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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum
Unit One – Make Your Dream a Reality – Chapter One Goals and Objectives: •
Establish a community of learners
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Examine personal goals and values
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Enhance team building skills
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Set expectations for: • Reading • Class participation/asking questions • Completing assignments
Reading and Comprehension Checkpoints: These questions are designed to help you facilitate a powerful in-class discussion based on student reading assignments.
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Q: What is a good basic question to ask when thinking about college and career? How would you answer this question or brainstorm to help find an answer? A: The question is, “What do I enjoy?” Examples of brainstorming would be journaling to gain insight and interviewing professionals
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Q: Name some of the 10 areas where it is important to set goals in life? Why is it beneficial to goal-set in these areas? A: Areas are personal, health, recreation, family, friends, community, career, financial, household and spiritual. It is beneficial because together, all of these areas will help develop a well-rounded scope of who you are.
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Q: What three elements does self-discovery involve? A: self-reflection, investigation and involvement
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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum
Powerful Coaching Questions for Chapter Review: Use to initiate discussion after the chapter is read and activities from the book are completed. 1. What are some of your favorite ways to spend free time? After you come up with a few, see if you can generate career opportunities that align with the way you like to spend your time (i.e. like to doodle – graphic artists, logo designer, etc; video games – special effects producer at Industrial, Light and Magic, etc). 2. What do you think our culture values the most? Why? What behavior reflects these values? Do you hold these same values? 3. Why do you think it is important to take time to reflect on what you like to do, what your values are and the dreams you have for your life? 4. We spend a lot of time pondering what we want to accomplish for ourselves, but what do you want to do for someone else?
Journal Topics: Below are topics from Sophomore Guide to College and Career to be used for student journaling. The objective here is for the students to write as freely and openly as possible. It is not about punctuation, grammar and style. 1. Write about someone you personally know who has made their dream a reality? What did they do? What obstacles did they overcome? How is their life different now than it was before? 2. What are your family’s attitudes around money? Is there enough of it? Does money create stress for your family? How are your attitudes about finances related to your upbringing? 3. Write about a time when you quit something. Were you happy to quit or do you regret quitting? 4. When you were little and people asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, what did you say? Do you still have the same dreams? If not, how have they changed?
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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum
EXPLORATORY Activities: These activities can be used for cursory exploration and to expand upon chapter content. 1. Making Connections Benefits: • Students get to know one another • Students get up and move • Students make connections Materials needed: None This activity is a fun and easy way for you and the students to get to know one another. Begin by moving the desks to the side so that there is ample space to move about the classroom. Call out a category from the list below. For example, the category is color of hair. All students with brown hair gather together, while students with blond, red, black and “other” gather together in their respective groups. Once students are in their groups, have them each say their name to the others so that they all are introduced to one another. Then call out a second category and so on. Keep moving so that the students gather, meet and quickly move on to another grouping. The activity works best if you begin with basic categories and move to more complicated groupings. Below is a list of possible categories: Color of hair State/country of birth Number of siblings
Favorite type of music Favorite genre of books Favorite food/movie/color
After several of these simpler categories, move into more complex groupings: Desire to live outside of the U.S. Agreement/disagreement with minimum wage laws Belief/disbelief that global warming is a major world problem Belief/disbelief that all people should have access to education, etc. Add categories that are relevant to your students. To Further Learning After you have played the game for a while, have students gather to debrief. Then ask students to generate categories while you keep a list on the chalkboard. Play the game again with student generated categories.
