Career Exploration Activities, Lesson, Resources for Elementary Students

Engage your third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students with this career exploration program complete with a PowerPoint & Google Slides™ lesson, classroom scoot game, and career research prompts activity. Elementary students will consider work environment "this or that?" preferences, identify community helpers, and consider their own talents, interests, hobbies, and more throughout the career exploration activities and resources included in the curriculum.

Career Exploration Lesson Plan:

Ignite career exploration in your third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students with an easy to use, no prep career exploration PowerPoint presentation and lesson for Google Slides™ during your classroom guidance class. Use as a stand-alone lesson or pair it with a schoolwide Career Day event to amplify career exploration activities in your elementary school counseling program.

Your upper elementary students will:

• deepen their understanding of a job versus a career
• sort true and false career statements
• consider their work environment preferences ("This or That?")
• recognize community helpers
• brainstorm different careers within one building
• identify talents, interests, and hobbies
• explore how to research fields of interest
• name a career for each letter of the alphabet

The career lesson for students is designed for:

• large group classroom guidance lessons with 1:1 devices
• online & virtual learning
• homeschool learning

Enhance your students' career exploration with these topics:

• Career vs. Job
• Career & Job Venn Diagram
• Career Questions - True or False?
• How do I want to spend my days?
• Work environment preferences (3 pages, sorting statements)
• Community Helpers
• Community Helpers - Uniforms
• Community Helpers - Tools
• Community Helpers - Vehicles (3 slides)
• Community Helpers - Locations
• Many jobs in one place
• My Interests
• My Talents
• My Hobbies
• Researching Careers: How can I learn more about careers?
• How do I want to help the world? Short prompt
• Alphabet challenge

Educators like you are saying...

"I incorporated this resource into my career exploration lesson and it was a huge hit. The kids enjoyed all the slides and it allowed for a lot of creative thinking and great discussions. We couldn't even get through all of the slides. I will definitely be incorporating this resource into my career exploration unit from here on out." - Sarah Y

"The students really enjoyed doing this career exploration unit.  It covered so many different topics and they found it easy to navigate." - Kathy W

"Used this for a virtual small group guidance lesson. It was super easy to use. Most of all, my students really enjoyed it! They were very engaged the entire time." - Brittany T

"My students LOVED this activity! They were very engaged and learned so much about careers." - Tracie S

Your career exploration digital school counseling resource includes:

• a PDF with the link to make a forced copy of the 26-slide Career Exploration Lesson for Google Slides™
• a 26-page PowerPoint (PPTX) version
• many text boxes and shapes that are editable and moveable (some text and graphics are flattened per the clip artists' and font artists' Terms of Use).

Page counts include a Cover, Terms of Use for distance learning, one page of links to preview more of my digital resources, and Credits.

**A note on editable Google Slides™**

You'll need to open this resource in edit mode (not present mode), and you can type your students’ responses into those boxes (they are editable text boxes, so you use it in edit mode) and drag and drop shapes in that mode. Another great option is to download Full Screen Interactive Google Slides Extension App for Chrome.

Career Exploration Scoot Game

Students will respond to 30 “This or that?” prompts describing their ideal work environment in this engaging, movement-based classroom scoot activity. Scatter 30 cards around the room and give each student a response grid. Students will read each prompt and circle their preference for a work environment.

This scoot activity is the perfect companion activity with the career exploration lesson or a career-themed book. It can also be used as a stand-alone activity, perfect for a Career Day event!

This non-editable 17-page PDF download includes:

• Directions for play
• Scoot Answer Board
• Master List of Questions
• (5) pages - This or That? 30 Discussion Prompts (color version)
• (5) pages - This or That? 30 Discussion Prompts (grayscale version)
• Cover Page, Contents, Terms of Use, Credits

Career Exploration Research Prompts digital activity

Your students will research key career exploration questions in this digital activity. Choose from Google Slides™ and PowerPoint versions.

Use this activity for:

• large group classroom lessons with 1:1 devices and printables
• online and virtual learning

Decorate a career bulletin board with completed papers, or encourage your students to present their research to peers. You can also display completed prompts online in a virtual, password-protected, career room.

Choose from two versions of each of the two career pages: the one with editable text boxes is intended for digital use, and the one without text boxes is intended for printing.

Your zip download includes two files:

Career Exploration digital research prompts:

Includes a PDF with the link to make a forced copy of the 8-slide Google Slides™ Career Exploration activity. Many text boxes are editable and moveable, while other text and graphics are flattened per the clip artists' and font artists' Terms of Use.

Your download includes a link to the digital Google Slides™ Career Exploration activity and an 8-page PowerPoint (PPTX) version. 

Page counts include a Cover, Terms of Use for distance learning, one page of links to preview more career resources, and Credits.

Educators like you are saying:

"Used this resource as a follow up to our school's career day, during our afterschool program. Students were engaged at all levels and highly motivated to do more research about their perspective career paths." - Lakasha C.

"I would give this 10 stars if I could. I loved that I could use this material as a guidance lesson before getting into career day. It was long so I had to pick and choose which sections I wanted to use, but that is a good problem to have. I will use this again this coming school year." - Kayla W.

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My Terms of Use is included and allows for sharing with your students by email or on a password-protected, secure digital learning platform. This resource may not be shared on a publicly-accessible website or with other educators.