Careers Lesson Plans / KS3 - Professional Skills and Career Planning - 6 form time activities / Professional Skills and Career Planning short activities

Professional Skills Lessons - Introduction and Guidance

Each activity is designed to take around 20 minutes to complete, making them ideal for teaching during form time, or as part of a careers enrichment day. The activities are straightforward and effective, with no expert knowledge required on the part of the teacher.

The activities have been devised in collaboration with groups of key stage 4 students at four schools in Suffolk. Two of the schools were mainstream, two were special schools for young people with moderate to severe learning difficulties.

The challenge was for the students to help develop activities that would be suitable for younger students. Their invaluable contribution has meant that each activity involves some form of creative expression and demonstration of their learning, including role play, displays or presentations.

This diversity of approach was seen by the students to be an important part in any successful learning activity.

The first three activities focus on establishing career goals and working out how to achieve these:

Lesson 1: Establishing Goals – The Lifewrite The first activity invites pupils to complete a “lifewrite”, which is a statement that reflects where students see themselves in a few years to come. They are then asked to share and review their lifewrite, to consider how achievable their goals are.

Lesson 2: Reaching Goals – The Plan Referring back to the pupil’s “lifewrite” of the previous session, they are required to focus on how to reach one of their goals with the production of a mindmap. This will encourage pupils to consider various routes to their success, such as what skills and experience they may need to qualify.

Lesson 3: Clarifying Goals – Career Pathways This session relies on the homework of the previous task, which was to research a target work sector online. Pupils are asked to share what they found, and so build on their career research skills by being required to appropriate different sources for their chosen career.

The final three sessions seek to improve professional and interpersonal skills in a careers environment:

Lesson 4: Professional Skills – The Handshake Lesson 4 centres around the interactional handshake activity, which works on giving a positive first impression to potential employers. Both observing and carrying out handshakes between one another will refine any weaknesses and improve self-confidence.

Lesson 5: Professional Skills – Body Language This session focuses on the strong impact that body language can have, and how various types of behavior can be projected and read. With the use of a body language charades game, pupils will learn how to achieve positive self-portrayal.

Lesson 6: Professional Skills – The Interview The final session emphasizes the importance of interview preparation. On the basis of different job descriptions, pupils are asked to complete mind maps in groups. The aim is to establish both what the interviewer is looking for, and what they would want to ask the interviewer.