Earlier this year, Education and Employers, together with OECD Education and Skills and other research partners, published a report which explored the career aspirations of primary school children around the world. As well as pointing to children’s favourite school subjects and top career aspirations, to me the report also revealed that children are no strangers to the topic of jobs and they like to imagine and talk about their futures.
We thought it was a good opportunity for some language practice and selected six from the top ten jobs mentioned in the report. Here are some simple ideas for enjoyable classroom activities on the topic of jobs that are easy to set up and don’t take much time to play. All you need are a small set of flashcards on a theme related to your lesson, or something students remember from previous lessons, pen and paper, and some magnets or Blu Tack for the board.
Let’s play the “Reading race”
The “Reading race” is a perfect warm up that will get your students moving and thinking fast. You will need to divide the pupils into two equal groups.
- Look at the flashcards and write one sentence per flashcard on a piece of paper, each describing what’s shown, e.g. He loves working with animals. for the vet flashcard.
- Attach the flashcards to the board.
- Divide the class into two teams (equal if possible) and divide the sentences into two equal piles.
- Place the two piles of sentences face down, give one team one stack of the sentences and the other team the other stack.
- Say “Ready, steady, go!”
- One pupil from each team picks up a sentence, reads it aloud and sticks it below the correct flashcard on the board. They then walk quickly back to their team and sit down, naming the next pupil to read the next sentence.
- The first team to stick up all their sentences correctly is the winner.
Let’s play “Musical cards”
“Musical cards” is a good way to reinforce target vocabulary at the end of the lesson. For this activity you will need flashcards and some lively music.
- Hand out the flashcards to different pupils.
- Play some lively music. Pupils holding a flashcard pass it on to the pupil on their right.
- Stop the music. Ask two pupils who are holding flashcards to make one or two sentences about the picture from the flashcard, e.g. for the flashcard musician, They love music. They play the guitar.
- The class can ask questions, e.g. Where do they work? The class guesses the profession.
- Lower level students can mime the flashcard for the rest of the class to guess.
- Once the class has guessed correctly, collect those two flashcards.
- Play the music. Pupils pass the remaining flashcards again. Continue until you have collected all the flashcards.
You could also extend the topic of jobs with this little worksheet, ask children to do a little research with their families at home and complete the page.
These activities are inspired by Guess What! Level 4 Teacher’s Book, and you could try them with other topics. For more activity resources, visit Cambridge Young Learners.