Middle School Grades 6
TEKS-aligned career education lessons for Middle School in the Houston -Galveston region.
Download the When I Grow Up – Middle School Cover Page, Section Dividersand Binder Spine.
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Stem In All Clusters Stem Career Web
Grade
Career Standards
Career Standards
Reasons That Career Exploration Must Begin In Middle School
This article has some excellent background on the challenges that high school graduates are facing when they leave school without a plan. For students who do have a plan, they began to formulate that plan during middle school. Take some time to read through the reasons why middle school career education is a must.
Learn more: Apprentice Learning
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Career Exploration Webquest From Abundant Teaching
Another resource you can find in the TpT marketplace is this career exploration webquest unit from Abundant Teaching.
This career exploration unit costs $9 and includes five lessons to help students determine careers that best align with their skills and abilities.
The lessons walk students through:
- Exploring different careers
- Considering areas of improvement
- Thinking ahead to set goals
Each lesson involves students embarking on a webquest to use the Internet to research and answer questions on the accompanying activity sheets.
These lessons are designed for students to work autonomously to complete the activities.
So, if youre looking for a resource thats mainly hands-off from the teachers side, this webquest unit will be a great fit.
Why Career Exploration Lesson Plans Are Important
Students are often bombarded with decisions that need to be made, which hinge on a specific career path. How can they know what courses to take in high school for a future educational goal, if they havent explored career options available to them?
How do we expect young people to dream if they dont know what they can dream about?
Thats what Americas Promise Alliance asks on their website when talking about why career exploration matters. They also explore more in-depth reasons, such as:
- Gives young people broader exposure to the working world they will one day enter
- Improves academic performance
- Improves the attitudes of young people about their career possibilities
- Increases students knowledge of career options
- Allows students to more easily envision how they fit successfully into the working world
- Encourages students to plan their high school courses of study carefully to gain the skills they will need
Now that you’ve learned more about why choosing quality career exploration lesson plans is critical to the success of your students, let’s explore some of the best options for teaching career exploration in your classroom.
Recommended Reading: Career One Stop Interest Assessment
What Types Of Activities Are Included
Each lesson plan has step-by-step directions for a variety of hands-on activities, such as designing infographics, playing games, performing skits, creating job postings, and interviewing experts. In addition, youll get accompanying printables and student assessments.
Here are some of our favorite activities:
- Walk a mile in an athletic trainers shoes.
- Interview an entrepreneur.
- Live a day in the life of an EMT.
- Go on a biotech scavenger hunt.
- Create a colorful infographic about mental health.
- Create an agriculture career pathway.
- Play hiring director for careers in carpentry.
- Hold a brainstorming session about working with babies.
- Play a round of Vet Tech Would you Rather?
- Experiment with a career as a food scientist.
- Spend a day in the life of a welding engineer.
Career Exploration For Students
What all is involved in career exploration for students?
To be honest, theres a lot to cover here.
You want to provide fun and engaging activities for topics like:
- Understanding Careers: The foundational blocks of understanding how a person earns money, having a job versus working on a career, how to develop your career, etc.
- Career Interest Assessments: Which careers intersect a childs natural abilities and a childs interests?
- Career Investigation: What does a day look like when holding down a job in one of those career fields that interests a student? Whats the salary like? This can include activities in the classroom, research, and also shadowing.
- Skill Identification and Development: What skills do they need to pursue a job that interests them? What level of education would they need?
- Understanding How to Get Hired: Things like interviews, creating a resume, job searches, etc. are critical for students to know how to do.
- Career Stepping Stones: What steps can the student take right now in order to set themselves just a few steps closer to getting into that career field , type of afterschool/weekend jobs)?
- Income and Paycheck Management: Discussing how to not only manage a paycheck from a real-job, but also how to manage your career so that your income more than matches current cost of living needs. Also, going over paycheck taxes, pay type , insurance, workplace retirement contributions, and other deductions.
Whew that list wasnt meant to overwhelm you.
