2015 Semester Exam

I'm sorry I couldn't be in class today.  My daughter has a stomach bug and is staying home from school.  Please answer the following exam questions in a Word document and email them to me at mattspinella@gmail.com for a grade.  I will have your exams graded by 3pm today.

Part 1: Reflection Essays – 100 points (50 points per essay)

Compose two (2) reflection essays (minimum 200 words for each)on any of the following concepts covered this semester:

• ·         The importance of safety in the classroom and workplace
• ·         How to apply for an entry-level job (fast food, grocery store, retail, etc.)
• ·         Proper interview preparation
• ·         The importance of a resume
• ·         Electronic vs. physical portfolio
• ·         Digital footprint
• ·         Branding yourself

Your essay should include information you’ve learned, how you can apply what you’ve learned, and how your learning can help separate yourself from other job candidates or college applicants.

Part 2: Employability Skills – 25 points

Perform a Google search on your desired career and identify which knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are essential.  Be specific about your desired career (Examples: If you wish to be a CPA, will you pursue tax or audit? If you wish to be a nurse, what licensure will you pursue?).  Use current job postings and articles to compose a descriptive list of at least five (5) employment requirements.

Part 3: Ethical Conduct in the Workplace – 25 points

Often, in lower-level job settings (fast food, grocery store, retail), employees face ethical dilemmas.  Describe a scenario in which an employee’s ethics would be challenged, and explain at least two ways you could practice good ethics in the workplace.  Examples include:

·         Handling large sums of money

·         Inappropriate comments in the workplace

·         Alienating co-workers based on gender, race, religion, or sexual preference

·         Stealing merchandise

Part 4: Interview for a position at ABC Grocery Store – 50 points

Please write out your answers for the following questions:

1.    Tell me a little about yourself.

2.    What is your biggest strength and how can it help you succeed in your career?

3.    Tell me about one of your weaknesses.

4.    Tell me about a time in which you failed.

5.    Do you have any proof that you can complete the tasks required for this position? - Great time to show off the portfolio

6.    What do you know about this position?

7.    Do your grades in school reflect your work ethic?

8.    Tell me about a time in which you were faced with a challenge and succeeded.

9.    Why should I hire you?

1        10.  Do you have any questions for me?

I Good luck on the exam.  Have a safe and restful Winter Break!

Let's Put This Fancy Equipment to Good Use

This week, we're going to use our new camera to complete a majority of our tasks.  I haven't broken down the tasks into daily assignments.  Rather, I've laid out the work we will do and how we will do it.  Please see below for what we'll get done this week:

Class Photo:
We need to choose a day when we can get our class photo taken.  I will have a 6th period planner in to take our picture.  This image will be loaded to our Google+, Twitter, and YouTube pages

WBL Videos:
Well try to record the following videos for each student:

1. 20-Second Introduction
1. If you feel as if your video last week isn't sufficient, we can do these first
2. Placement (or Desired Placement) Description
1. What is your (desired) placement?
1. Those of you who are employed have been focusing on that job as your guide in completing our tasks, so please use your current job in this video
2. What are your job responsibilities?
1. Please be specific.  Discuss what you do and how you do it rather than just stating, "I work the register," or, "I clean up."
3. How do you conduct yourself on the job?
1. Again, please specify how you handle yourself with co-workers, supervisors, customers, etc.
4. How do you use literacy on the job?
1. Talk about employee handbook, safety manuals, reading updates or messages from your boss, etc.
5. How is numeracy incorporated on the job?
1. If you work the register or handle money, this is obvious.  
2. Also think about time management or budgeting (allocation of funds from your paycheck)

***You will use Monday's class to compose talking points for your videos.  

***We will complete our 20-second intro videos first and load all of them to our YouTube, class website, and Google+, as well as tweet them.

***After completing our Placement Videos, you will use the editing software on the school computers to make them professional.  Editing will be tough, so use one another as you work through the process

On Friday, you will compose a 200+ word blog post about what you did this week.  Please use the following questions to guide your entry:

1. What did you discuss in your videos?
2. Do you feel your videos are a good representation of yourself?  Would an admissions officer or scholarship panel be impressed by your submission?
1. That's the point of making these videos
3. Explain the purpose of having these as evidence of excellent work in an electronic portfolio.
4. What other activities would you like to do next semester to add to your portfolio?

