Career Planning

Activity Lesson: What career path should I consider based on my desired lifestyle? (Part I on College and Career exploration project)

Topic: Reading and Personal Finance

Grade: 9-10 Grade

Aim: Students will explore various career clusters and investigate resources, and education,  needed for a desired life-style to answer the question: What can you do now and over the course of your academic career in HS and college to live the life-style you desire?

Learning Objectives

Students will:

Research careers within career clusters:

1. Use a variety of sources for career research and employment information

2. Develop strategies to explore career options

3. Develop an awareness of high school and postsecondary options

4. Investigate specific job descriptions

Standards:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.7 Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.

Common Core Skills

• Students use advanced internet search methods to obtain reliable, relevant information.
• Students apply new information to pre-existing knowledge to formulate new ideas.
• Students synthesize information from multiple sources and from multiple formats to create a college and career plan.
• Students will organize information digitally.

Vocabulary: career pathway, associates degree, bachelor's degree,

graduate degree, Career Cluster, Agriculture & Natural Resources

Architecture & Construction, Arts, A/V Technology & Communication, Education & Training, Business, Management & Administration

Materials:

Smartboard or whiteboard & markers, computer, headphones, printer, graphic organizers, writing utensils, access to Google Apps, internet connection, list of suggested websites and videos.

Motivation:

Students will look at projected images of careers, homes, environments, and families and will put their name on the board under those that appeal to them. After a short introductory discussion on how current choices affect how life progresses, students will then complete a checklist of what they believe they want to achieve after high school.

Learning Activities:

1. Students participate in an introductory whole class discussion on what they perceive as their ideal life-style and career.
2. Students come to the board and put their name under their preferences and then complete a checklist
3. As a whole class students watch a video on Career Clusters and participate in a short discussion addressing different jobs that fall into the various clusters. Questions will be asked of students who currently have jobs.
4. Students will complete a worksheet listing their talents, skills, hobbies, preferences, and personality traits.
5. Students will then go to a computer (assuming they have then in the class, or are using BYOD, or alternatively this can be done in a lab) and will log into their Google Apps account and open a shared document that contains a graphic organizer template and links to various resources. The graphic organizer will have fields for the job, career cluster, education requirements, salary range based on geographical area, job title growth projections, family time, and notes.
6. Students will use Diigo (previous lesson introduced this tool) to bookmark websites and other resources, as well as to annotate the sources in obtaining the main idea and relevant information.
7. Students will use the information from the bookmarked sites and videos to complete the graphic organizer in preparation of completing part II of this activity, which is writing a career path plan and presenting the highlights via a Google Presentation.
8. Teacher will review the graphic organizers with each of the students to offer feedback and/or suggestions.

Differentiation:

Select students will be given a research sheet with less resources to investigate.  In this way the the complexity of the task is maintained, but the amount of information to be processed is reduced.  Additionally the graphic organizer and procedural list will be projected during the activity.

Higher Order thinking Questions:

Are my interests in line with my career choice?

Are my skills and talents complimentary to my career choice?

How can what I do today help me achieve my goals for career choice?

Assessment:

Observation and teacher interaction with the students as they complete their research.

Teacher review of the graphic organizer

Closure:

Students will participate in a whole class discussion regarding their findings and if what they found changes their initial ideas. Teacher will introduce Part II of the activity, which is to create a career plan and present the highlights by creating a presentation in Google Presentations, imovie, or other medium of their choice. Through discussion students will identify classmates that have similar interests regarding career choices and will be asked to share what they saved in Diigo so students can compare and contrast what was annotated.

Next:

Part II, students create an actual career path plan and create a presentation reflecting the highlights of that plan.

Evaluation of the Lesson:

The strengths of this lesson are in the perceived relevance of the activity to the students lives.  Additionally offering graphic organizers and a social bookmarking site will help the students to organize their ideas and research in an efficient manner so information can be synthesized and a deeper level of understanding can be achieved. Also, by using Google Docs and Diigo, information is readily available online and saved automatically so no research will be lost.

A weakness would be any limitation to computer or internet access as this activity is dependant upon both.