Summary
This 8th-grade campus visit activity will complement a student tour of a college or career tech campus to learn about postsecondary options. Students will participate in a learning activity to explore their interests, career clusters, and postsecondary opportunities to prepare for various careers. The campus visit activity will help students and administrators set expectations for students to meet Oklahoma’s Academic Standards of being college, career, and citizenship-ready.
Essential Questions
How can looking into personal interests and career groups help someone plan for postsecondary education and get the job they want?
What types of education are needed for different types of careers?
Learning Goals
Relate personal interests with careers
Discuss postsecondary options that could help them get the job/career that they want
Snapshot
Engage
Students use a Mental Time Travel to imagine themselves in 10 years and envision their future self.
Explore
Students take the Career Interest Survey to determine the top three careers they align with. Students will then use the Carousel strategy to visit their top three careers and brainstorm jobs that fall under those specific categories.
Explain
Students use the Card Sort strategy to match careers with the education requirements.
Extend
Students return to the jobs they brainstormed on the Career Posters and sort them into groups based on education requirements. Students will then select one career that matches their interest and research more about the job.
Evaluate
Students reflect on their learning by answering questions on an Exit Ticket.
Materials List
Activity Slides (attached)
Career Interest Survey (attached; one per student)
Career Interest Survey Facilitator’s Guide (attached, one per facilitator)
Career Posters (attached; 1-2 sets)
Card Sort Career Cards (attached; one per group of 2-3)
Card Sort Graphic organizer (attached; one per group of 2-3)
Exit Ticket (attached; 1/2 per student)
Sticky Notes
Laptop or Tablet (one per student)
Engage
Use the attached Activity Slides to guide the activity. Begin with slide 2 to introduce this activity to students. Welcome students and let them know that this session presents an exciting opportunity to visit a college campus and gain valuable insights about the various degrees and career goals associated with college, as well as other postsecondary education (PSE) options.
Transition to slide 3, titled "Housekeeping: Norms," and discuss the list of expectations for the visit with students:
Keep cell phones on silent.
Behave like a guest—represent your school well.
Leave campus as clean as it was when you arrived.
Stay engaged in all activities.
Ask related questions.
Follow all instructions.
Stay with your group.
Move to slide 4 and briefly discuss the activity objectives with students.
Go to slide 5: Mental Time Travel
Ask students to imagine themselves in 10 years, using the questions on the slide as prompts. They should imagine what job they would like to have, where they will live, and what things they do for fun. Solicit a few responses from the group before moving on.
Tell students that what they are imagining is called their future self.
Explore
Move to slide 6 and introduce students to the Career Interest Survey handout. Distribute the surveys and ask students to spend 10 minutes working independently to complete the survey and identify their top three scoring boxes. When students are finished, walk around and help them with the scoring boxes as needed.
Move to slide 7 and present the Carousel strategy. The students will get up and move to stand by the numbered poster that corresponds to the highest-scoring box on their interest survey. Have a copy of the Career Interest Survey Facilitator’s Guide so you can navigate students to the correct poster. Once all students are standing at the posters, ask them to read the career category and definition to themselves (or they can select a representative from the group to read it aloud). Next, students should brainstorm jobs that fit into the career and add those jobs on sticky notes next to the poster.
Transition to slide 8. Ask students to move to the poster that corresponds to the second-highest-scoring box on their survey. Give them 2 minutes to read the definition, brainstorm, and add jobs to the poster.
Move on to slide 9. Ask students to rotate one final time to the poster that corresponds to their third-highest-scoring box from their survey. They should have 2 minutes to read the definition and add any other related jobs.
Once students have completed the Carousel, ask them to return to their original seats.
Transition to slide 10. Introduce the essential questions:
How can looking into personal interests and career groups help someone plan for postsecondary education and get the job they want?
What types of education are needed for different types of careers?
Ask students to keep these questions in mind throughout the next activities.
Explain
Many opportunities after high school can lead to a good job and a fulfilling career. Ask the students to think of what they could do after high school that might help them get the job they want.
Go to slide 11 to confirm and/or supplement the student responses for postsecondary education:
technical training/career tech
two-year community college
four-year college or university
Review the kind of training certificate or degrees you can get at postsecondary institutions and ask the students to share examples of 2-year colleges, 4-year universities, and career techs if they know of any.
Since the careers or jobs that match their interests may have different postsecondary education requirements, transition to slide 12 to introduce the Card Sort strategy. Divide students into groups of 2–3. Pass out the Card Sort Graphic Organizer handout and each set of the Card Sort Career Cards (one per group). Invite students to consider each job represented on the Career Cards and match it to the appropriate category on the Card Sort Graphic Organizer (career tech, 2-year degree, or 4-year degree). What kind of postsecondary education is required to do these kinds of jobs?
Allow 4 minutes for students to organize the career cards.
Now, transition to slide 13 to reveal the Card Sort answers for occupations and career in the "Career Tech" category.
Aviation Mechanic- Supply Chain and Transportation
Real Estate Agent- Financial Services
Pastry Chef- Hospitality
Nail Tech- Health and Human Services
Repeat this process with slide 14 discussing 2-year degrees.
Paramedic- Public Service and Safety
Drone Pilot - Digital Technology
Social Media Marketer - Marketing
Radiologist - Health and Human Services
Move to slide 15 and repeat the process with 4-year degrees.
Park Ranger- Energy and Natural Resources
ASL Interpreter- Education
Veterinarian - Agriculture
Interior Designer - Construction
After revealing these answers, ask students whether they were surprised by any of the answers or if anything about the categories stood out to them.
Extend
Move to slide 17 and have students return to the poster from their highest-scoring career interest survey. The group at the poster should try to sort the suggested jobs they recorded on the sticky notes into categories based on the training/education required: Career Tech, 2-year College, 4-year University. Provide each group with three more sticky notes to create category headings for Career Tech, 2-year College, and 4-year University.
Once students have completed sorting their careers, move on to slide 18. Have each student choose a job from the grouping to research more about. While researching have them focus on the following questions:
Were they correct about the education required?
What are some Postsecondary Institution options to get that training near where they live, or in the state where they live?
Explain to students that postsecondary institutions are the places or locations where they attend for training and degrees.
Evaluate
Transition to slide 19 and introduce students to the Exit Ticket strategy. Pass out an Exit Ticket and a pencil/pen to each student. Ask students to reflect on the following.
1. Based on the interest survey and the career posters, do you have ideas about future careers that interest you? Describe.
2. What are you currently doing that is helping you prepare for your life after high school?
3. What are you not doing that you think would help?
Research Rationale
Acquiring knowledge about educational requirements for various careers helps students align their career aspirations with ideas about postsecondary education, which increases educational attainment (Perry et al., 2016). This is important because college can be a life-altering experience for students. For example, earning a bachelor's degree will allow students to earn, on average, $1 million more than high school graduates over the course of their careers (Starrett et al., 2022). College also offers students an opportunity to build relationships with mentors and peers that will benefit them throughout their careers (D’Agostino, 2022). College graduates tend to have more job satisfaction, jobs that offer a greater sense of accomplishment, more independence and opportunities for creativity, and more social interactions in their jobs than non-college graduates (Wolniak & Engberg, 2019). Additionally, college graduation increases the chances of employment. Over the last 20 years, the unemployment rate for college graduates has been approximately half that of high school graduates (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022). Postsecondary education helps students develop skills that prepare them for careers in the tech-driven economy, including nonroutine, abstract skills that aid in problem-solving, multitasking, and creativity (Reynolds, 2021).
Resources
K20 Center. (n.d.). Card Sort. Strategies. Retrieved from https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/147
K20 Center. (n.d.). Gallery Walk/Carousel. Strategies. Retrieved from
K20 Center. (n.d.). Exit Ticket. Strategies. Retrieved from https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/125
K20 Center. (2021, September 21). K20 Center 2 minute timer [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcEEAnwOt2c
K20 Center. (2021, September 21). K20 Center 4 minute timer [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpCsfuvzQeY
K20 Center. (2021, September 21). K20 Center 10 minute timer [Video]. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gy-1Z2Sa-c