1. Instructor: Ms. Erica Johnson
Title of Lesson: Identifying your skills and finding your career
Domain: Career
Grade Level: 9-10 Time Required: 1 class period or 90 minutes
ASCA National Standard A: Students will acquire skills to investigate the world of work in relation
to knowledge of self and to make informed career decisions.
Essential Questions:
How do we identify our skills?
What skills are important in employment?
What career is best for me?
How do we line up our skills with our career choice?
Material/Resources
WebQuest activity
www.vawizard.org
Occupational Outlook Handbook www.bls.gov/oco/home.htm
Activity I: Tap into your resources by indentifying you skills
We all have skills and characteristics that make us unique. The important thing to remember
about yourself is that you develop skills in all activities; we just have to figure them out. Where
do you think you gain these specific skills you have? What activities do you participate where
you may gain certain skills? School, community, extracurricular activities, chores, etc.
Participants will brainstorm in groups of 2 or 3 and develop a list of activities they participate.
Next to the activity they will list the skill they think they learned as a result.
Now that we have identified our specific skills, let’s organize them into categories. They are:
 Knowledge-based skills
 Transferable skills
 Personal skills
Closure: Think about what jobs will require some of the skills you have listed on your
paper. What types of jobs can you get with these skills? Does the career they are
interested in require skills that you do not have listed?
Activity II: Career Assessments
Now let’s take a look at jobs that you may be interested in. How do we find out what you are
interested in? Career Assessment! This is a tool that asks specific questions related to you
interested. Based on your responses they categorized different careers that you may be
interested in.
Participants will do the career assessments on VAWizard.
Closure: Select 3-4 careers you want to explore in more detail. Think about whether or
not the skills you listed in the last activity match with the careers you have selected from
this career assessment.

2. Activity III: What are employers looking for? Training/education/skills/characteristics
Each employer looks for something different for the job they are advertising. In this activity you
will learn if your skills match what is needed for the careers you have selected. You will also
explore what training and education requirements for that job. Lastly, you will identify how
much money you can make in that job and whether or not there will be a demand for that job
when you finish the required training/education necessary.
Participants will do a webquest and log on to VAWizard or the Occupational Outlook
Handbook to find information related to their career choices. (Webquest attached)
Closure: Save all your information to review at a later date. Review the information on
the education or training needed for each career choice and begin thinking about how you
will obtain that education or training. Begin looking at colleges/universities, community
colleges, technical schools or the military.
Evaluation: