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 Welcome

 
 

 Choices of Activities

  Test Your Skills
  Practice
  Explore Careers
  Workbooks
 

 

 

 Resources

  Ideas For Users
  Tips for Developing Materials
  Related Sites
     
 

 Contact Us

 
 

 Acknowledgments

 

 

 


Now that the 'How do your skills Measure Up?' site has been available for a few months, we have been gathering ideas from user groups across Canada to provide you with effective ways to use this tool. 
If you would like to contribute your ideas, please contact us.

'How do your skills Measure Up?' provides instructors and learners with an easy to use web based resource to test, practice and explore three of the Essential Skills needed in all types of occupations: reading text, document use, and numeracy. 

'How do your skills Measure Up?' is of particular interest to:
 

 

Teachers (K-12)

  Test Your Skills

Test your student’s skills
Teaching workplace skills to your Career Prep students? Test Your Skills provides an easy to use tool for assessing student competency. It will give you a preliminary idea of how your students’ skills compare with those presented in the more than 170 occupations posted at HRSDC’s Essential Skills website.

Use Test Your Skills at the beginning of your unit (pre-test) to assess your students’ current skill level. Then, as you cover skills in the classroom, use Test Your Skills to assess what your students have learned (post-test). As the level of difficulty of the skills you teach increases, so does the level of difficulty that Test Your Skills assesses for. You can also use Test Your Skills to test the skills your students have acquired through career education or work placements.

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  Practice

Practice makes perfect
With practice, comes skill growth. Completing these activities will give your students more experience filling in forms (document use), reading regulations (reading text), calculating numbers (numeracy) and other workplace tasks.

Does a student need to practice reading text? Choose from Labels or Forms; Notes, Letters, Memos; Manuals, Specifications, Regulations; or Report, Books, Journals. Practice generates an authentic workplace example of reading text in the requested format. Start simple and build in difficulty as your students demonstrate mastery.

Develop classroom activities
Use Practice to help you develop instructional activities to complement your Career Education program. Create lessons that test skills at progressively more difficult levels. Duplicate workplace situations described in the question portion of the problem set and assess student performance using the answers.

Teach the thinking process
There are two forms of answers: (1) the answer; and (2) a detailed, step-by-step description of one approach you could take to reach that answer. These expanded answers highlight the thinking required to arrive at the answer. It is this thinking process that is the most transferable skill of all. Use these steps to show your students how they might apply a similar approach to other tasks. Once they have learned how to critically examine a task and break it down into a series of manageable steps, they can apply this method to many other tasks.

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  Explore Careers

Develop classroom activities
Need real work examples to give you ideas for developing classroom activities? Want to show how a skill that you teach is used in a particular occupation or set of occupations?  Need to highlight the relevance of what you are teaching? The Explore Careers section highlights over 90 occupations profiled by HRSDC’s Essential Skills Project. Occupations are sorted by name or National Occupation Codes (NOC). Select one of the occupations and you will be taken to a page that provides a brief description of that occupation as well as an opportunity to try some activities typical of that work place position. It also has links to the full profiles at the HRSDC Essential Skills database and additional information at the NOC database.

Prepare for career fairs, workplace visits, guest speakers and internships
Explore Careers provides almost everything you could want to know about 75 specific occupations. For each occupation, you are provided with a simple description and links to more detailed information. One link connects you to the HRSDC site that itemises and provides examples of all the Essential Skills required by workers in that occupation. Another link directs you to HRSDC’s NOC Search Engine where you will get detailed information on the main duties performed by and employment requirements of these workers, as well as links to similar occupations.

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   Tips

  1. You don’t have to be online in order to use How do your skills Measure Up in your classroom. If you have Adobe Reader 5.0, with just a couple of clicks of your mouse you can open and print one document that contains the questions and answers for each problem set. Then you have paper versions that you can use anytime, anywhere. Use them to plan lessons. Or, photocopy the questions for students who don’t have access to a computer.

