitch, and the teacher scores criterion 6 from that plus the team's live delivery of the rest. The rubric's criterion 6 descriptors are written so that none of these three routes caps the score. No student is required to stand in front of the room and no pitch is filmed or posted anywhere.

Assessment

The Topic 7.2 formal check is Rubric 07 criteria 3 to 6. Criteria 3, 4, and 5 were scored from the Lesson 7.10 folder and prototype. Criterion 6 is scored today. Return the completed rubric in Lesson 7.12 with the portfolio.

Homework

None. The homework for the last night of the school year is to bring everything from the year that is not already in the room, for tomorrow's portfolio: the sewn item, a photograph of it, anything that went home.

Connections

Inside the building: this is the lesson that connects FACS to the rest of the school in the most direct way available, by putting an administrator and another teacher in the room with a judge sheet in their hand. FACS gives them 25 minutes of evidence about what students can do; they give FACS the fact that the audience is real. Community: a local business owner, a bank employee, a chamber of commerce member, a school board member, or a graduate. Ask for 45 minutes and send the briefing two days ahead. Keep the list; the same people come back next year and they bring somebody.

Sources

• NYS Middle Level CTE FACS Content Module 01, Individual Growth and Life Readiness, lines 3. c), 3. d), and 5. b).
• NYS Middle Level CTE Theme Module 02, Communication and Interpersonal Relationships, lines 1. f) and 6. f); Theme Module 05, Problem Solving and Innovation, line 1. e).
• NYS Learning Standards for FACS (1996), Standard 3, Intermediate. NYS CDOS Standard 3a, Interpersonal Skills. Wording per 02 Standards/STANDARDS SOURCES - web research.md. [Sal: confirm against the NYSED PDFs.]
• National Standards for FCS Education 3.0 (LEAD FCS Education, 2018), competencies 1.2.8 and 13.3.2.
• Sal's own materials: his Brentwood business packet "Shark Tank Showdown," which supplies the 60-second pitch structure, the investor ask, and the judging frame. Rewritten here with the teacher side it lacked: the panel logistics, the judge briefing, the timing math, the audience scoring sheet that keeps every student working, and the award categories.
• The Problem Solving and Innovation illustrative activity in the state's Individual Growth and Life Readiness module ends with groups pitching "to a panel representing potential investors" and "classmates and investors vote on which entrepreneurs to back." The audience scoring sheet and the two sets of award votes are that line, written as a procedure.

Teacher notes

• Decide the per-team time from the team count the night before, write it on the briefing, and tell the class. Do not do timing math in front of four adults.
• The audience scoring sheet is the difference between a good pitch day and chaos. Twenty-seven students with nothing to do for 25 minutes is a behavior problem; twenty-seven students scoring four criteria and casting four votes is a room full of judges.
• Brief the judges on the question, hard. The failure mode is a judge who gives a two-minute speech about how business worked in 1994. The briefing says one question, ten seconds of specific feedback. Stand up at second 80 and they will wrap.
• Tell the judges plainly that their sheets are not the grade. It frees them to write honestly, and it protects students from a stranger's off-day.
• Four award categories, not one winner. Most Useful, Best Numbers, Best Pitch, and Most Likely To Actually Work reward four different kinds of strength, and Best Numbers in particular gives the quiet CFO a category to win.
• The timer is a student's job and it has to be honored. If the teacher runs the timer, the teacher becomes the villain. If a student runs it, the clock is just the clock.
• A team's poster falling off the easel is the most likely physical failure. Tape everything down at the end of Lesson 7.10 Day 2.
• Thank the judges by name, out loud, in front of the students. It models the follow-up that the Lesson 7.5 vocabulary already named, and it is how you get them back next year.
• The no-guest version. If no outside adult can come, the panel is the teacher plus three students drawn from teams that have already pitched, sitting at the judge table with the same judge sheet. Run the pitches in two halves: the first five teams pitch to a panel of the teacher and three students from teams 6 to 10, then the panel swaps. Everything else is identical, including the award cards and the audience sheet. The version with students as judges is a genuinely good lesson and not a lesser one: a student judging with a rubric in hand has to defend a score out loud, which is criterion 3 of the audience objective at a higher level. Do not cancel pitch day for lack of guests.
• [Sal: your invitation list is the thing to build in September, not June. One administrator, one teacher, one parent, one business owner. Ask in writing, give them a date and 45 minutes, and send the briefing two days out. If you get an outside guest in year one, you will have three in year two.]