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H3=high Skill +high Wage + High Demand
Grade
Career Standards
Career Standards
Career Research For Students
When students research a career, they need to look at it from several different angles before deciding if its possibly on their Career Hitlist.
Here are the different things to research for a career:
- Find Income information: Salary, or hourly pay? Whats the range? Do people have this as their only job, or do they need to supplement with a second job to make ends meet ?
- Ask People and Watch Interviews: Your student will want to make sure a day in the life of a potential profession is something theyd actually be interested in. Interviewing current employees in a profession, or even watching videos where professionals are interviewed can be really helpful.
- Find Shadow Opportunities: Students can go shadow a job within your school district, or with a family/friend. Or, they can take part in a Take Your Child to Work day at their parents/aunts employer.
Psst: Have you ever heard of CareerVillage? Students can ask career-related questions and get them answered by professionals, for free! Students of all ages are accepted, and theyll need to create an account to ask a question.
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Claim Your Future Game
Available as a classroom or online game, this resource has students develop awareness about career options through different scenarios. In addition to asking about future financial goals, students are given an average salary and have to make decisions about career paths.
Learn more: Claim Your Future
Career Exploration Planning Bundle From Carol Miller
Carol Miller is a well-known vendor on the Teachers Pay Teachers online marketplace.
Among her products, youll find a $32 bundle focused on career exploration and planning, which contains seven different resources:
- How Do I Become A Career Research and Planning Lesson
- Discovering Ourselves — The Career Exploration Process
- Where Do I Work With A Career In That?
- College and Career Conversation Starters
- Draw It! Careers Edition Game
- College and Career Awareness Escape Room
- Careers In STEM Quiz Show
In total, these resources can help you fill between 5 to 10 classes, depending on how much time you allow for each hands-on activity.
As a result, this bundle is a great way to both introduce career exploration and reinforce the information through engaging activities and games.
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How Do I Learn
This activity reviews the three types of learning styles. Read the Visual Learner sheet and circle all traits that apply to you. Then read the Auditory Learner sheet and circle all that apply to you. Finally, read the Tactile Learner sheet and circle all that apply to you. Count the circles on each sheet and write the number of the bottom of each page. Which learning style has the highest number on the bottom of the page? Does it match the result of the previous learning style activity?
The Visual Learner
The Visual Learner learns through seeing…
These learners can either process information randomly or absorb what unfolds in sequence before their eyes. They need to see the teachers body language and facial expression to fully understand the content of a lesson. They tend to prefer sitting at the front of the classroom to avoid visual obstructions .
DO yOU
Career Exploration Lesson Plans
Free Career Exploration Lesson Plans
Yay, I finally posted my Career Exploration Packet on TPT! This has been a loooong time coming. These activities were created and used in my classes over a month ago but have since been collecting cyber dust in my iCloud waiting for a final polish:) Well, thanks to 10+ hours of flying last week , the polishing is complete:)
Now that the packet is up and running, I wanted to talk about why I was compelled to create these lessonsAs you know, the career you choose is one of the most important decisions in life. Your career plays a highly influential role in your health and happiness – it can give you a purpose, be a great source of great stress, provide financial security, connect you to a social network, and so much more.
For these reasons preparing students for their future should be one of the core objectives of our educational system. However, even though we know this is how it should be, I honestly dont felt like we have been doing a stellar job at achieving this objective.
For these lessons, the first step of instruction was to refresh students on the dimensions of health and the definition of Occupational Health.
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Career Activities For Middle School Students
June 23, 2022// by Shelley Uselman
If the question “what do you want to be when you grow up” leads to blank stares, then you’re in the right place! Middle school students are just beginning to recognize that they have a place in the world. Help them explore their potential through fun career activities!
These 20 middle school activities will help your students develop their own identities as they explore career choices. Many of the jobs they will have in the future are in fields that don’t yet exist make sure to focus on building essential skills alongside career research.
Take Your Child To Work Day
Originally designed as “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” to introduce more girls into the workforce, this annual event has evolved into an opportunity for all kids to experience what their parents or caregivers do on a day-to-day basis at work. This website covers one professional’s experience with this day, and also includes resources for those who work from home but still want to participate!
