One School Showed Yr

Breaking The Mould – Appendix 8

What job is this – and who would do it? Lesson plan and slides

One school showed Yr.3 children untitled job descriptions and asked them whom they might apply to. They included lists of skills that turned out to relate to dancers, farmers or footballers. Many children thought the dancer’s job description was for a footballer.

They were then encouraged to identify which footballer was the source of a particular quote – she turned out to be Faye White whose achievements in the game surpass that of most of her male counterparts. Children were also surprised to learn how successful England’s women’s team has been (compared to the men!) and encouraged to question why they hadn’t known this before – for example, because of preconceptions in the media that people would be less interested in women’s football.

This work was part of a whole series of lessons focusing on jobs and gender stereotypes. The whole scheme of work – with annotations added after the lessons were delivered for the first time – is shown below.

See Ambitions and jobsin the online document Boy’s Things and Girl’s Things – challenging stereotypical choices and behavioursfor more information.

MEDIUM TERM PLAN

PSHE-Can anyone do any job[A1]?

YEAR GROUP/TEACHERS
Year 3 / TERM/YEAR
Autumn Term
2012 / Hours study per week
1
What we want the pupils to be able to know, understand and do / Activities they will undertake to achieve this / Differentiation / Resources / Assessment Opportunities*
Learning Objectives
+ NC POS
WALT: Look at variety of jobs / Ask children what jobs are there in the world -collect on flipchart-try for extensive list.
Ask children what jobs they would like to do. Press for why they would like these jobs.
Ask what skills are needed for certain jobs –footballer - balance, fitness
Ballet dancer - same
Look at an advert for gender stereotypical job for male – e.g. builder. Don’t tell job, but just give specifications of skills needed. Ask class who would like to do job.
Do the same for stereotypical job for female -nurse.
Key question - Can anyone do any job?[A2]
Look to introduce idea of stereotype and gender. / In mixed ability groups
Children in groups given job title - write skills needed to carry out.
Ask about gender, are they looking for a boy or girl to do the job?
Key Vocab - Gender, job, boy, girl. /

• Sugar paper
• Felt tips
• List of jobs

To know aboutthe range of jobs carried out by people they know, and to understand how they can develop skills to make their own contribution in the future.
To know the range of jobs and work roles carried out by people they know and what they like/dislike about them explore and compare how adults feel about their work / Task - Interview people in school about their jobs: school librarian, cook, admin officer, head teacher, LSA. Advise children on protocol involved in asking questions. [A3]
ICT LINK – DIGITAL CAMERA TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHILDREN INTERVIEWING
HOMEWORK OPPORTUNITY; A questionnaire to ask people at home about their jobs. (CROSS CURRICULAR NUMERACY AND ICT LINK) / MA AND LA Mixed ability interview groups
Support for LA writers
KEY VOCABULARY
Career, job, future, profession, interview, questions, jobs, roles.
Children can compile a list of appropriate questions, to ask adults about their work.
Children begin to understand that adults may like/dislike some aspects of their job. / Questionnaire proforma
IWB
Interview questions
ICT LINK – DIGITAL CAMERA TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHILDREN INTERVIEWING
WALT: To mind map jobs of people we know / Ask children to think about their own mums and dads, what jobs do they do?
Make list of jobs on flipchart, to be labelled as mum or dad.[A4]
Look at list, what do the children notice? (don’t press for gender stereotype)
Refer back to last lesson, do any children want to have the same job as a parent or completely different job, why?
See if any children make non-stereotypical choices – e.g. boys – nurse, girls - builder.[A5] / Ask the class what is a good job for a mum and dad.
Ask in talking partners for children to share ideas.
Share with class - write children’s ideas on flipchart.
Ask children in talk partners, what are unusual jobs for mums and dads. Record on flipchart.
Look at list of jobs, do the children notice anything.
WALT: To understand the role of gender in a job. / Ask the class what they want to be when they are older. Look for stereotypical roles for gender e.g. boy - footballer, builder, girl - nurse, teacher.
Read a description of female footballer Faye White - ask class who do you think said this.
Reveal that it is a woman. Ask class for their thoughts.
Have quote from Billy Elliot actor Jamie Bell about dancing. Which famous celebrity said this?
Reveal it was man, who now stars in films like King Kong and Tintin. Class discussion on thoughts.
Introduce term gender, why are certain jobs associated with boys or girls?
Look at Sandi Toskvig-Girls are the best.[A6] / Mixed ability
Use Venn Diagram - Children to sort out list of jobs into jobs for males and females or both.
Children have to state why they have chosen males/females.
Offer support to LA children of help with definition of unfamiliar jobs.
What have they found?
Key question
Are there any jobs that are just for men or women?
Ask children if they have changed their mind about what jobs male or females can do[A7]. / List of stereotypical male and female jobs.
To know the range of jobs and work roles carried out by people they know and what they like/dislike about them / Think about people around the world who are homeless or have had to leave their home because of problems such as war. (INTERCULTURAL LINK).
Link to jobs, has anyone had to move because of their jobs?
Look at what effect jobs have on our lives?
Marriage[A8], moving, pay. / MA
LA
Cards with some jobs and role play ideas on, to prompt children who are unsure
KEY VOCABULARY
Career, job, future, profession, job, act, mime, tasks.
Task - Play ‘guess the job’ (CROSS CURRICULAR DRAMA LINK). Children to act out a job they are familiar with from their research, others to guess from actions alone. Then ask yes/no questions if unsure to determine role. ASSESSMENT OPPORTUNITY V A K CHARADES? / Job cards / Children show an awareness that not all people live in houses or indeed have permanent homes.
WALT: To be able to act out jobs. / Look at the book Princess Pigsty.
Look at picture of Cinderella and other stereotypical princesses, what do all these pictures have in common?
What is their idea of a princess? Note on flip chart.
Read Princess Pigsty.
Ask for children’s thoughts on the book. Does Isabella follow the idea of stereotypical princess?
Should she have acted in a certain way? Why should she have acted in that way? / Have list of stereotypical jobs ‘stereotypical’ male jobs on pink card, ‘stereotypical’ female jobs on blue card.
Allow children to pair up themselves.
Give blue to girls, pink to boys.
Children to try to act out the job. Share performances with rest of class.
Then pairs to switch with different colour.
Boys to have blue, Girls to have pink. Allow time to act out.
Discuss what they thought about acting out the different jobs. [A9]
WALT: write an advert for a job. / Look at clip of Jane and Michael looking for a nanny.

