Lesson Plan: Explore Careers - CLC
Career Lifecycle Stage:
Making a Choice, Making it Happen

This learning activity helps students gather useful information and prepare for the creation of their personal integrated post-graduation career plan that can be included in their capstone project. If information is missing, students will use WorkBC.ca resources to support further research and exploration. Students will use the Explore Career Worksheet A as a guide and gather evidence of learning and achievement related to: self-assessment, career choice, career pathway (education and/or work), financial plans and health and well-being.

CLC: 10-12
6-9 hours
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Lesson Plan
Overview

In Career-Life Connections (CLC), grade 11 and 12 students continue to develop their career-life planning competencies and further their understanding and awareness of the world of work, and of themselves. Career development competencies developed over the senior years of high school will result in an understanding that careers, education and life opportunities change over time. This awareness encourages ongoing exploration, planning and connecting with mentors. Students will have used a variety of career exploration, research and reflection techniques to think about career opportunities – in the process, they will be identifying aptitudes, attitudes and achievements needed for post-graduation plans. Through using a variety of career planning tools, including WorkBC.ca, students will identify and assemble evidence, and design and create their capstone project.

Resource Requirements

Worksheet A: Preparing for your capstone project post-graduation plan (available for download)

WorkBC resources for students:

Career Discovery Quizzes

Career Trek

Explore Careers

Career Search Tool

Job Board

Other Requirements: Computer, tablet or smartphone.

Key Questions
  1. Do I have the right information so I can plan and create my integrated post-graduation plan for my capstone project?
  2. Can I show evidence of my self-assessment process including my:
    1. Interests and experiences.
    2. Values:
      • What I am looking for from a job?
      • Where I will live?
      • Types of work environments I would like to work in.
    3. Transferable skills:
      • Essential skills.
      • Employability skills.
      • Work skills.
      • Academic skills.
    4. In-school and out-of-school courses that support post-graduation plans.
    5. Community learning experiences.
    6. Internal and external influences on personal development and career choices.
    7. Achievements that support my career choices.
    8. My career support network.
  3. Can I identify and provide evidence of the aptitudes, attitudes and achievements that shaped my post-graduation goals and plans?
  4. Can I identify and provide evidence of learning experiences I undertook that helped me choose a career-life pathway, including education and/or work?
  5. Can I demonstrate that I gathered information on the finances required to support my career-life plans?
  6. Did I ensure that all my information is current and that I updated it as required?
  7. Did I assemble the information in a format that will be useful when I create my post-graduation plan as part of my capstone project?
Thinking about Teaching

In Career-Life Connections (CLC), grade 11 and 12 students continue to develop their career-life planning competencies and further their understanding and awareness of the world of work, and of themselves.

Career development competencies developed over the senior years of high school will result in an understanding that careers, education and life opportunities change over time. This awareness encourages ongoing exploration and planning.

Students will have used a variety of career exploration, research and reflection techniques to think about career opportunities and to identify aptitudes, attitudes and achievements needed to support their post-graduation plans. Through learning about their career options, students are better prepared to achieve their post-graduation plans.

The capstone project is embedded in the CLC curriculum. The capstone project allows students to demonstrate their cumulative learning, using an area of interest as the basis for the project. Ideally, this would be an area they are passionate about and hope to pursue after graduation.

In CLC, students will identify and assemble evidence, and design and create their capstone project. They will present it to an audience to demonstrate personal learning and achievement (in and out of school), as well as their growth in the core competencies. Their presentation should reflect how they came to their decision regarding their post-graduation plan.

Students who participated in the learning activities associated with WorkBC Career Discover Quizzes and Career Trek lessons, will have accumulated a number of learning experiences that will be helpful when they create their capstone project.

This learning activity is specifically intended to help students gather useful information and prepare for the creation of their personal integrated post-graduation career plan. This plan will be included in their capstone project.

If information is missing, students will use WorkBC.ca resources to support further research and exploration.

Students will use Worksheet A as a guide and gather evidence of learning and achievement related to:

  • Self-assessment.
  • Career-life choices.
  • Career-life pathways (education and/or work).
  • Financial supports.
  • Health and well-being.
Activities
Proposed Scope & Sequence
  1. Learn about the integrated personal post-graduation plan and the capstone project.
  2. Gather evidence related to career planning and decisions based on their learning and achievement to date. Elements will include:
    1. Self-assessment.
    2. Career-life choices.
    3. Career-life pathways (education and/or work).
    4. Financial supports.
    5. Health and well-being.
  3. Evaluate the evidence to determine whether it is sufficient to support post-graduation goals and plans.
  4. Use WorkBC resources to conduct further exploration and research, so students have up-to-date evidence.
  5. Create an approach to pull all the evidence together, so it is ready to be used as part of the integrated post-graduation plan within the capstone project.
Activity One: Overview of the Capstone Project and the Personal Integrated Plan for Post-Graduation

As an introduction to this activity, provide an overview of the elements of the capstone project. Students should understand the purpose for gathering evidence about what they have learned and achieved in their career planning activities. They should be aware that when presenting their capstone project they will need to demonstrate connections between their learning and achievements, and their post-graduation plans.

As an example, one student has chosen to pursue a career as a provincial park ranger. When asked why, she may provide evidence of participating in outdoor activities such as hiking in nature, belonging to the environment club at school and achieving honours in her biology class.

For further information see the Ministry of Education guide to Career Education 10-12 (PDF).

Activity Two: Identify, Assemble and Evaluate Evidence that Demonstrates a Rationale for the Post-Graduation Plan

In this activity, students will individually gather evidence and evaluate its usefulness for creating their post-graduation plan. Students will need to develop evaluation questions and a method to save their evidence electronically. Prior to starting their work, review part one to four with the students, review the WorkBC resources, and answer any questions they might have.