That's it for this week.  Next week we'll focus on preparing for the mid-term.  See you tomorrow!

Social Media Campaign for Our WBL Class

The above image is taken directly from the FBLA competitive events scoring sheet and will be used to assess your work as we create a social media campaign for our WBL class.  

This week, we will use two of the FBLA Competitive Event Topics to guide our work as we demonstrate mastery in communication, thinking & problem-solving, and creativity.  The topics are vague, so I’ve set a daily task checklist to ensure we do our work effectively.  Please see below for our two projects:

Social Media Campaign:

In class, we will create social media accounts for our WBL Class (Northwest High WBL).  We will utilize this platform to promote the course.  This allows us to teach upcoming students what we do in class AND helps everyone in the class create a positive digital footprint.

Website Design:

We’ll also create a Northwest High WBL Weebly page, on which we will highlight our students (feel free to utilize what we included in our Newsletter) and some of the projects we’ve completed.

This week, we’ll simply focus on getting everything launched, adding effective introductory information, and connecting with people who we believe should learn more about what we do (think teachers, underclassmen, friends, and POTENTIAL EMPLOYERS).    Sure, this project is intended to be a learning experience, but if you put together something that will help you stand out among others, why not use it to your advantage?

Our Clear Target for each day this week is as follows:

We can create an effective online presence through effective use of online resources

Monday:

Objective: Create Google, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, and Weebly profiles

I’ll begin class by explaining the goal of this project.  Essentially, we want to raise awareness about our WBL class, so the best way to connect to those who will be interested is through their favorite channel – social media. 

As a group, you will determine who will manage each account and begin working on the profiles for each.  For the Weebly page, one or two students can come up with a design and skeleton for the site, including what tabs the site will have, what links to include, and what kind of content (images, videos, writing) to present.  Social media pages will require images, a profile, and a number of groups to connect with.  This allows you to get noticed by the right people.  If/when you finish, use any spare time to take notes on what other quality accounts have on their profiles so that we are on par with the best.

By the end of class, each student will report out about how much has been finished.   

Tuesday:

Objectives: Make first posts online, Establish presence by tagging the right people, Connect all channels

Do you ever notice that most businesses have uniformity within their website, FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, and email?  This is obviously by design.  On Tuesday, you’ll make sure there is uniformity within our channels so that we have a truly connected identity.

Once this is accomplished, we will actually publish our first posts for our accounts.  Coming up with unique content that will attract followers isn’t easy, so this will take some time to think about. 

Once we’ve sent out a few posts/tweets, we can start reaching out to people who might want to follow us or people who we feel would benefit from our message.  This also requires some thinking and research, but thankfully, the websites (and Google) will provide us with some assistance.

By the end of class, we will again report out on our progress.  Once we have uniformity across all channels, we can begin to work on our first big step with this project.

Wednesday:

Objectives: Prepare to give WBL Presentation, Practice run for WBL Presentation

Remember that Google Presentation we made about WBL?  Remember how we were supposed to film ourselves giving that presentation but our camera equipment wouldn’t be in for a few weeks?  Well, our equipment still hasn’t arrived, but we can definitely prepare to give our presentation and thanks to our smartphones, we can still film and load the videos!

On Wednesday, you will be given approximately 10 minutes to review your talking points for the presentation and practice them.  After that 10 minutes, you will have another 5 minutes to work together to establish who will be speaking and when (basically you’ll set the order for giving the presentation).  With the remaining 30 minutes, I expect you to practice giving the presentations at least three times.  After each practice presentation, we will discuss things that went well, things that could have been done differently, and how to make the presentation look and sound worthy of loading to our accounts.

This is not going to be easy, so don’t be upset or disappointed if you’re not perfect by the end of class.  Just be ready to film the presentation when you return to class on Thursday.

Thursday:

Objective: Film at least three takes of WBL Presentation, load presentation to YouTube (on your own time)

All the work you put in on Wednesday, both during and after class, will be put on display on Thursday.  During class, we will record at least three takes of our presentation, allowing us to select the best take to load to our YouTube Channel.  Feedback will be provided after each take, and we will have time to view each take to determine which one is best. 

Friday:

Objective: Publish video across all platforms, reflect upon work completed this week.

