During the first day of a new 12 week rotation I gave my class an assignment that would test my knowledge of the QFocus sessions that we had up to that point. At the beginning of class I gave the small groups a checklist to help them understand what it takes to be an effective team member. I wanted to ensure that they understood their roles before we started the QFocus question. Once we completed the checklist and talked about it we moved on to the QFocus for the day. I gave the students two different lists; one with careers and a key vocabulary list. Students were asked to identify a connection between the two lists. They asked a lot of questions during their five minutes, including how to pronounce different careers, and asking why I gave them the list. Some of the students asked really good questions about the connections between the two lists, such as, what is the median salary of each career?

Once the students completed the 5 minutes for questions we talked about the questions and how they relate to the assignment that they were about to complete. Students had to work with their small groups to complete what is called a Career Match-Up Hook. This hook is to match a STEM career to the description and impact of that career. They then had to work together to find the salary of the careers.

Still working in the small group they have been working with they started to take the career information to the next level finding the pros and cons of a group selected career. They had to dig deeper into the career to find how the career contributes to solving a global problem. They had to find a surprising requirement, daily responsibilities, soft skills and lastly the future outlook of the career.

One thing that I found out from starting the lesson using the QFocus activity was that students only see what is in front of them. They did not ask drop questions when it came to the list of items, they did work closely together as the lesson went on throughout the class period.

Melissa Metcalf
Foley Middle School
Madison County
Grades 6-8