A Lesson Plan on Career Planning: Great Lesson Idea for School Guidance Counseling

A Lesson Plan on Career Planning: Great Lesson Idea for School Guidance Counseling
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Finding a Job

Ask children to bring in the classifieds section of a daily newspaper with the job listings on it. Have children bring in as many as they are able to in case there are some children who do not have access to a newspaper. Job adverts can also be found on internet and printed out if necessary. During the first part of the lesson ask children to browse through their classified adverts and find a job offer that interests them. Stress that they do not have to know everything about the profession they choose but that they must have a vague idea of what it means to be a nurse, teacher, driver etc.

Once children have found a job offer they must extract the following information:

  • If you get this job what will you be?
  • Who will be hiring you?
  • How much will you be paid?
  • Do you need to have previous work experience or are beginners accepted?
  • What level of education do you need?
  • Why are you interested in this job?

Let students know that if they cannot find all the information they need to answer these questions in their advert they should not worry as the class will be taking a trip to the library to find out more about the chosen careers.

Career Information

A school library or local library will have children’s books on careers or choosing a career. Ask children to have a look through the books in this section and find the career they have chosen from the newspaper. Help them to answer the above six questions on their chosen career and to jot down any other interesting information they can find.

Most children will have chosen the same popular types of jobs. Depending on the age of your students, boys tend to want to be police officers, soldiers, firemen, train-drivers, pilots and doctors. Girls lean more towards being teachers, nurses, cooks, lawyers, singers or taking care of children and animals. However, in this day and age many stereotypical roles have fallen away so be careful not to play out stereotypical roles for children by telling girls that they cannot be soldiers or boys that they cannot be nurses.

Conclusion

Once children have found the information they are looking for at the library they can return to their classroom and hand in their answers to the six career questions. Ask students to come up to the front of the class to give a short presentation on their chosen career and the information they have found out concerning it. Children who have made the same choice may present their information as a group while others do so on their own.

If you have access to internet in your classroom then divide the class up into groups and let them log on to internet. The following careers quiz is a fun conclusion to this careers awareness lesson. There are eight possible careers for several different personality types. Stress to students that the quiz is just for fun as there is always the chance that one of the children will end up with the criminal personality type.

There are many roles for a guidance counselor and many different types of guidance counselor lesson plans on careers and orientation. This lesson plan involves children from the start, is fun and allows them to use real-life materials to learn about different careers.