Once the video is loaded to our YouTube, we can share the video via Twitter and Google+, as well as embedding it to our Weebly.  This will put a nice bow on the work we’ve done all week. 

When finished with these tasks, you will compose a Blogger post of at least 250 words (try to stay below 400 words, though), with images and the YouTube video embedded to the post.  Use the following questions to guide your writing:

• Which social media platform did you work on?
• What did you notice about other effective accounts and how did you incorporate them into our WBL account?
• How well do you think you performed in the presentation? 
• How will our social media platforms help others understand what we do in class?
• Do you think students will be interested in enrolling in WBL as a result of what we’ve posted?  Why or why not?

That’s it for this week.  I’ll see you all tomorrow!

Thanksgiving Week

This week is very short, but we will still complete a good amount of work.  After reviewing and discussing professionalism and ethical behavior in the workplace and school, it’s time to write about it. 

On Monday, you will research discrimination in the workplace by finding at least two relevant articles that touch upon the sensitive topics of either: gender, race, national origin, religion, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, veteran status, or any characteristic of a group unrelated to the workplace. 

On Tuesday, you will create a blog post of at least 300 words, at least one image, and cite all sources used in helping you formulate your post.  Feel free to use quotes from the sources so that you can defend your stance with professional viewpoints.

Our Clear Target for this week is as follows:

We can analyze professionalism and ethical behavior in various workplace scenarios

Monday:

Objective: Read and research one element of discrimination.  Use at least two sources for research

In my absence, you should read at least two articles about discrimination in the workplace.  Please narrow your search to only one element of the aforementioned standard.  Take notes on the articles and identify at least two quotes that can be used in your blog post.  If you finish both articles with time to spare, please find a third article to read.  More information on the topic will allow you to write more comfortably on the subject. 

This requires no classroom discussion, so please be silent so that everyone can optimize his/her research time.

Tuesday:

Objectives: Compose blog post about discrimination, share post with Mr. Spinella, discuss blog posts

Today you will compose your blog posts using your notes and research you completed on Monday.  Please make this blog post at least 300 words, include at least one image, and cite your sources by providing the URL for each article you read at the end of your post. 

We will discuss our posts with the last 10 minutes in class, so please make sure you finish your posts in the first 35 minutes of class. 

That’s it for this week.  I look forward to our discussions on Tuesday!

Workplace Integrity

After reviewing things with the bookkeepers, it is apparent that our camera order may not come in until the week we return from Thanksgiving or perhaps the week after that (holiday shipping is an issue).

That said, this week we will mainly focus on Standard 12: Demonstrate professionalism and ethical behavior.  Our activities will be centered around managing oneself in different work scenarios, and our currently employed classmates will help us with each task throughout the week.  Since I will be out of the building Wednesday, you will dedicate this class period to blogging about what you’ve learned on Monday and Tuesday. 

Our Clear Target for each day this week is as follows:

We can analyze professionalism and ethical behavior in various workplace scenarios

Monday:

Objective: Present oneself professionally and with proper etiquette, in accordance with norms of the industry and workplace.

I’ll begin class by explaining how I present myself on a daily basis in the classroom and how I previously presented myself in the sales industry.  This lecture goes beyond dress and posture, so please be ready to learn about the “game face” and working with co-workers/clients differently.  I’ll also explain professional conduct on the golf course vs. in the office.

After this, our working students will role play a scenario in which he/she deals with a supervisor and one in which he/she deals with a regular everyday customer.  We will then break out into pairs and practice similar scenarios for five minutes. 

When finished, we’ll compare/contrast professional presentation and etiquette in our desired careers with those traits in our current professional setting.

Tuesday:

Objectives: Demonstrate reliability and responsibility in attendance and in following through on agreed-upon tasks; communicate with supervisor when circumstances change

Today we will discuss the importance of showing up (ON TIME) and making good on our promises.  I will explain a recent scenario in which I worked with a CTE director in Sumner County and how my follow-through reflected well on my employer. 

I’ll then discuss the importance of keeping everyone up to speed on the status of various projects.  This will dovetail into a discussion on initiative, so be prepared to discuss how this applies in the workplace.

We’ll then break out into two groups to cover each of the discussed topics.  Group 1 will create a skit/presentation on how NOT to demonstrate reliability and responsibility.  Group 2 will create a skit/presentation about keeping all concerned parties in the loop on the status of a project.  Groups will present their creations at the end of class for a grade.

