I had been wanting to do a career study with my fourth graders for years before the Career of the Week idea came to me. True, most upper-elementary kids don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. And they don’t need to! But I believe studying different careers can spark new interests, inspire new dreams, and also offer a kind of understanding towards people children encounter in their daily life by providing insight into what people in these different fields do and the challenges they might face.
But with all of the content we have to cover in all of the different subjects, I simply couldn’t devote the time needed to give students a good understanding of a wide range of careers. Then one day while lesson planning, the idea came to me that a career study doesn’t necessarily have to be separate from our core subjects. It could be part of it.
I started small. Each week, I would look at the texts we were reading, the science topics we were covering, and the people or events we were talking about in social studies. Then, I’d find a career that was related to one of these subjects. I’d print it out along with a photo of a famous or influential person who worked in this field and a few interesting facts, then display this on one of our bulletin boards for the week. It was by no means an in-depth exploration of the career, but it gave students a chance to learn about the job and discuss with their group whether or not they would want to work in that field, and why.
This is a quick, easy way to introduce students to new careers they might not know about, or give a little more information about careers they are already familiar with. But I still wanted to offer more, so I began making interactive notebook activities students could use to record the education, experience, and skills needed as well as the job responsibilities for each career. And instead of making a career study separate from the rest of the subjects, I decided to work it in! I created a short nonfiction reading passage with four multiple-choice comprehension questions about each career that can be completed as a quick reading assessment, a writing prompt students can respond to during ELAR time, a STEAM extension, and a quick quiz and reflection for the end of the week to wrap everything up. With each activity designed to take approximately 15 minutes, it gives the students a good understanding of so many different careers without taking a big chunk out of the day.
If you want to try it out with your class, each individual Career of the Week career study is available on our TpT store. And if you love it and want to make it a part of your weekly routine, I have them divided into 10-week bundles at a discount and also as a complete bundle!
There are 40 different careers in the set right now. We’ll likely add more one day, and we’re always up to suggestions if there’s a career missing that you think students would enjoy learning about!
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