Sharing Camden Practice

Careers Event at Christ Church, NW3

Key Points

Develop a greater understanding of available career choices

Raise the children’s aspirations

Develop pupils’ knowledge of particular careers

Chance to interact with a range of professionals

Purpose

What were your reasons for doing this development work?

This event gave the children the opportunity to learn about a range of careers. It was a chance for them to further develop their understanding about the need for commitment, focus and drive so to enable them to gain experience and knowledge to move forward in their areas of interest.

They truly appreciated the opportunity to engage in a mature learning experience and to interact appropriately with a range of professionals.

Who were the identified target learners?

Our year 5 and 6 children along with a year 6 class from a local school who joined us for the morning. This is an event we hold every 2 years and due to this we feel it is important to include both year 5 and 6 so they all have this valuable opportunity.

What were your success criteria?

The primary aim was to allow the pupils to learn about some of the various opportunities available to them for the future. Speakers were asked to share their knowledge and experiences. The wide number of delegates provided an opportunity for the children to have a glimpse of the tremendous array of career opportunities open to them and help them to begin to understand the process of considering career choices.

What did you do? (What success criteria did you use?)

After a teaching session on career opportunities we asked the children which career paths they were interested in. Using this list, I contacted a range of local businesses and also sent a letter out to all the parents asking for their support.

Once all responses were returned I asked children to identify their selection through ranking – they were guaranteed one of their top three.

After allocating the children to four speakers the children were asked to write down appropriate questions to ask the professionals they were going to listen to.

I managed to secure a wide range of careers – 25 in total (Police, School Nurse, schools and teachers programme organiser at the British Library, Engineer, Finance, Vet, Estate Agent, Chef, Conservation, Programming, Radio Therapy, Managing Director, Conservator/Restorer, Psychiatrist, Art Director/ Designer, Facilities Manager, Fashion Buyer, Freelance journalist, Intellectual Property Barrister, Project Manager, Chef.

What specific teaching resources did you use?

The speakers arrived with a range of resources to support their sessions. They were given a free reign but visual prompts were encouraged. Many had prepared work on laptops/ PowerPoints along with actual objects to touch and use. The engineers, for example, set the children a problem-solving activity which really made them work together and they were fully absorbed in the session.

Outcomes and Impact

What has been the impact on pupil learning and teaching?

The children thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They were confident to ask questions and listened to answers attentively. It stimulated their thinking and made them look at the wider picture. It is easy to become influenced by those adults around you and what they do, this was an opportunity to find out about the unknown. The children shared what they had learnt with their peers This gave others the opportunity to hear about careers they had not been selected for during the careers morning,

 

There were many positive comments from the children in their feedback forms which clearly showed their appreciation of the opportunities the Careers Morning created:

It was fascinating.

It was inspirational.

I enjoyed the participation and interactive activities.

I learnt about some very interesting jobs.

I met lots of people with interesting careers.

There are loads of opportunities ahead of me.

I had a taste of the interesting things that others do.

I enjoyed it because it gave me an opportunity to learn about jobs I didn’t know even existed.

I enjoyed learning about all the different parts of the job.