  2. For more ideas on using Test Your Skills, Practice, and Explore Careers as self-directed assessment tools, check out Students and Workers.

 
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Adult Basic Educators

  Test Your Skills

Test your learners’ skills
Do you need to design classroom activities or programs to meet the individual needs of your learners? Do you want to assess the range of skills possessed by learners who may have diverse occupational experiences? Do you want to help your learners set personal skill development targets? Test Your Skills provides you with an easy to use tool to assess the individual skill sets of your learners. With the resulting information, you will be able to group learners of similar abilities or backgrounds to work together to explore new skills. Or, conversely, you may wish to team up learners with diverse backgrounds and skill sets so that they may learn from each other.

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  Practice

Practice for the real world
If you have learners that are retraining to enter the workforce or exploring new career fields, Practice provides them with a valuable tool for developing basic skills used in real workplace settings. For example, learners who lack confidence when working with numbers might want to build their skills by practicing Numeracy. Here, they can work through practice activities in Money Math; Scheduling, Budgeting and Accounting; Measurement and Calculation; and Data Analysis.

Bring real world examples into the classroom
Practice also provides an easy to access bank of authentic work place examples to integrate into your adult education program. These examples can provide the inspiration for new instructional activities or they can supplement existing lesson plans. For many learners the inclusion of authentic work place examples, using skills they are learning in the classroom, will make for a richer, more relevant learning environment.

Teach the thinking process
There are two forms of answers: (1) the answer; and (2) a detailed, step-by-step description of one approach you could take to reach that answer. These expanded answers highlight the thinking required to arrive at the answer. It is this thinking process that is the most transferable skill of all. Use these steps to show your learners how they might apply a similar approach to other tasks. Once learners have learned how to critically examine a task and break it down into a series of manageable steps, they can apply this method to all other tasks.

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  Explore Careers

Explore options
Are some of your learners rethinking their present occupations or training for new ones?  Explore Careers will help you to help them learn more about specific occupations. Here they will find out more about the Essential Skills required for 75 occupations ranging from Babysitters, through Greenhouse Workers, and Wastewater Plant Operators. For each occupation, they will find a basic description, sample job titles, detailed information on Essential Skills required, and a description of duties and employment requirements. Then, they will get an opportunity to explore some activities typical of that occupation. In conjunction with Test Your Skills and Practice, Explore Careers will help learners assess whether occupations in which they are interested will be a good match to their current skill sets, interests, and life goals.

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   Tips

  1. For more ideas on using Test Your Skills, Practice, and Explore Careers as self-directed assessment tools, check out Students and Workers.

 

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Career Counselors and Employment Trainers

  Test Your Skills

Test your clients' skills
When new clients come to you for help with retraining or advice on changing careers, Test Your Skills is an invaluable tool for helping to assess their existing skill sets. Whether guided by you or self-directed (refer to Students and Workers for more information), your clients will be able to try out a wide range of occupational skills in Reading Text, Document Use, and Numeracy, at varying levels of difficulty.

Although it is an informal assessment, it will give you a good idea of how your clients’ skills match the ones described in HRSDC’s Essential Skills Profiles. You and your clients can see their skill strengths and areas needing improvement. With this information, you can help clients explore careers that are a good match to their existing skills or you can help them focus on developing their skill areas so they can pursue careers of interest.

Test Your Skills can also help clients to assess their own skills in preparation for resumes, job interviews, or training. And, it can provide an introduction to some of the requirements of jobs or career fields that interest them.

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  Practice

Practice building your skills…
Show your clients how what they are learning can be applied in the workplace. Practice allows clients to work with activities that will help them build skills in the areas of reading text, document use, and numeracy in careers they are interested in exploring. And, it allows them to gain additional experience practicing skills required in careers of interest to them.

…and build your confidence
Clicking on Skill Type and selecting a specific area to practice presents clients with a set of questions and answers relating to authentic workplace applications. Ultimately, Practice gives clients the opportunity to build confidence in their ability to succeed in the workplace by helping them to build job skills before they even apply for a job.

