Integrating Career Awareness into the ABE/ESOL Classroom - SABES

L e s s o n 1
Reality Checking
Learning Objective
To help students make a good match between a desired occupation and their basic skills
Materials Needed
World-of-Work Map website at www.act.org/wwm/index.html, student test scores,
and/or samples of students’ math and reading skills from the class
Vocabulary
“making a match,” basic skills, skill level, data, occupational profile, majors, programs of study,
applied technology, applied mathematics, teamwork
SCANS Competencies
Information: Acquire and evaluate information; Interpret and communicate information
Thinking Skills: Decision making
Instructions for Conducting the Activity
Part of the career planning process is continually doing a “reality check” between an occupation in which a student is
interested and the student’s basic skills in math and reading. In Section III, Lesson 1, students had an opportunity to look
at career exploration websites. In this lesson, students will use the World-of-Work Map, to look more closely at the match
between their skills and an occupation.
Ask students to identify the 2–3 occupations that best fit their interests and needs based on previous occupational
exploration activities they have done. Then ask students to choose a sample of:
• Their best math work completed in the classroom
• Their best writing work completed in the classroom
• A reading passage that best reflects their most comfortable reading level
Now, there are two ways to continue this lesson.
1. Students can go to the World-of-Work Map website. Each student looks up their three occupations. For each occupation,
students look at the skill levels chart to identify the math, reading, and writing skills needed for each occupation. The
student can then compare his/her classroom samples to those listed.
2. Another way to approach the lesson is for you to print out examples from the World-of-Work Map website of 3–4 levels
of the math, reading, and writing skills. You can start with one skill, such as math, and distribute samples to the students.
Review the skill level standards with the students. Then each student can identify the level they think best matches their
current skills. The second part of the lesson for another day would be to have the students then look up occupations on
the website and compare their skill levels to what the occupation requires.
Extension Activity
You can develop activities in the class to help students measure their skill level in other skill areas noted for the occupational
profiles on the World-of-Work Map. The other skill areas include listening, locating information, observation, teamwork, and
applied technology.
Integrating Career Awareness into the ABE & ESOL Classroom | Section IV, Lesson 1: Reality Checking | 98