Career Ed
Gr 7 outcomes/indicators

Career Ed instruction begins during Gr 6. As students begin to enter their teens in Gr. 7, the program challenges them to consider life careers and the preparation for them. At this age, students are becoming better able to ask what if questions and predict their futures. I developed the metaphor of a three legged stool to help focus the program. The three legs are aptitudes, interests and opportunity. Our aptitudes are those areas where we more easily develop skills. Interests are those pursuits that are more likely to hold our attention. They will get us out of bed in the morning. Opportunity evaluates which career paths are more pragmatic. They make sense. There is little opportunity for blacksmiths however much it may be an interest.

Career Ed. will mostly be taught during the second and third terms. I will be using the time during the first term to build some essential PAA skills.

PAA

Practical and Applied Arts is a generally integrated set of activities focused on skills that support or enhance learning. Next year, during Gr. 8, PAA is more formalized. Students take weekly trips off site based on one of two options. This year, I will focus on two broad categories.

• Integration of technology. Students will learn how to use cloud storage for sharing and collaboration as well specific features of Microsoft tools including Word, PowerPoint and Excel. This school year, students will be required to produce polished written compositions using Word templates, deliver individual and group presentations using PowerPoint and build graphs using Excel. We may do some coding as well, time permitting. It teaches algorithmic thinking and it's actually quite fun.
• Television production. This winter, all students will participate in the Telemedia program producing both an interview and television commercial at our studio.

Note that all SPSD students have the right to up to five installs of the full MS Office suite for home use. I will walk students through the process.

PowerPoint creation activity - printable instructions