1. Want to integrate DECA Series Competitive Events
into your classroom?
Get to know your friends: Instructional Areas
Advisors often ask how DECA integrates with their classrooms. That answer has two
main parts: integrating the events with the curriculum and integrating the other chapter
activities with the classroom. This article shows the direct way that role-play events relate
to your teaching.
The key to integrating DECA’s Series Events into your classroom lies in understanding
the instructional areas the events fall under and then the performance indicators listed
under them. Instructional areas (IAs) parallel curriculum units (standards). For example,
currently the Series Events are written using the Marketing Core IAs and the Business
Administration Core IAs (as defined by the Career Cluster concept). The complete list of
instructional areas for the Series Events at this time is
Instructional Areas in the
Marketing Core
Channel Management (distribution)
Marketing-Information Management
Market Planning
Pricing
Product/Service Management
Promotion
Selling
Instructional Areas in the
Business Administration Core
(Common to all business specialties)
Business Law
Communications
Customer Relations
Economics
Emotional Intelligence
Entrepreneurship
Financial Analysis
Human Resources
Information Management
Marketing (its role and function)
Operations
Professional Development

2. Strategic Management
Whenever advisors teach a unit in one of these common instructional areas, they
can extend the concepts by using role-play scenarios. Previously used role-plays
may be procured through DECA Images, and there are samples on the Web site:
www.deca.org/celisting.html. (When new advisors ask how they should invest
their scarce resources, they can’t go wrong with starting their library of previous
events and event winners from DECA Images.)
Each Series Event is labeled with a specific instructional area and lists 5
performance indicators (competencies) under that IA. Students can also identify
and learn the skills (performance indicators) for that IA through role-play practice.
(The complete list of performance indicators, organized under their instructional
areas, is found on the DECA Web site.) Specific teaching techniques are
suggested in various places on DECA’s Web site and in its publications. (For
example, see the teaching tips under the Customized Plan button on the Web
site home page.) We are preparing a lesson plan for teachers on how to
introduce these events to students, including developing appropriate skills.
Studying comprehensive exam questions is another way of integrating Series
Role-play Events into the classroom. Advisors may procure previous exams and
select questions that relate to the unit they are teaching. They can then use
these questions, and vocabulary from these questions, in a variety of creative
ways for each curriculum unit they teach. Just go through the previously used
questions and label them according to which instructional unit they relate to.
Then you can quickly pull out a few to liven up your class sessions: vocabulary,
contests, a “Who can explain the wrong answer?” activity (the answer keys do
explain the wrong answers)—wherever your creativity leads you!