What Do Other People Want To Be?

In this lesson, students will graph people’s job choices and identify which jobs would have the most competition based on the data.

In this lesson, students will graph people’s job choices and identify what goods and services each job provides. The graphing in this lesson is simple graphing done via interactive activities and assumes that students are familiar with the concept of graphing. An explanation of graphing is available for teachers to paraphrase. This lesson follows the What Do You Want to Be? lesson and builds on some of the decisions students made in that lesson, although it can also stand alone.

• Be able to graph and answer questions based on data showing people’s job choices.
• Be able to list and/or verbally communicate at least three reasons for working.

• Kids’ Zone: Learning with NCES.This website helps students create different types of graphs, and provides an explination of graphing for teachers to paraphrase.
  www.nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx
• What Do You Want to Be?: In this lesson, students have the opportunity to explore various jobs and decide what they might want to be when they grow up through an interactive activity. The What Do You Want to Be? lesson provides some fundamental ideas that are built upon in this lesson.
  What Do You Want to Be?
• Interactive Graphing Activity: Students can use this interactive activity to display their survey results.
  interactive graphing activity

Activity 1

Part A
Survey students based on what they decided in the What Do You Want to Be? lesson, or conduct a survey in class by asking students the following question:

1. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Record the results on the board.

Have students complete the interactive graphing interactive graphing activity to display the results.

Guide to the interactive graphing activity:
If you used the jobs from the “What Do You Want to Be?” lesson, students will only need to enter the values under the “Number of People” column. If you elected to do a new survey in your class, you’ll need to total the results from the class and instruct students to enter the top five jobs and the value for each on the first page of the activity. The maximum value for each category is 10, so you may need to explain that limitation if more than 10 is reported for any one job.

The survey button that is displayed on the first page generates random numbers for each of the jobs. You can use this feature if you are unable to conduct a survey in your class.

Once data has been entered or generated, students should create a bar graph by dragging each of the bars into the correct position based on their data. They may check their results using the “check” button in the lower right corner. They will not be able to move on until all of the bars are in the correct positions.

To complete this activity, students may print a copy of their graph and answer the questions on the print out.

Discussion items:
Ask students to think about and answer the following questions:

1. Why did you choose the job you did?
2. Why do we need people to perform that particular job?

List the students answers on the board as you discuss them focusing on the reasons that people work. Help the students generalize about why people work based on the responses you receive. Discuss with students the various jobs that were listed and why people may have been more interested in some jobs over others.

Part B.
Tell students that you are going to have them survey adults to find out what job they do, why they work, and why they chose that particular job. Have students ask their parents/guardians or any adult the following questions and report back to the class the following day.

1. What is your job?
2. Why did you choose that job?
3. Why do people need to perform that particular job?

As students report their findings back to the class for question #1, list the various jobs that students report on the board. Make tally marks next to each job that is repeated.

Again, have students complete the interactive graphing activity.

Guide to the interactive graphing activity:
This time students will need to enter both the “Jobs” and the “Number of People” based on the survey data that was collected. Inform students that they will be creating a graph that displays only the top five jobs that were listed. Have students type in the top five jobs in the fields under the “Jobs” heading. Once they’ve added the jobs, you can have them enter the number of people based on the tally marks from the board. The maximum value for each category is 10, so you may need to explain that limitation if more than 10 is reported for any one job.

To complete this activity, students may print a copy of their graph and answer the questions on the print out.

Discussion items:
Continue to list the students answers on the board for questions #2 and #3 based on their survey. Again, help the students generalize about why people work based on the responses you receive.

Compare the survey results with the reasons students listed choosing a specific job. Did students have reasons similar to the adults reasons? What main differences were there? What reasons did students leave out that students thought were important? Do you think your reasons for choosing a job might change when you get older?

1. Have students look at all the jobs that were listed and see if they can come up with one good and/or service that each provides.
2. Have students see if they can come up with the “Top 3” reasons that people work based on the survey.

Have students list or verbally communicate at least three reasons for working.