Learning Plans
Get a Job
This project engages students in career exploration while building personal and professional skills. Students will explore job responsibilities, work environments, education, pay, and soft skills. Their findings will be presented to highlight career insights, common themes, and personal goals.
Party Planning Palooza
Students practice event planning by creating a personalized party plan for a real client, using interviews and feedback to refine ideas, solve challenges, and organize logistics while applying creativity, communication, and critical thinking.
Beyond the Badge
Students work in groups to explore careers in the Law and Public Safety cluster by taking on specific roles, analyzing real-world scenarios those roles face, researching how they contribute to resolving issues, and reflecting on the job’s importance, community need, and resources for further information.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Students take on logistics roles to solve a real-world challenge—designing an efficient, cost-effective plan to ship bananas from Ecuador to global destinations and presenting their solution to an audience.
Green Thumb Revolution
Students will work in teams to design and implement a simple, productive garden that provides fresh food and encourages healthy eating. The project includes researching sustainable practices, planning and building the garden, and promoting the benefits of fresh produce to the school and community.
Safe Haven
Students investigate housing insecurity by taking on construction and design roles, researching the challenges of homelessness, and developing a client-centered housing plan that balances safety, affordability, functionality, and dignity, then present their design to an audience.
Engage to Empower
Students research effective teaching strategies, design engaging lessons for a Pre-K–12 audience based on their interests, share and refine ideas with peers, and present final activities to school stakeholders.
AppCraft: Designing Digital Experiences
Students will consider the challenges they face in their personal, academic, social, and emotional lives. They will engage in the process of designing digital experiences to address real-world issues and improve their daily routines.
Activate Your Body, Activate Change, Activate Your Future
This plan helps students address rising adolescent obesity, diabetes, and heart disease by promoting physical activity, nutrition, and mental wellness. They research and develop a product or service to encourage healthy habits, gaining awareness of health careers and practical insights into the industry.
Operation TEACH
Students research the career of teaching, determine a solution for retaining effective teachers, and create a presentation about their solution. They will present their solution to school administrators and/or school board members.
Robots Wanted!
Students explore fruit and vegetable farms to understand the labor involved, research farm economics and plant life cycles, and examine ways mechanization or robotics can reduce manual work. They present their findings to an agricultural engineer to begin developing solutions to labor shortages.
Tool-Up Tech: First Aid for the Backcountry
Students use the engineering design process to create a first aid device that stabilizes backcountry injuries until medical help is available, incorporating composite materials in their design.
Simulation: Health Care Center
Students work as part of a committee to identify the staffing needs of a new community medical center.
Water Ops for Growing
Students design and create a smart watering system for a small herb garden.
Simulation: Live Shark Tank
In this simulation, students conduct market research, start a business, and pitch their product or service to community members posing as sharks, similar to a Shark Tank episode.
Simulation: Drones in High-Tech Farming
Students discover the science behind how a drone works, explore how drones are used in agriculture, and program and operate a drone for the purpose of monitoring grazing sheep.
Simulation: Posterized!
Students take on the role of a graphic designer to complete a poster project that meets the needs of their “client.”
Are We Prepared?
Students discover what constitutes a natural disaster, explore the different professions involved with natural disaster response, identify steps they can take to help themselves and others be prepared for natural disasters, and educate individuals about natural disaster preparedness.
Agritourism: Extreme Farm Makeover
Students work in groups to design an agritourism experience that boosts profits for a family-owned farm while offering agricultural literacy opportunities for the community. They research finance, marketing, tourism, and the farm’s production systems to create a successful, educational agritourism business.
Bringing Back Downtown
Student groups research target markets to identify community needs and propose a business plan to a mock city council offering downtown revitalization grants to attract more foot traffic.
Career Gaming
Students design games that will assist others with identifying a variety of careers, possible emerging careers, the education required for career options, and the types of salaries that can be expected in each career.
Cord Mess
Students work in teams to design a product or process that solves the problem of tangled electronic device cords, developing what they see as the best solution within available time and materials.
Energy Bar Exploration
Students create a healthy, simple energy bar recipe, design its marketing and branding, build a display box, and present their product to a group.
Culinary Concepts
Students develop a unique retail food product using Utah-sourced ingredients to create a new “Utah’s Own” company. Working in teams, they will design a product that can be sold in retail outlets or served in the school cafeteria.
Edutainment
Students work in pairs or small groups to use the engineering design process to research, design, and create a toy or web-based game/app that both teaches age-appropriate skills or information and provides suitable play for young children.
Enlightened Concessions
Students survey peers about healthy concession products, choose one to test in class, and present it to a guest panel as a healthy option.
Mind Your Own Beeswax
Students solve the problem of excess beeswax, a byproduct of honey bees, by developing a useful beeswax product and marketing their product to be sold in a local boutique or farmers market.
Let’s Glow!
Students explore simple circuits and sewing techniques while designing and making a custom “smart” stuffed animal.
Online Entrepreneur
Students create a feasible business plan for a chosen product or service, including marketing, cost analysis, and a prototype or service plan. They present their plans to guest “Sharks” or DECA/FBLA officers from the feeder high school.
Outhack the Hackers
Students explore the history of cybersecurity and research current topics, then create a website, game, interactive presentation, or brochure to teach younger students how to stay safe from hackers and scams.
Spice Up Space Food
Students work in groups to create a flavorful and nutritious meal for astronauts to eat in space. They experience careers in food and nutrition, food science, and marketing, research different ways to preserve foods, and discover how food is taken to and eaten in space.
STAYcations in Utah
Students conduct research and create three different types of advertisements for a Utah vacation spot to be used to promote tourism in Utah to people who already live and work in Utah.
Utah Stories
Students study, collect, write, and tell stories about Utah in digital formats.
Water Purification: Clean and Pure
Students work to develop a system of filtering water when faced with a natural disaster or a boil order in their own home.
Where’s My Pencil?
How many times have you heard, “I lost my pencil?” In this lesson, students work in teams to design, manufacture, and market a product using a 3-D printer to customize a student’s pencil. This will enable and motivate students to more easily keep track of their pencils.