Examine the thinking process
There are two forms of answers: (1) the answer; and (2) a detailed, step-by-step description of one approach you could take to reach that answer. These expanded answers highlight the thinking required to determine the answer. It is this thinking process that is the most transferable skill of all. You can use these steps to show your clients how they might apply a similar approach to other tasks. Once they have learned how to critically examine a task and break it down into a series of manageable steps, they can apply this method to many other tasks.

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  Explore Careers

Explore
Explore Careers provides the most immediately relevant tool for clients who are interested in doing just that, exploring careers. Whether retraining for a job similar to one already held or looking to make a change, clients will benefit by being able to explore more detailed information on over 90 jobs, cross-referenced to HRSDC’s Essential Skills Profiles.

For each occupation, clients will find a basic description, sample job titles, detailed information on Essential Skills required, as well as a description of duties and employment requirements.  Then, they get an opportunity to explore workplace activities typical of that occupation.  

Explore Careers gives clients a wealth of career information in one easy to navigate, clearly organized area. For some clients who have a well-developed, varied skill set, this part of the site may be the only area they need to visit.

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   Tips

  1. For more ideas on using Test Your Skills, Practice, and Explore Careers as self-directed assessment tools, check out Students and Workers.

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Students and Workers

Need a self-directed assessment tool?
If you are a high school, college, or university student, you may be wondering what you would like to do for a career. You may be looking for a summer job or co-op placement. Or, you may be unfulfilled in your present job and ready for a change. How do your skills Measure Up is a great tool to help you assess your current skills, identify what new skills you may need, practice those skills, and explore careers and the specific skills they require. If you have access to a computer, you have access to a valuable, easy to use, self-directed assessment and learning tool.

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  Test Your Skills

Do you have what it takes?
Need help finding out what skills you have? Are they the skills you will need in your future job? This information might influence your future career options. Test Your Skills will give you a good idea of how your skills compare with the ones described in the more than 200 occupations profiled in HRSDC’s Essential Skills website.

Test Your Skills is easy to use as a self-directed assessment tool. Start at Level 1-2. Once you get 80% on two self-assessments, move to the next level. The site provides questions and answers in a printable, portable, document format. Work on your own or with a partner testing each other. As your skills grow through practicing work place skills in the classroom, or career placements, you can use Test Your Skills to track your progress. As your skills grow, you can watch your career options multiply!

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  Practice

Practice now for future opportunities
You may want to practice specific work place skills before applying for a job. Completing Practice activities will give you more experience filling in forms, reading regulations, calculating numbers and other workplace tasks. Or, you might want to find out how skills you are learning in the classroom are used in the every day world of work.

Practice the thinking process
There are two forms of answers: (1) the answer; and (2) a detailed, step-by-step description of one approach you could take to reach that answer. These expanded answers highlight the thinking required to arrive at the answer. It is this thinking process that is the most transferable skill of all. Examine these steps and explore how you might apply a similar approach to other tasks. Once you have learned how to critically examine a task and break it down into a series of manageable steps, you can apply this method to many other tasks.

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  Explore Careers

Explore your options
If you are a high school, college, or university student, Explore Careers will provide a valuable bank of detailed information on 90 different entry-level occupations. Look here to identify occupations that suit your current areas of study or areas of personal interest.  Here, you will find a simple description of each occupation and links to HRSDC’s web pages for detailed Essential Skills Profiles and NOC information. On the Essential Skills web site you will find a concise list of Essential Skills required for that occupation. At the NOC site, you will find a description of that occupation’s typical duties and employment requirements.  Now that you have identified the skills you will need and what kind of duties you will be expected to perform, you are ready to try your hand at some sample work place activities.

That is here too!

If you are in the work force already, you will find this area to be of particular value. Adult learners have said they like the fact that they can go to this one area of the web site and get all the information they need to start exploring other career options.

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The Measure Up website is made possible with financial assistance from: