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Divine Redeemer Lutheran School--Eighth Grade Career Exploration & Computer Apps w/Web 2.0
Michelle Gibson Herman



** Career Exploration Class--Where Do You Fit? **
**Name of Course/Nature of Course** This course is one semester in length, 1/2 credit elective credit on career exploration (if at the high school level). The students can either be at the eighth or ninth grade level. This course could be delivered either 100% online or in a face to face classroom. The purpose of the course is help students explore and research careers that fit their skills, abilities, personalities, and aptitudes.  The learners are eighth graders attending a parochial school. Most of the students have used the computer for personal as well as school use. Due to the nature of these students, Millennials, technology and group interaction comes easy to them, but many need reminders of using proper English when compling their thoughts and interacting with discussion posts. Most of these students have not taken an online course before, so concepts and navigation may be very new to them.
 * Student Analysis**

Many supports built into the course
 * Supporting Mechanisms **
 * [|Calendar] of activities with due dates
 * Web links to many resources
 * Rubric for assessments
 * Direct link to tech support

**Goals/Objectives** **For Unit on Understanding Future Careers and You:**
 * 1) Using provided Internet sites, students will explore how their skills, abilities, and aptitudes fit into a career.
 * 2) By completing a discussion post, students will describe three types of personalities they are, what skills they are good at, and how it fits into their career profile.
 * 3) By completing a table collaboratively, students will discuss four different careers found within one of the 16 career clusters.
 * 4) By creating a comic strip, students will develop personal goals in increments of one-five-ten years.

Over the course of this unit, there are various instructional strategies: reading, research, partner work, and writing either through discussions posts or individual assignments.
 * Instructional Activites and Strategies **

Activity 1: Explore various web sites Students will use information about themselves to answer various inventories in determining which careers best fits themselves. This activity will aid in identifing who they are as people and how those assessment inventories will guide them into identifing possible career choices.

Activty 2: Complete [|discussion post] Students will gather information from the various assessments and evaluate themselves on personality, skills, and abilities. This activity will allow students to form connections about who they are as individuals to what careers best fit them. Students will be using their own prior experiences and knowledge for this activity.

Activity 3: Complete [|chart] with partners in a collaborative environment. (The actual chart is in Google Docs) Students will research information on different careers found within one of the 16 career clusters. Then, collaboratively work together to analyze four of those careers. Working together, students will begin to also see the vast array of careers within a career cluster and instrinstically think if these careers would also fit their individual profiles. Students may draw on past experiences while working on this activity.

Activity 4: Complete a [|comic strip.] After working with interest inventories and collaboratively researching various careers, students should begin to have a better idea of who they are and what careers may interest them. As an introduction to goal writing, I would use some of the TeacherTube videos on various career clusters. Example:[|Law, Public Safety, Corrections & Security Career Cluster]. These are great examples because it highlights what goals students can accomplish within one, five, and ten years time with a specific career field. Students at this age are very social and talkative, so for the first portion of goal writing, students will create a comic strip of their goals--where they see themselves in one, five, and ten years time. This type assignment is very visual in nature and requires students to critically think their future in only three panels. By making this a more personal assignment, it makes learning more meaningful.

**Assessment and Evaluation** In what ways will you measure student learning? For each activity, there is either a discussion post, table, or activity that is created. The elements of the discussion are intended to draw from student's assessments and create a clearer picture of who they are as individuals. By looking at who they are as individuals, allows the students to analyze deeper into what career paths are available to them. I will know if learning is achieved by how they post answers to questions that are easy to understand and is reflected later in other units. A rubric will be used to critique discussion posts.

For providing feedback--will be mostly formative in nature. I will give specific comments to the students via email. These comments will identify if the students understood what the assessments provided in terms of how they see themselves. The formative feedback to each student should force a response back to me with other information if they missed a portion of the discussion post. As for collaborative work, I will look at how much each student participated based on color and through a peer evaluation that each group member will respond to on equal work/particapation. As for goal writing, evaluation will be based on a rubric. If students are having problems or are not doing as well as expected, I will contact them either through email, phone call, or in person to make sure he/she is understanding the material being discussed.

**My criteria is basically communication and self-directed learning strategies. This unit requires students to use prior knowledge of themselves in order to successfully analyze how those individual assessements reflect various career choices available to them. This unit also focuses on collaboration within a group, forces commmunication between members, and reflection at a higher level of thinking.
 * Step Back

I would consider the unit successful if students: For my own evaluation of the unit, I feel that I successful created resources and materials that were relevant to the student and met the learning objectives for the course. I feel that the assessment for this unit are valuable for the student as well as the unit objectives and do not see changing anything at this time. However, would be willing to modify assessments based on student feedback. *
 * Gained knowledge about themselves that they may not have known before.
 * Successfully worked together using technology that was brand new to them.
 * Able to discuss posts and articulate information with higher level thinking