State that we are having a special guest coming in...
We have a nanny coming in who will answer your questions about what the job.
Make sure children know what a nanny is before moving on.
What are their views, or who looked after them when they were babies?
Children to work in talking partners about what questions they could ask.
Introduce Nanny (male) - ask if children want to change their questions to the nanny now they know it’s male.
Have Q&A with nanny about job and what he thinks about it being a “woman’s job”. / Children to write their own job advertisement for a nanny, what skills do they have to have?
Children work on literacy tables.
LA - use key words to help.
WALT: Create a job advert / Look again at job adverts (list of skills but without job titles) [SEE ATTACHED SLIDES].
What do the children notice[A10]?
Ask the class to raise their hand to show if they think they have these skills and would like to do this job.
At the end, reveal that this is job for (for example) a ballet dancer – would some children change their minds now they know what the job is? Why?
Key question
Why are certain jobs seen as male/female jobs?[A11] / Children given role of pretending to interview a partner for a job, if a boy being interviewed, give “female” job, if girl being interviewed give “male job” e.g. – Girl - mechanic
Why would they like to do this job? What skills do they have and what would they enjoy about it?
Children to prepare questions beforehand for interview.

[A1]I think we can keep returning to the key theme – why are certain jobs seen as belonging to men or women – throughout the lessons. This may take some time to unpick and it gives you an opportunity to look at how the children’s thinking develops over the sessions.

Remember to check if there are links with any of the books we looked at. They include female pirates, male cooks and ballet dancers and princesses and dragons who reject the standard job description(!) – perhaps they could be useful here.

We could reflect on how people might feel the need to do certain jobs (or crucially, don’t do jobs they would like) because of other people’s expectations.

[A2]Some additional questions we could ask here or later:

• Why do some people think particular jobs are for men or women?
• Are men and women better at different things?
• Why do some people think that men make better builders (for example)? Is this true?

[A3]Could there be some options to look at gender here?

The first time we did this the children didn’t pick up on the gender association with certain jobs (dinnerladies). They don’t notice anything explicitly. So they’re learning that this division is ‘normal’ so we need to question it whenever we can!

[A4]Thinking back to previous lesson, check whether we get a different range of responses asking about jobs for Mums and Dads from those we get when asking about jobs for men and women. Which of these approaches is most useful?

[A5]Reinforce non-stereotypical choices – and give real life examples of people who do these jobs both here and later in the sessions.

[A6]Particularly in regard to women in particular jobs/professions. As a whole, the book is a bit grown up for Yr. 3 but it would be useful to pull some specific examples out of it.

[A7]Careful how you word this – we don’t want it to be too much of a leading question so that it just gets the response the children think we want.

[A8]This is an interesting one – is it different for men or women? We could ask about having children as well. Could we unsettle things by talking about stay at home Dads and women working full time? More men are now volunteering for school trips – we could pick up on things like this that the children will be aware of to talk about how gender roles might be changing.

[A9]Take care not to reinforce stereotypes about who – boys or girls – do which. We could get them to act out a range of stereotypical and non-stereotypical jobs, ask what they thought of each and encourage the class to critique each other’s views. Might be interesting to do boy/boy, girl/girl and boy/girl pairs and see if that makes a difference.

[A10]When we did this the first time their facial expressions were very interesting – they showed more surprise than they expressed verbally. There was real shock at the woman farmer and male ballet dancer. But they were also very open to the difference and they quite liked it – it’s interesting.

[A11]This is key to the whole exercise I think – we need to introduce it earlier (see comment 2 above). Their views can be quite difficult to shift around this so we need to be returning to it throughout the lessons.