Learn more: Money Prodigy
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Career Day At Pixie Academy
While targeting elementary grades, this reading activity does a fantastic job of exploring how we can individually contribute to our community through the variety of jobs we have. This activity would work for 6th grade, or older middle school students could be paired with younger students.
Learn more: Common Lit
How To Research Income Information
While it used to be difficult to figure out income averages for a career or job type, its quite simple nowadays thanks to some seriously great, free, resources provided by the Department of Labor.
Heres a one-stop salary finder, where you enter the occupation and your location to get an idea of the average pay.
It also offers a listing of professions, so students can click around by career cluster and just explore.
Psst: another important thing to make students aware of through research? Are career projections. In other words, is an industry or job path they want to pursue growing, or are the jobs getting scarcer? Heres a great resource from Workforce Solutions that shares percentages for various careers.
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Auction Adventures Auctioneer Career Game For Kids
Suggested Age Range: Grades 3-5
Being paid by commission is wayyyyy different than getting a salary . You have to actually sell something to make any money!
This game has your students calculate their commission rates while, at the same time, learning about how auctioneers work in a variety of different places.
Here’s a set of worksheets to go along with this game.
Like it or not, the gig economy where people are not full employees of companies, but still accept gigs from them and earn a small or substantial amount of money on the side, seems to be here to stay.
So, kids should understand how this can fit into their career and money plans!
The Uber Game gives your teen a scenario, such as they have a $1,000 mortgage payment due in a week, and then asks them to try and earn enough money through accepting gigs in order to pay that bill.
Can they do it? Is it hard or easy? Can they sustain themselves on a gig job?
Psst: Youll want to check out my 31 free personal finance homeschool curriculum, as some of the resources also have free career resources.
Level Two: Career Exploration Map
The level two worksheet focused on answering the level one questions for a specific career. In keeping with our first example, a possible answer could have been: As a graphic designer, I would spend most of my day sitting at a desk working at a computer. This would greatly reduce my daily physical activity.
Some students took the assignment a step further by customizing their poster to their desired career .
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Career Exploration Lessons For Sixth And Seventh Grades
Abstract
C are e r e x plorat ion l es s on s F o r s i x t h a n d s e v e n t h g r a d e s A SUPPLEMENT TO THE TEACHER’S GUIDE
In the newest education curriculum namely curriculum 2013, Indonesian government focuses on building good character for citizen in several aspects which covers religion, social, knowledge, and skill. In order to succeed the government mission to build a good character for the citizen, teachers and lecturers should integrate character building through learning process in the classroom. It can be done by creating a good atmosphere through teachers behavior change in the classroom so that the students can enjoy studying so that their good character can be developed. During the team conducted lesson study, self-confidence was chosen to be the main character which was developed. This study proposed to find out how students self-confidence can be enhanced through teachers behavior change on lesson study program for TEYL 1. The result of the study showed that the students self-confidence were enhancing due to the teachers behavior change.
Level Three: We’re Hiring Flyer
For the level three worksheet students conducted an in-depth review of the career they were most interested in. The worksheets also made great wall posters.
For each of the worksheets, it was necessary for students to recall information theyve learned in previous Health classes. When students were stuck, I encouraged them to take ownership of their learning and use the posters on my classroom wall + all of the connections from this Post It activity to guide help guide their learning.
To end the lesson, we regrouped and shared discoveries. This was my favorite part because I absolutely love hearing kids dream about their future. My only fear is that they stay dreams. Hopefully, lessons like this help my students better understand how to turn dreams into reality!
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Hello. I’m
A middle school health teacher turned curriculum developer . I’m on a mission to share the easiest-to-teach, most impactful health lesson plans on the Internet.Because your time and energy is better spent on teaching and connecting, not on planning and prep.
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Career Planning Lessons From Money Instructor
Money Instructor is a membership-based organization focused on helping students learn personal finance, business, career, and life skills.
When you register as a member, you gain access to dozens of resources on their site, including their content on career planning.
In total youll find 26 lessons across seven categories:
- Career Planning
