Researching A Career, Author(s): Paul J Cavano, Grade Level: 7, Subject Area: English, Have students take out a sheet of paper and write what kind of job or career they would like to be doing ten years from now. Inform students of their upcoming participation and attendance at the countywide Career Awareness Day or our local district's career fair. Hold discussion of what things one should consider before taking a job or choosing a career.

Researching A Career

* Madison-Oneida BOCES- This document may not be reproduced in any form without the expressed written consent of the District Superintendent or hisdesignee

LU Title: Researching and Writing a Career Report	Author(s): Paul J Cavano
Grade Level: 7	School Address: Poland Central School, 74 Cold Brook Street, Poland, NY13431
Subject Area: English	School Phone/Fax:(315)826-7900

CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

Declarative	Procedural
Careers - students will be able to understand some of considerations to be made when choosing a career or job, what the career or job involves and what background is needed to secure a position in that career.	Researching - students will read and listen to the ideas of others as a way of gaining information.
	Decision-making - students will decide what careers to explore and what aspects of the career are personally important.
	Reporting - Students will be able to write a report as means of organizing and communicating information.
	Communication Skills- oral, written and reading.

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What is the career?
What is the occupational cluster in the career is in?
If you are interviewing or listening to a speaker

Who is presenting the information?
What is the person's normal job?
Where does the person work?
How long has he worked there?
What does the person think are some of the advantages of the job?
What does the person think are some of the disadvantages of the
job?
What kind of skills is needed and useful for this job?

Questions for any source

What is the nature of the work involved in the career field?
What are the typical working conditions of this career or occupation?
Where these jobs are available?
Who might employ people in this occupation?
What training, qualifications and education are needed to become employed in this occupation?
What is the job outlook of this occupation?
What is the starting pay and entry level position for this career?
What are the earnings and job advancements that may be available in this occupation?
What you think you would like the most about the job?
What you think you would like the least about the job?
What is the most interesting and surprising thing you found out about this job?
If you had to choose today, which job or occupation you would pick?
Why would you pick this job?

INITIATING ACTIVITY

Have students take out a sheet of paper and write what kind of job or career they would like to be doing ten years from now. Inform students of their upcoming participation and attendance at the countywide Career Awareness Day or our local district's career fair. Hold discussion of what things one should consider before taking a job or choosing a career.

Connection to State Learning Standards

Content Area: English Language Arts

Level: Intermediate

Benchmarks: Students will read the ideas of others as a way of gaining information and understanding and will analyze what they have read. Students will demonstrate these skills by following directions that involve a series of actions.
Students will acquire, use information and show relationships by generating and writing their independent understanding of the careers

Benchmarks: Students will usewriting has a way to communicateideas and organize information.

Students will demonstrate thisability by taking research notes andwriting a report.

Standard: Standard 1: Language for Information and Understanding Listening and Reading

Standard: Standard 1: Language for Information and Understanding. Speaking and Writing

Unit Theme:
What am I going to do when I get out of school? An explorationof career choices.

Standard: Career Development & Occupational Studies
Standard 1: Career Development

Standard: Mathematics, Science & Technology
Standard 2: Informational Systems.

Benchmarks: Students will be knowledgeable about the world of work and explore career options

Benchmarks: Students will access, generate, process and transfer information using appropriate technologies

Learning Experiences

Declarative Knowledge

What declarative knowledge should e in the process of acquiring & integrating? As a result of the unit, the student will know or understand...	What experiences or activities will be used to help students acquire & integrate this knowledge?	What strategies will be used to help students construct meaning, organize and/or store the knowledge?	Describe what will be done.
some of considerations to be made when choosing a career or job, what the career or job involve and what background is needed to secure a position in that career.	Students will participate and attend either the countywide Career Awareness Day or our local district's Career Fair.	Brainstorm the kind of things a person should know about taking a job.	Students will be placed in small groups to brainstorm some of the things a person should know about taking a job or choosing a career.
	Students will listen to a presentation and/or engage in a Q & A with a person having actual experience in a	Lecture/Discussion about career clusters and the meaning of some career terms: starting pay pay advancement benefits job advancement	Groups will share information with the rest of the class.
			Teacher wills explain/discuss the meaning of career field career clusters, starting pay, benefits and job advancement.

Learning Experiences

Procedural Knowledge

What procedural knowledge will students be in the process of acquiring & integrating? As a result of this unit, students will be able to:

What will be done to help students construct models, shape & internalize the knowledge?

write a report giving information they gathered on different three careers and using this information to decide on a career that they might pursue in the future.