Wednesday:

On Wednesday, you will write a blog post about how you can create a portfolio artifact to demonstrate the character traits learned this week.  You will then explain how these traits will apply to your future career.

Thursday:

Objective: Demonstrate integrity and ethical behavior in all

worksite activities including the use of tools and materials, handling of money, logging of hours, billing of clients, sharing of information, and completion of all personnel-related forms.

Today’s lecture is centered around privacy and integrity.  I’ll briefly how I have handled each of the aforementioned scenarios and each student will describe how he/she has personally handled one or more of these responsibilities.  Even if you have never worked a job, you have definitely had to handle sensitive information or have been trusted to handle money. 

I will look for each of you to describe a scenario of your own and ask that you share with the class how you’ve handled yourself.  For closure, you will split into 3 groups to outline procedures for handling the following scenarios:

A friend asks for free food @ your restaurant

A customer leaves her credit card at the checkout counter of your grocery store

You are in charge of collecting money for your student organization

Friday:

Objective: Understand and adhere to appropriate workplace non-discrimination standards on the basis of sex, race, color, age, national origin, religion, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, veteran status, or any characteristic of a person or group unrelated to the workplace

Today you will be given a scenario to analyze.  You will identify the problem and uncover the workplace issues that could arise if the problem is not addressed.  You will then draft a solution for handling the problem and present your findings to the class.  You will use the skills discussed throughout the week to make the best decision possible.

That’s it for this week.  I’ll see you all tomorrow!

Writing Exercise - Presentation Skills

This week we will prepare to give our WBL presentation by analyzing some academic text about presentation essentials.  While my Computer Apps classes will be writing about the same piece of text, the level of analysis and quality of writing you will do is held to a much higher standard. 

The purpose of this exercise is to get you in the right mindset to make your presentations AND to force you practice organizing your thoughts prior to writing.  After this week’s writing assessment is finished, you will have a solid arsenal of techniques for presenting.  By next week, we can put these skills into practice.

Monday:

Clear Target: We can analyze essential presentation skills

Objectives:Close read presentation skills article, annotate information about central idea and new information, formulate opinion about central idea of article.

We’ll begin class by copying an article to Word for a close read.  After students copy article to Word, I will explain that this week, we will focus our efforts on learning to prepare for a presentation.  I will explain the purpose of our close read is to determine central idea of the article, but we will also focus on learning new words that we may not know.  I will demo first pass of identifying words I don't know and key terms/phrases/names  Students will do the same for their own understanding.  We will then read through article a second time, highlighting the central idea of the author.  After sharing out some of our ideas, we will discuss how some opinions differ.  For closure, students will answer questions in Edmodo about words they learned and their understanding of the central idea of the article.

Tuesday:

Clear Target: We can apply organization concepts to analytical writing.

Objectives: Learn organizational strategy for essay writing, analyze components of new strategy, Apply new strategy to essay question

We’ll open class by sharing out how each of us organizes an essay.  After reviewing answers, I will explain the lasagna analogy to essay-writing - the more substantial the lasagna, the better the lasagna.  I will then explain essay outline as students take guided notes.  I will demo how to analyze a prompt and break down what is asked.  I will intro the new prompt students will work on structuring their essays.  Independently, students will gather effective quotes to work on creating a substantial essay.  For closure, students answer questions about the lasagna method in Edmodo for a grade.

Thursday:

Clear Target: We can formulate an opinion about an academic text

Today’s class is designated for creating your outline and beginning your essay. With the outline you’ve created, it’s fair to say your informative essays will be 400+ words.  I’ll be able to circulate the room and make sure you are on the right path to success for your assignment.

Friday:

Clear Target: We can formulate an opinion about an academic text

Today you will complete your essays and submit them to Edmodo.  I will give you about 10-15 minutes to complete this.  When that time is up, each of you will be given 2 minutes to use the skills you learned about to give a presentation about a topic I assign.

By utilizing the presentation skills you read about, the improvisational exercise will be less stressful and serve as a preparation for next week’s activities.

As was the case last week, you can take the initiative and work on the Student Self-Assessment of Skills and the Student Skills Assessment Rubric.  The answers you submit in these forms are constantly changing since you should be obtaining additional skills as we work through the school year.

That’s it for this week.  I’ll see you all tomorrow!