Career Ed is taught at varying times through the year. I use two broad unit activities for instruction. The first is a series of smaller activities learning about the nature of careers and connecting to an investigation of personal attributes. The second is a simulation activity that will take a couple of months to complete. That will occur in the spring. Look for detailed descriptions of topics and activities here as they occur in the classroom.
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. I plan to do some coding as well, time permitting. It teaches algorithmic thinking and it's actually quite fun. My hope is to improve mathematical thinking as a benefit.
- 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.