A completed Job Reality Profile for a heavy equipment operator: role, salary bands, roster
Year 7 · Unit 04 · Lesson 05

The Scout's File

The summative, wearing a card game's clothes. The rigour is untouched — sourced stats, an honest catch per career, an evidence-cited call — but it feels like the best kind of hobby.

The Job Reality Profile, built in students’ native format: collectible-style Career Cards. The four careers drafted in Lesson 4 — two inside the industry, two outside — each become a card carrying nine required items: pay band from live ads, training door, rhythm, the four meters, a wow fact, sources for every stat — and THE CATCH: one hard truth per career, because cards without catches are ads, not evidence. A 15-minute evidence sprint fills the stats, a peer honesty check hunts the hype, and THE TABLE lets pairs play their cards stat-by-stat — including the round that is the whole unit in one minute: your own inside pick versus your own outside pick. Then the assessed Scout’s Call: silent, individual, open-book — the career named in sentence one, three sourced stats, the catch faced, the runner-up separated on a named stat.

Spark

Equipment check + the sprint

The whole unit lands on the desk — draft picks, starting stats, scout report, meters, caught quotes — then 15 minutes on live job boards harvesting sourced stats for all four picks. The hardest hunt is THE CATCH: “the ad won’t print it. Where else did we learn hard truths this unit?” The meters. The guest. The diaries.

A catch-less card is the most common weakness — catch it while circulating, before the honesty check does.
Check

Scout’s honour — the peer hype-hunt

Pairs swap ONE card each and inspect: unsourced stats and soft catches (“sometimes it’s hot” doesn’t count) send the card back for repairs, and the inspector signs when it passes. Repairs are normal, not shameful — say so.

Play

THE TABLE

Round one: strongest card versus a partner’s, stat by stat, circle the winner per stat — nobody sweeps. Round two is the unit’s point: each student plays their own inside pick against their own outside pick, and writes the trade-off in one sentence — the profile’s thesis in miniature.

Assess

The Scout’s Call + the Term 4 bridge

Silent, individual, open-book, about half a page, four moves — marked against the pack’s rubric with the integrity rule read aloud first: no right career. Then the bridge as files close: “You know this industry now. Next term it stops giving you answers, because it’s run out of some. Next term, it’s hiring inventors.”

Mark the evidence and the honesty, never the choice — an outside-pick Call scores identically to an inside-pick Call.

Teacher intel

“Your catch — would the worker from the Q&A nod at it, or laugh at it?”
“Which stat did you trust least? What would make it trustworthy?”
“Your outside pick beat your inside pick on one stat — does that change your Call?”
“If your card were about YOU at 30, what would its catch say?” (Only for rooms that have earned it.)
CalibrationA strong catch is specific and sourced (“night shifts on a 7/7 — the guest said day four is the wall” beats “it can be hard”). A strong first-step-at-17 is checkable (“Cert II at TAFE, applications open in Year 11” beats “work hard at school”).
Outside picksSame evidence standard out there as in here. Thin WA ads for a pick (astronaut, pro athlete)? The numbers on how many people hold that job ARE the finding — an honest card can carry it.
Running shortRound one of THE TABLE can go; round two cannot. The sprint can compress to two picks live, two at home IF sources still required. The Scout’s Call is untouchable.
Watch for“The catch makes the career bad” (every career has one — tell them yours) · “inside picks should win” (the rubric never asks; say it aloud) · “cards are the assessment” (cards are evidence; the CALL is the assessment).