Integrating Career Planning into Alberta's Grade 1 Curriculum: A Career Planning Unit and the Results

After completing the unit, students were given a three-page summative evaluation form. The teacher worked with small groups of students to complete the form. The first section asked students to indicate which activities they participated in. For the second section, students rated each activity by colouring in one of three faces indicating that the activity was "not good at all," "good" or "great." They were also asked if the unit helped them learn a lot about themselves and careers. Finally, students were asked whether the unit made them excited about what they could do with their lives and whether it made them want to learn more about various careers. The responses were analyzed, and they assisted in determining how helpful the students felt the learning activities were and what areas could be improved upon. The following tables summarize the results. As can be observed in Table 3, on average 94 per cent of the students agreed with the objectives of this unit. Therefore, it would be accurate to state that this unit helped students learn more about themselves and various careers, that it made them excited about what they can do with their lives and that it made them want to learn more about different careers. All the students agreed with the statements "This unit plan helped me to learn a lot about myself' and "This unit plan made me excited about what I could do with my life." As for the statement 'This unit plan helped me to learn a lot about careers," three students answered "I'm not sure." Therefore, in the future it may be a good idea to go into more detail about different careers, perhaps by bringing in more guest speakers or taking the class on more field trips.