Accessing the web site: Go to the home page of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://stats.bls.gov
Select the Publications and Research Papers link. Select the Occupational Outlook Handbook link

Then

select the Perform a Keyword Search on the Handbook link

Use this link if you have a specific job or occupation that you want to research

select Use the Index to the Handbook link,
Use this link to find an alphabetical listing of occupations and jobs

select the Select From an Occupational Cluster link

Use this link to see the eleven different occupation clusters and the different kinds of jobs and occupations are in each cluster
From each of these three links you can link to a specific job or occupation that you are interested in exploring and researching

Starting the Research:

You can browse through any number of different jobs or occupations covered by this site. Eventually, you need to decide on three to do your report on. Read the information provided for these specific jobs or occupations and take notes that will provide the information you will need for your report. Make sure your notes provide enough information to cover all the areas described

Describe what will be done

Students will write a report that they could present to fellow7th grade students on what they have learned about in THREE different occupations or jobs of your choice.
For each career
Students will give the occupational cluster to which this job or belongs. Students will provide specific information that explains the nature of the work, the typical working conditions of the occupation, where these jobs are available or who might employ people in this occupation, what training, qualifications and education are needed to become employed in this occupation, the job outlook in this occupation and the earnings and job advancements that may be available in this occupation.
Students will express their own personal opinions concerning these occupations.
Students will include the most interesting and surprising thing that they found out, what they think they would like most about the job, and what they think you would like least about the job.
Students will imagine that if they had to choose on a career today, which job or occupation they would pick and why.

Learning Experiences

Extending and Refining

What knowledge will students be extending and refining? Specifically, they will be extending and refining their understanding of:

What reasoning process will they be using?

writing for information understanding and evaluation.

Comparing

Classifying

Inductive Reasoning

Deductive Reasoning

Error Analysis

Analyzing Perspectives

Constructing Support

Abstracting

Other:

Describe what will be done.

* Organizing the report:

In your 1st paragraph (the introduction to the report) you need to:

restate all the background information provided in the directions, situation and task.
indicate the three jobs/occupations you have chosen
explain in detail why you have picked these jobs/occupations
include a sense of audience

In your 2nd paragraph you need to:

report all the information in the notes that you collected in your 1st job/occupation
explain what was the most interesting or surprising thing that you found out about the job/occupation
explain what you think you would like the most about the job/occupation
explain what you think you would like the least about the job/occupation
In your 3rd paragraph you need to:
report all the information in the notes that you collected in your 2nd job/occupation
explain what was the most interesting or surprising thing that you found out about the job/occupation
explain what you think you would like the most about the job/occupation
explain what you think you would like the least about the job/occupation

In your 4th paragraph you need to:

report all the information in the notes that you collected in your 3rd job/occupation
explain what was the most interesting or surprising thing that you found out about the job/occupation
explain what you think you would like the most about the job/occupation
explain what you think you would like the least about the job/occupation
In your 5th paragraph you need to:
decide which of the three jobs/occupations you would most like to get a job in
explain in detail why you picked this job over the other ones
explain what you think you will have to do to actually get this job/occupation in the future

In your 6th and last paragraph (the conclusion of the report) you need to write a summary that has:

an appropriate closing and reviews what you wrote in the rest of the report
Remember to make sure your report is well organized, has good complete sentences and contains no spelling or writing errors.
Remember the report must be written in your own words. You cannot just copy the information as is given on the Web site.

Planning Guide Unit : Researching Careers

Step 1	Step 2	Step 3
What knowledge will students be using meaningfully? Specifically, they will be demonstrating their understanding of and ability to…	What reasoning process will they be using?	Describe student's products and performances and the criteria for evaluation.
	[X ] Decision Making (selecting from seemingly equal alternatives or examining the decisions of others) [ ] Problem Solving (seeking to achieve a goal by overcoming constraints or limiting conditions) [ ] Invention (creating something to meet a need or improve on a situation) [ ] Experimental Inquiry (generating an explanation for a phenomenon and testing the explanation) [X ] Investigation (resolving confusions or contradictions related to a historical event, a hypothetical past or future event, or to the defining characteristics of something) [ ] Systems Analysis (analyzing the parts of a system and how they interact) [ ] Other:	Products/Performances

Rubric: Grading Rubric for written report

I use 4 point grading rubric to assess student writing.

