Content Area: Career Education and Consumer, Family, and Life Skills

 

Index: 9.2A Grade 8 CPI 3

 

Standard: 9.2 - Consumer, Family, and Life Skills

 

Strand: A - Critical Thinking

 

Cumulative Progress Indicator: 3 -  The student will identify and assess problems that interfere with attaining goals

 

Grade: 8

 

Sample Activities:

 

·       A public relations firm has been hired to develop and produce a documentary alerting young adults to the need for fiscal responsibility when using credit cards. As an employee, you have been asked to develop a five-minute demo for the client.

 

·       Mr./Ms. Z's company has decided to relocate the employee and the family overseas. The employment opportunities exist in Australia, Brazil, China, Kenya, and Switzerland. Your family must make the decision as to the country of preference with a backup alternative. Provide a justification to the human resource department. Be prepared to negotiate a contract that meets career, financial, and personal needs.

 

·       Although New Jersey is well known as the Garden State, it certainly could be recognized as the Invention State. We now live in an increasing complex "global society" with demands for increased invention, design, and manufacturing to make people's lives and work more productive while meeting personal and family needs.

 

·       Buy Me That

 

·       Values are basic beliefs and feelings an individual holds in deep respect.  They are the ideas on which people act, something he/she expressed as consistent behavior.  Complete these work sheets.  After completing, students rank order from high to low, the five items most important to them.  Teachers collect list.  Give back after one week.  Has the order changed for the students?  Why or why not?  Are there values that are consistent throughout life?  What role does society, family, peers, and resources have on values?

 

·       Students discuss the purposes of setting goals.  Divide class into four or more teams.  Each team has a road map of the area.  Using the map, students identify as many ways as possible to get from one selected stop to another.  Compare team strategies.  Compare finding ways to get to a location to goal setting.  What is the most effective way to reach a goal.  Is it always the quickest way?  Is there more than one correct way of reaching a goal?  What were obstacles to getting to site location?  What obstacles are there to reaching one's goals?

 

·       Develop short and long term career goals. Write objectives that will help a person to achieve these goals. Discuss with the students the importance of understanding themselves when developing personal goals. Direct students to go to the www.goventure.net web site and complete the self evaluation. Once the students have completed this evaluation they may print it out. Students should then compare their self evaluation to their goals to determine if they are compatible.

 

·      FBLA, offers middle school students the opportunity to apply this indicator in several of its competitive events. The Middle Level Achievement Program gives students the opportunity to set personal goals based upon the criteria given for the level chosen by the student. Once the level has been chosen, the student then will choose the activities that he/she will complete in order to reach his/her goal (level of achievement). Guidelines for these can be found at its website, www.fbla-pbl.org.

 

·       THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE: Initiate a student discussion with these questions: “Close your eyes and imagine where you might be 5, 10, and 20 years from now. Do you see yourself happy? successful? having fun? What do you think what might happen if you start using drugs? How might your life be different?” To focus on the possible effects of the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs during one’s life, students create an upside-down book. One side of the book—the positive, self-affirming side— contains self-portraits, drawings, poems, or descriptions of how the student envisions himself/herself at various stages of a drug-free life cycle. The other side of the book contains similar drawings, this time showing how life might be different if the individual used alcohol, tobacco, and/or other drugs. After the books are completed, students exchange books with a classmate. In pairs, students discuss the books. Reconvene the entire class and summarize the potential effects of substance use.

 

·       OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES: The use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs can be a major obstacle that interferes with many opportunities. This activity encourages students to think about the future and imagine the positive and negative things that might happen. Draw a time line on the chalkboard. Give each student several index cards with various life events written on them—some positive and some negative (e.g., illness, loss of job, death in family, inheritance, vacation, childbirth). Each student places a card along the time line (at a spot they think is “typical” or common) and discusses the impact of the event in the person’s life. After all the cards have been placed, discuss the placement of the life events. Then ask students to think about where they want to be and what they want to be 20 years from now and how that might change if they begin using alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. Students write three things that they can do now and during high school to reach personal goals, overcome obstacles, and grab opportunities.

Variation: Design a board game similar to “Life”, where students must meet various obstacles while performing life tasks. Use the game as a springboard for discussion on real-life obstacles and opportunities.

 

 

·       Students use a graphic organizer to show what you might be doing at each time sequence.

 

    1) Next week

    2) 3 months

    3) 6 months

    4) 1 year

    5) 3 years

    6) 5 years

    7) 10 years