DECA is an organization that promotes all the foundations of business and teaches the youth all about business. Woodhaven takes pride in its DECA Chapter, which is promoted heavily throughout the marketing classes. As Districts are coming up, students are preparing in various ways, one being DECA Day.
DECA Day was hosted on November 19th, where upperclassmen showed younger students the tips and tricks of testing and performing role plays. For testing, upperclassmen who performed exceptionally well showed students how to make quick and accurate guesses on problems that they didn’t know or weren’t quite sure about. For roleplays, a similar structure occurred, however, students were given practice role plays and the upperclassmen judged the students based on fluency and structure of their roleplay.
Later that day, Mirahbelle Johnson, who is Vice President of Career Development, gave students a tutorial on how to operate and excel in Canva, an editing app used for students’ written pages. She stated, “ We showed examples of national winners from last year who used Canva for the majority of paper and who didn’t really use canva. Along with that, I showed my paper from last year and compared it to this year, how to create QR codes, upload photos, and remove the background of images in Canva. I also talked about how to make flyers and what you should have and what you don’t want to have on your flyer. After that, we held a flyer-making contest to make a flyer for the basketball teacher appreciation night.”
Towards the end of the day, the 5th and 6th hours participated in trivia about DECA and overall marketing concepts, in hopes of furthering the student’s overall understanding of the club and what skills are needed to flourish at Districts. Students were then rewarded with candy, and if the questions went unanswered or were incorrect they were then answered correctly. Overall this day seemed to improve everyone’s knowledge and united the organization even more than it previously was.
Another method that has been used to ready students is the DECA Practice tests. These tests can be found on DECA + and are a certified method of testing better. DECA’s main page states, “The best way to study for DECA exams is to take past exams to figure out exactly what to expect on test day. DECA’s Competitive Events webpage has a sample exam attached to every event. Be sure to take this test because it is usually the one that was given the previous year, making it the most up-to-date and valuable source of study”. Along with that these tests go over the fundamentals of business and help pace students for the real test. They are important because they contribute towards how members do at districts as they are weighted 1/3rd of the total score.
Another way to perform better on the tests is to improve one’s overall basic knowledge of the concepts of marketing, like using Kahoots or Quizlets to gain a better concept of business. These methods are all used in marketing classes around the state and are promoted by DECA Advisors
