Hi ,
We hope you've enjoyed your well-earned break over the summer holidays and are rested and recharged for the new academic year ahead!
This year we're looking to pour even more of our creativity into career learning - with a particular focus on creating more careers games and other interactive activities to bring the world of work to life.
So for our first addition to the Resource Bank for the new year, we're delighted to introduce...
🃏 NEW GAME: Guess Who!
Our new Powerpoint-based version of Guess Who gives a careers twist to a classic childhood favourite!
Students are presented with 24 characters representing a wide variety of career paths. They must then ask career-related questions (relating to workplaces, tools, skills, duties etc) in order to correctly identify their opponent’s mystery character before they can identify theirs!
We think this simple but highly entertaining game will be perfect for an introductory careers lesson for your new Year 7 cohort - or to use as a fun activity in a careers lesson, during tutor time or on a careers drop-down day.
Note: to play the game, students will need to load the Powerpoint onto two separate devices and the game must be played in Slide Show Mode (full instructions are provided on the game file).
You can access the Guess Who game here - and you will find our full collection of careers games in the Games folder here.
🪄 'Back to Hogwarts' Activity Pack
You might have missed your invitation to Hogwarts again this year, but why not use the annual ‘Back to Hogwarts Day’ to sprinkle some magic on your careers lessons with our new activity pack that explores some of the careers found in the Harry Potter world!
Students complete challenges relating to eight careers linked to characters featured in the famous book series; everything from Journalist to Nurse to Librarian, there are challenges that will interest all students that help to build key skills as well as connecting careers and the curriculum.
The activity pack also includes a Careers Quiz based on the books that will challenge even the most serious Potterheads and allow them to earn points for their house teams.
A great activity for tutor time this term or for World Book Day; simply print and allow students to work independently!
‘Back to Hogwarts Day’ is officially on 1st September but we're sure that this activity will work well as a general 'back to school' activity any time this month - or as part of the Halloween festivities that will soon be upon us, or even on World Book Day on 7th March.
You can download the ‘Back to Hogwarts Day’ activity pack here - and you can find a host of other resources linked to key dates in the calendar in the Events folder here.
📰 The Panjango Post
You may remember that just before the holidays we launched the Panjango Post offering news with a careers twist!
Well, the Panjango Post is back with some fresh stories to deliver the latest news into your classroom alongside career challenges that will put your students at the heart of the stories allowing them to apply their skills and critical thinking to the stories that are making the front pages around the world.
The latest stories featured include:
- Wildfires sweep across Greece after extreme heatwave
- Schools closed due to unsafe concrete
- Prince William's new project to end homelessness
- 180,000 passengers hit by flight cancellations
- Blackpool Zoo welcoming a baby orangutan
- The greenest-ever Glastonbury Festival
You can check out the latest edition of the Panjango Post here.
We'll continue to update the newspaper with fresh stories as they happen to continue to connect career learning with the real world.
Let us know if you have any feedback on this new regular feature or if you have any specific story requests!
🐎 Individual Careers
We’ve added three new individual careers resources to the Careers folder to continue to widen the choice of careers for your students to explore.
Whether you explore as a group during tutor time, set students to explore their favoured career choice independently or even print challenges for homework, these resources are a fantastic way to broaden the horizons of your students and link their learning to the world of work.
This month we've added: Horse Riding Instructor, Travel Agent and Musician.
Each of our Careers resources includes bite-sized job information, discussion prompts, seven contextual challenges and a ‘boss level’ which takes students through a series of three story-driven challenges.
You can find our full collection of 65 individual Careers resources here.
Remember there is also a Career Exploration worksheet for students to complete to reflect on the job role they chose to explore.
🧮 KS2 Maths
Finally, we’ve added the next set of Maths resources to the KS2 folder which cover topics mapped to the KS2 Maths curriculum.
These resources are great for reinforcing knowledge with new pupils at the start of Year 7. They could also be used as challenge activities alongside your baseline assessments to identify how well your pupils can apply their knowledge to 'real world' scenarios.
Our four topics this month are: Number; Fractions, Decimals and Percentages; Measurement; and Geometry.
Each resource includes seven challenges that demonstrate the real life applications of each topic - making these resources ideal for sharing with the Maths teachers in your school to help them bring the Maths curriculum to life and connect careers and the curriculum (Gatsby Benchmark 4).
You can find these resources, and all our other Key Stage 2 curriculum-focused resources here.
🗣️ Next steps...
That’s it from us for now. We really hope we're creating resources that will help you with your careers planning - but if there is anything specific you would love to see in the Resource Bank that would engage your students, or will just make your life easier, then please get in touch!
We’re already busy working on our next batch of resources - and a really fun new game that we're sure your students are going to love!
All the best with the start of your new school year...
Jon and the Panjango team
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