The final grade is determined by dividing the total sum of the rubric scores by 80.
A 4 means the student has demonstrated an accomplished degree of writing
Student's writing is extremely well developed and nearly error free
A 3 means the student has demonstrated a proficient degree of writing
Student's writing is developed and has few errors or omissions
A 2 means the student has demonstrated a developing degree of writing
Student's writing is somewhat developed and a number of errors and/or omissions are evident
A 1 means the student has demonstrated an beginning degree of writing
Student's writing is underdeveloped and contains numerous errors that impede reading and understanding
A 0 means the student has demonstrated a degree of writing that is totally incorrect, irrelevant or incoherent
A NA means the category is not applicable to the assignment/task or for individual student
The students' reports are evaluated in 20 different categories or areas.

INTRODUCTION

______ Establishes purpose / focus

______ Shows awareness of the audience

______ Contains all necessary background information

WRITING CONTENT

______ Meets the purpose of task

______ Has sufficient supporting information

______ Contains pertinent details for topic / task

______ Shows development of ideas

______ Uses appropriate language for the task / audience

______ Produces reader satisfaction

WRITING ORGANIZATION

______ Writing shows logical or thoughtful organization

______ Maintains the focus of the task

______ Paragraphs have an appropriate opening / clear purpose

______ Paragraphs focus on a single main idea and have related sentences

______ Appropriate transition and connecting words are used

CONCLUSION

______ Has an appropriate closing statement

______ Contains sufficient review, summary or paraphrasing of main ideas

WRITING GRAMMAR / MECHANICS / USAGE

______ Uses proper paragraph and sentence structure

______ Uses proper grammar and usage

______ Uses correct punctuation, capitalization, indentation and spacing

______ Uses correct spelling

Rubric: Rubric for accessing the web site

	Element #1	Element #2
Elements	Accessing the web site	Navigation through the web site
Weights	1	2
4	Student accessed the web site independently and without any assistance	Student is able to navigate through the web site independently and without help
3	Student needed some assistance to access the web site	Student needed some assistance to navigate through the web site
2	Student needed step by step assistance to access the web site	Student needed a great deal of assistance to navigate through the web site
1	Student refused to try	Student refused to try

NOTE: Rubric or other performance assessment instruments may be used.

Have You Considered These Yet?

Assessment Modifications: Instructional modifications depend on the needs and abilities of the individual students. This report can be modified for students in three areas.

1. The expected performance level can be reduced or increased by changing the necessary amount of research and the length of the report. This can be accomplished by reducing the required number of jobs or occupations to be reported on from 3 to 2 or 1 or increasing the number of jobs or occupations.

2. The expected performance level can be reduced or increased by adjusting the components of the writing task. The expected performance level can be reduced by eliminating the introductory paragraph and/or concluding paragraph or by reducing the amount of information that the students need to gather about each job or occupation. Requiring more information and details about each job or occupation can increase the expected performance level.

3. The expected performance level can be adjusted by modifying the overall quality levels when grading. In others words, the performance level can be adjusted by modifying what constitutes accomplished, proficient, developing and beginning responses.

4. Finally, individual modifications can be made on the writing rubric by use of the NA (not applicable) notation. For example, if a student's IEP indicates that the student's score should not be lowered for incorrect use of grammar, I would mark NA in that category and then divide by 76 for the final grade.

Unit Schedule/Time Plan:

The amount of planning time will depend on the knowledge and level of the students. By the time I gave this assignment my students were already thoroughly familiar with the writing process and the grading rubric. My students also had previously completed work that introduced the writing of a report.

It takes approximately 1 and 1/2 hours of class time to present the task and demonstrate the use of the web site.

I spent approximately 20 minutes introducing the concept of researching a topic and giving some recommendations on how to take notes

Another 20 minutes was spent giving an overview of the assignment and directions with a detailed emphasis on the information that should be included in the report.

I also spend about 20 minutes discussing with students some of the terms and concerns that they might have when discussing careers. Terms like benefits and advancement and the different career clusters need to be introduced to the rade students.

Finally 20 minutes was spent giving a demonstration of how to access the site and how to maneuver through it. Students do most of the research outside of class time. I feel students should need at least an hour of time accessing the Web site. In addition there is the day that they go to the career fair or the career day.

I give the students a week to complete the research after the day of the career event (or after I show them how to use the web site) and another week for the writing process before the final due date. Written Overview:

This unit has successfully brought a new purpose to my student's participation in the different career days. They never really had much preparation or follow up to the career days and always wanted to know why they had to go and pay attention. This unit is a short term purpose...the report .... and begins to make them think about the future in more realistic ideas.