A remote operations controller at a wall of screens, supervising autonomous haul trucks and live site feeds
Year 7 · Unit 04 · Lesson 01

Jobs You've Never Heard Of

One idea must land: “mining” is not a job — it's hundreds of jobs, in six families, and some are stranger than anything students could invent.

Unit 4 opens on the term where engagement is earned, not assumed — so the whole lesson is built like a game. The riddle first: “this person is driving a 400-tonne truck right now — where is the truck?” (Answer: over a thousand kilometres away.) Then JOB OR FAKE: eighteen cards, stand-up-sit-down voting, real jobs stranger than the invented ones — settled by a timed proof hunt on live devices using the rule they already know: no source, no evidence. It lands on identity: the Starting Stats character sheet, and a locked salary guess that Lesson 2 will test against real job ads.

Spark

The riddle

The image goes up with no explanation. Guesses locked, then the reveal: a remote operations controller in Perth, driving real autonomous haul trucks in the Pilbara from an office chair — more than 1,000 km away. Office job, city home, giant trucks.

Minds tend to break a little here. Let them. This one image kills “mining = a bloke with a shovel” in thirty seconds.
Core

JOB OR FAKE

Eighteen titles read game-show fast: stand for real, seated for fake, no half-standing. Twelve real (shotfirer, underwater welder, iron ore train driver, mine site paramedic…), six fake (ore whisperer, dust sommelier, truck psychologist…) — including two sneaky ones built to fool half the room. Every real job lands a one-line wow fact. Students tally their own score out of 18.

Pace it loud and quick, no discussion between rounds — “save your arguments for the proof hunt” is the line when they groan. When half the class stands for “rock polisher,” enjoy it.
Workshop

The proof hunt + the six families

Three minutes, pairs, devices: pick the real job you find hardest to believe, find WA proof — a job ad, a company page, a video. No source, no evidence carries straight over from Unit 3. Then the families sort: trades · tech · science · logistics · environment · community — and the guess-the-number moment: how many different jobs on one big site? Hundreds.

The true/false fix kills the biggest myth in the room: plenty of these jobs never go near a pit — control rooms, labs, ports and offices say otherwise.
Land it

Starting stats + the salary lock

The lens flips from jobs to THEM: circle what you’re actually into, match it to a family, shortlist three jobs worth scouting. Framed in their language: “these are your starting stats — the build comes later.” Then the cliffhanger: a haul truck operator’s salary, guessed and locked, no changes — checked against live job ads next lesson.

Teacher intel

Which family surprised you by existing at all? (Usually community or environment.)
Your proof — would it convince the class sceptic? What’s missing?
Which of the five channels would the environmental scientist check first? (Unit 3 never left.)
If the truck drives itself, what is the controller actually paid for? (Judgment. Let it hang.)
Watch for“Mining = one job” (hundreds of roles, six families) · “you need uni for all of it” (park it — Lesson 2 maps the four training routes) · “all the jobs are at the mine” (control rooms, labs, ports, offices).
Running shortPlay 12 cards, keep both sneaky fakes. Protect the riddle reveal, the proof hunt, the character sheet, and the salary lock — Lesson 2 opens with it.
SupportThe six families stay on the board all lesson with one example each; the proof-hunt search string is printed on the sheet.
ExtendThe nineteenth card: invent one fake job so plausible it would fool the class — and explain what makes a fake believable. Same skill as spotting one.