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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum
2. Brainstorming Possibilities Benefits: • Look at life from a variety of perspectives • Generate goals and visions for multiple areas • Create a visual model to see areas in life that might need more attention Materials needed: Handout #1 Distribute Handout #1. Review the ten categories for goal setting from the book (pages 11 – 14). Begin with one category and ask the students to brainstorm as many goals as possible for themselves in this specific area. They don’t have to commit to these goals at this time. The purpose of this activity is to simply generate possibilities. Give students ample time before moving to the second category. Ask them not to move ahead. They may come up with goals in specific areas that they’ve never thought about in the past. Once students have completed all 10 categories, initiate a discussion by asking: • • • • •
Which categories were easier to list goals? Which more difficult? Did you come up with a goal or dream that you’ve never considered before? Is your wheel balanced? If not, why do you think you have more emphasis in one area over another? (Remind them there are no right or wrong answers here, just observations.) Do some of the goals inspire them, while some relate to duty or obligation? How does it feel to be inspired by a goal?
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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum
RIGOR AND RELEVANCE Activities: These activities encourage students to further explore textbook concepts while facilitating more in-depth classroom discussion. 1. Standing for Your Values Benefits: • Evaluate beliefs and values • Take a stand on various issues • Keep students moving about classroom • Prompt discussions of world problems Materials needed: None Divide the room into two sections. Read the first scenario from the list below. Ask each student to decide on one of the two courses of action in response to the scenario. Students then move to the area in the classroom designated for their response. Have students share why they choose to stand where they do. Finish by reading through the remaining scenarios in a similar manner. •
You are in a class that is graded on a curve. You know that someone has cheated on the final exam, which affected the curve and made your grade lower. Do you report the person who cheated to the teacher?
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You are out on a date and you see your best friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend out with someone else. Do you tell your best friend?
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You are a politician and must decide whether the city’s excess revenues will be put towards an early learning program for children who do not speak English as their first language, thereby helping them perform better once they are in school. Or you can increase the number of elderly people who receive meals through a “meals on wheels” program.
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A fire truck responds to a call on a winding mountain road. They will be the only crew that makes it to the fire in time. They come to a fork in the road. If they go right they’ll be able to stop the fire from burning a library that holds volumes of original Shakespeare writings that do not exist anywhere else in the world, along with other original classic collections. If they go left they’ll be able to save a burning home (they are unsure if anyone is in the home). Which direction should they turn?
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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum •
You go to vote and the following education proposition is on the ballot: One choice is for all tenth graders to take a standardized test. Depending on their scores, they will either be sent to trade school to learn to be a mechanic, etc., or to a college preparatory high school. Proponents of this measure say that this type of system will free up resources currently spent on students who don’t want to be in a traditional high school. The money saved can be used to increase the quality of college preparatory education, while providing an education for other students to obtain a trade and earn a living. However, once the test in tenth grade is taken and the educational track is chosen students can’t change their course. The other choice on the ballot is to keep the education system as it is now, giving all students continued access to traditional high school and college preparatory classes but will not allow for enhancing the quality of this education.
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You direct a nonprofit agency and are giving a grant to a country in Africa. You can earmark the money for immunizing 300 children and feeding them for the next six months, saving them from malnutrition and disease. Or you can invest the money in a water treatment plant that will create a fresh water supply for three neighboring villages (600 people total) for five or more years.
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You have just sold your computer software company, making millions of dollars, and want to give back to the community. You are deciding between creating a program which gives money to young entrepreneurs to start innovative businesses with great likelihood for success or you’ll give your resources to the local food bank to increase the number of hungry people they serve.
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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum
2. Lights, Camera, Action! Benefits: Emphasize the importance of the class Allow for creativity Generate team building Materials needed: None Divide the class into groups of five. Ask students to create a short (2 – 3 minutes) commercial, advertising the benefits of this class. Suggest that they peruse the table of contents of their text for indicators of what will be covered over the term of the course. They can also go online to www.bls.gov (Bureau of Labor Statistics) to find interesting facts about the future work force. Other resources appear in the appendix at the back of the book. Encourage them to create jingles, costumes or whatever inspires them! Students then perform their commercials in front of the class. You may choose to videotape the commercials, as students may enjoy watching their own performances.
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Sophomore Guide to College and Career Curriculum
Handout #1 Brainstorming Possibilities