Review the Web sites listed under Resources, and add those that you like best to your Favorites. In addition to these Web resources, you might gather together print materials such as atlases, books about international cuisine, and anything about pizza!

Download the Pizza Plan Excel workbook (listed under Resources), review all three tabs, and make any adjustments necessary for your students' best use.

Students will be tackling this project in teams of four, and the tasks are structured so that each student has a specific role to play. Decide up front how you want your students to be grouped.

Introduce the lesson by taking an informal poll: How many students like pizza? Which toppings are their favorites? What's the strangest pizza combination your students have ever had?

Tell the kids that they will now create their own pizza companies with the express mission of developing innovative pizzas using ingredients from around the world. Their pizzas will be for sale in the United States as well as overseas.

Copy and hand out the Student Activity pages, and set your class to work!

Open the Pizza Plan Excel workbook that your teacher set up for you on the classroom computer. Click the Cover tab.

As a team, decide on a name for your new pizza company. Fill this in with the other information on the cover sheet. (You may also want to replace the clip art on the cover with something more specific to your own company, or wait to do so until you've completed the rest of your plan.) Save the workbook with your new company name in the file name.

Click the Ingredients tab. Decide who on your team will focus on each of the four basic pizza elements--dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings--and note that person's name in the appropriate heading in column A.

Start Internet Explorer to check out some of the pizza resources your teacher has placed in Favorites for you--and search for more. Your goals are to:

Save your work and show it to your teacher.

Each team member should make a short list of possible innovative ingredients to research in his or her particular pizza area (dough, sauce, cheese, or toppings).

Use Internet Explorer and the resources your teacher has gathered for you in Favorites to begin tracking down where in the world your new ingredients might come from. Encarta Online Encyclopedia may be especially useful in accomplishing this task, because of the deep information it can provide (including country contacts) when you search by ingredient.

As your team begins selecting innovative ingredients, begin filling in the relevant columns on the Ingredients sheet.

When your suggested innovative ingredients are in place, look over them as a team and make sure they go together, culturally and regionally as well as flavor-wise. For example, if you're thinking that Mexican cactus might make a nice topping, you probably don't want a rich French cheese.

Share your work with your teacher.

In your Pizza Plan workbook, click the Plan Elements tab.

If your team hasn't already done so, decide on the country that you will market in outside of the United States. Put this country name in the appropriate cell.

Now do some brainstorming about target audience for your innovative pizza idea.

Next focus on Positioning. What is it about your pizza that will persuade your audience to buy it? The taste of home in the United States, perhaps, or national pride in the foreign market? Note one or possibly two very strong positioning points in the appropriate cells. Your foreign market position should be attuned to the culture you'll be serving.

Now think about Distribution--that is, where your customers will buy your pizza. Will you open your own restaurants, set up a team of street vendor stalls, or sell through supermarkets? You may want to do some research before answering this one, particularly in the foreign market. Insert your final choices in the appropriate cells.

Finally, think about how you'll communicate with your target audience so they know your pizza is ready to buy. Will you advertise on the radio, hand out free samples in the mall, or sponsor after-school parties? Again, make sure your strategies make sense in the markets (U.S. and foreign) that you'll be serving.

Finally, do some projecting. Considering how many people are in your target audience, and that it takes time for a new product to win customers, how many pizzas do you think you'll sell here and overseas in the first year? The second? The third?

Save your work, and turn a copy in to your teacher.

As a wrap up, present your Pizza Plan to your class. Talk about how and why you chose your ingredients, and explain your strategies for marketing your wares. After all the teams have presented, take a vote to see which pizzas your classmates would most like to eat!