Part One: Assemble and Identify

Provide an overview of the process students could use to gather information and what they should be looking for to support each element. Ideas include:

  1. Results of self-assessment quizzes and other exploration (for example: Career Discovery Quizzes, Career Trek), self-evaluation and in-school or out-of-school experiences that influenced their career options.
  2. Decisions related to career options and the basis for those choices (for example: Career Discovery Quizzes, WorkBC career profiles).
  3. Results of research related to education and/or work pathways that will support their achievement of career goals (for example: EducationPlannerBC or WorkBC Job Board).
  4. Identification of financial support (for example: bursaries, part-time work) that will be required to achieve career goals (for example: WorkBC Financing for Students).
  5. Identification of actions that will support health and well-being, while working towards the achievement of career goals.
Part Two: Evaluate Evidence for Usefulness and Currency

Let students know that after gathering their evidence, they will reflect on and assess its usefulness. If they are missing evidence, then they will do further work to fill in the gaps.

  • Provide an example of how to conduct an assessment of evidence, using the Key Questions above to determine whether the information is relevant to their post-graduation goals and plans. The following activity may be useful.
  1. Students should develop evaluation questions to help guide their assessment of evidence.
  2. In pairs, ask students to discuss and brainstorm some examples of questions they could use for their assessment of evidence. Have several groups share their responses. Use the Key Questions or share the following questions as a thought starter:
    1. Have I collected all the right information needed to create my integrated post-graduation plan?
    2. Have I completed a self-assessment such as Career Discovery Quizzes, and do the results still reflect how I feel about my post-graduation plans?
    3. Have I identified career choice(s) that work for me? Have I shared my thoughts with my network to get their feedback?
    4. Do the values I identified earlier still make sense now that I am in grade 12?
    5. Have I researched scholarship opportunities that I could use for the education program that interests me?
    6. Have I researched the prerequisites for the education program(s) I want to take, and do I have what I need?
    7. If I want to go directly to a job, have I researched my work options?
Activity Three: Use Resources Such as WorkBC to Conduct Further Exploration and Research

Over Career-Life Education (CLE) and Career-Life Connections (CLC) programming, students will likely have used the WorkBC.ca website to conduct research into various career options. If student identified gaps in the evidence they assembled, they can use WorkBC to help them fill in the gaps.

  1. To refresh students’ memories, give a short demonstration of WorkBC resources that will be useful to them.
  2. Many students will have an account in WorkBC. If they do not, provide the instructions for setting up an account.
  3. If they need to conduct additional research, students can explore other sources on the internet to help them make decisions. School districts may have proprietary resources that can also support student career research.
Activity Four: Create a Format to Store Evidence

Students will need to develop a way to store the evidence they gather, so they can access their materials when they are ready to create their final post-graduation plan.

  1. Students will develop the storage framework and format prior to collecting their evidence.
  2. Students will produce a product that captures their current evidence. Some suggestions include
    1. Digital book using the Book Creator App on the iPad or similar app.
    2. Slide presentation using Google Slide or Microsoft PowerPoint.
    3. Poster using the Pic Collage app on the iPad.
    4. Electronic folders for each element.
Assessment Ideas

Self-Assessment

Ask students to provide evidence of the statement:

  • I identified and assembled evidence of learning and achievements that will support the creation of my integrated post-graduation plan.
  • I evaluated and assessed my evidence for usefulness and currency.
  • If I found evidence that was not current, I took action to bring it up to date.
  • I created a product that represents the evidence I collected to support my integrated post-graduation plan.

Teacher Assessment

Teacher creates rubrics to assess product.

Curriculum Details
Background

This lesson plan supports elements of British Columbia's Career Education Curriculum as outlined below. For further details on the curriculum itself, visit the Ministry of Education's Career Education Curriculum webpage.

Big Ideas
  • Career-life development includes ongoing cycles of exploring, planning, reflecting, adapting and deciding.
  • Career-life decisions influence and are influenced by internal and external factors, including local and global trends.
Content
  • Personal career-life development:
    • Mentorship opportunities.
    • Factors that shape personal identify and inform career-life choices.
    • Reflection strategies.
  • Connections to community:
    • Career-life exploration.
    • Ways to represent themselves, including consideration of personal and public profiles, digital literacy and citizenship.
  • Career-life planning:
    • Self-assessment to achieve goals that advance preferred career-life futures.
    • Methods of organizing and maintaining authentic career-life evidence.
    • Diverse post-graduation possibilities including personal, educational and work options.
    • Post-graduate budget planning.
    • Capstone guidelines.
    • Approaches to showcasing the learning journey.
Curricular Competencies
  • Examine: Analyze internal and external factors to inform personal career-life choices for post-graduation planning.
  • Examine: Assess personal transferable skills and identify strengths including skills that require further refinement.
  • Interact: Collaborate with a mentor to inform career-life development and exploration.
  • Interact: Engage with personal, education, and employment networks to cultivate post-graduation resources and social capital.
  • Interact: Create and critique personal and public profiles for self-advocacy and marketing purposes.
  • Experience: Explore possibilities for preferred personal and education/employment futures, using creative and innovative thinking.
  • Experience: Identify and apply preferred approaches to earning for ongoing career-life development and self advocacy.
  • Experience: Engage in, reflect on, and evaluate career-life exploration.
  • Share: Reflect on experiences in school and out of school, assess development in the core competencies, and share highlights of their learning journey.
  • Share: Design, assemble and present a capstone project.
Core Competencies
  • Communication:
    • Explain/recount and reflect on experiences and accomplishments.
  • Personal awareness and responsibility.