Let’s Create Job Biographies!

Mryam Ayazi, ESOL Instructor
Community Education Center,
City College of New York

Lesson Title: Let’s Create Job Biographies!

Focus of Lesson: To enable adult learners to relate their knowledge of work in their countries to a workplace in the USA.

Objectives: Students will brainstorm images related to jobs.

Students will design a 5"x 5"collage related to a job in their country.

Students will create a short written paragraph on the computer.

Level of students: Intermediate

Applicable Learning Standards: Career Development & Occupational Studies 1:

Be knowledgeable about the world of work, explore career options, and relate personal skills, aptitudes, and abilities to future career decisions.

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Implementation Time: 2 class periods (5.5 hours)

Materials and Supplies: magazines, scissors, glue, 5"x 5" pieces of paper, access to a computer.

Room arrangement: Students work independently, so any room arrangement is good that allows students space to create a collage.

Introduction for Teachers:

Let’s Create Job Biographies was designed for an intermediate ESOL class that was going to visit AT&T to conduct an informational interview with four employees. Many of the students had limited work experience. This lesson was conceived to allow students to activate their prior knowledge, and to allow them to share their work experiences in preparation for the visit to AT&T.

This lesson takes its inspiration from a workshop on ESOL and learning disabilities at the Literacy Assistance Center in Manhattan. This lesson uses multiple intelligences in order to help students connect with their prior knowledge.

Procedure:

First Day

Warm-Up

(20-30 minutes)

Tell students that they will be creating a collage about a job they had or wished they had had in their country. Show them an example of a collage that you created. Have students brainstorm jobs and images that go with those jobs.

Whole-Class Activity (2 hrs. 15 min.)

1. Show students how to use magazines to make a collage. Students may want to paste one picture on their paper. Explain that for a collage a variety of images and colors are pasted together on one piece of paper.
2. Give students the materials. Let them work anywhere in the room.
3. Circulate and help students clarify their ideas.
4. When the students are finished, allow them to share their pictures with a partner. Then hang them on the wall and have an art exhibit. Allow students to talk about their work with the class.
5. Have students tell what they liked best/least about the assignment. Did it help them to remember something they had forgotten?
6. What is the assignment?
7. Students write about and share their impressions and experiences of work in their countries with work in the USA.

Second Day

(2 hrs. 45 min.)

1. Introduce the students to the computers. This should take about one hour because students will need to know how to start and shut down the machines. Also students will need to know how to save and perform other important functions (e.g., backspace).
2. Have students place their collages in front of them. Then ask them to write a 5-6 sentence paragraph about their collage.
3. Tell them to just type without worrying about mistakes. Tell them that they will edit when they have finished writing.
4. When most of the students have typed in their sentences, show students how to edit them.
5. Students print their work.
6. Another student can help them edit their printed product, or they can exchange seats and edit the work on computer.

Assessment:

The student's collage and paragraphs will be discussed and shared with classmates. The teacher will have a conversation about the assignment with each student.

Reflection on Lesson:

The students were eager to re-create visual impressions of their prior work experiences on paper. They also enjoyed working on the computer. The combination of the visual and the tactile allowed them to express themselves more easily than if I just asked them to write a paragraph.