Activities to support the use of ‘Focus on Careers’ resources
These learning activities have been developed with Yr 9, 10 and 11 in mind, to be delivered by a non-specialist, typically a tutor with a twenty-minute
session per week within a broader tutorial programme. They are not intended to replace any of the
excellent resources currently in use in schools for Careers lessons, but to give tutors a means of
generating and sustaining a dialogue about future careers with groups and individuals.
They are, however, based on the assumption that to be a tutor is to take a proactive interest in the
future economic wellbeing of your students.
Activities to focus in greater depth on decision-making skills for Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4
transition have been deliberately omitted. There are well-tried resources based on the concepts in the
former ‘Progress File’ that comprehensively deal with these issues, in partnership with Connexions
Personal Advisers.
The activities are designed to draw on students’ current awareness of jobs, however limited or
incidental, and to generate an enquiring approach to information about future education, training or
employment. Thus, each activity is structured in a similar, three-part, way:
- pre-learning
- main activity (approximately 20 minutes) post-learning/self study
The lesson plans also allow for a flexible ‘mix and match’ approach. Pre- and post-learning
activities can be adapted and combined with the main activity to create a typical 50-minute lesson.
Teachers will need to match the activities to the appropriate level for their own students and may
wish to re-order the sequence of lessons. However, it is advisable that the National Qualifications
Framework (NQF) activities precede the Routes to Higher Education section. The format of the pack
enables teachers to selectively omit some pre- or post-learning activities to create a smoother ‘flow’
of one lesson into another, from week to week.
Thematically, the lessons can be categorised as follows:
Occupational Categories
The National Qualifications Framework
Employability skills
Job trends
Routes to Higher Education
There has never been more Career information available to students, nor a wider range and flexibility
of progression routes. The overall objective of this lesson pack is to enable students to reflect on the relevance
and usefulness of that information to themselves. This generation of students faces the greatest challenges so far, in terms of acquiring the
knowledge, skills and attitudes to face an increasingly unpredictable economic future. This pack will
hopefully make a small but significant impact on that challenge.
Why use this resource?
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