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The Real Game

Overview

The Real Game logo

From this resource came a realisation that secondary school studies have a direct impact on their future lifestyle, an aspect that can only have a positive impact on school retention rates.

Teacher

I like The Real Game because it made me realise that being grown up is harder than it looks.

Student

At last school subjects can be seen to relate to real life and provide a reason for learning.

Parent

The Real Game is a career and life skills programme aimed at students aged 12 to 14.

The core activities take 18 to 23 hours of class time to complete. Optional activities provide opportunities to involve other teachers, parents, guardians and people from the local community.

Programme Synopsis

At the beginning of The Real Game students create wish lists of things they would like as adults. After assuming randomly assigned life/work roles, they experience a “reality check” as they balance their monthly budgets, cope with unexpected chance events, and explore the balance between work and the rest of their lives. They create an imaginary community, and plan group holidays taking into account individual budgets and work schedules. As their role characters are made redundant, they learn how to adapt to change and unexpected situations, and use their transferable skills to enable them to create new work opportunities. Finally, students leave their roles behind and imagine themselves in the future, developing their own personal life/work profiles.

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Objectives

The objectives of The Real Game include enabling students to:

discover unique personal skills and talents with respect to life/work roles and interact positively and effectively with others;

  • build, reinforce and maintain a positive self-concept;
  • see how schooling (all subjects) and extracurricular interests are directly related to future life and work roles, and how furthering knowledge and skills opens doors to new opportunities;
  • explore financial management and budgeting, and realise there is a link between education and training, income and lifestyle aspects such as time available for family, community and leisure;
  • explore a range of teamwork, problem-solving, decision-making and communication skills, and develop effective work habits in multiple life/work roles;
  • explore diverse work and community roles, and discover what aspects of these roles are most satisfying and fulfilling for themselves;
  • explore links and balance between work and broader life roles, including the dynamics of building, living in and contributing to a family and community;
  • explore the impact of chance events and learn how it feels to lose a job through no fault of one's own and how to convert adversity into opportunity
  • explore work search/creation skills as well as effective personal marketing and time management; and
  • make judicious choices regarding school and other aspects of life, feel more in control of decisions, and move positively and with enthusiasm towards personal futures.

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Other Features

The Real Game:

  • includes specific learning outcomes for all sessions;
  • includes many optional activities for use at the discretion of teachers;
  • is easily localised and linked to community resources and realities;
  • links school subjects directly to life and work roles;
  • can easily be linked to other existing career development resources;
  • can be team taught by several subject teachers; and
  • lends itself to involvement of peer facilitators.

Click here to download a full colour programme brochure, which includes a detailed programme summary (PDF 6 pages 436kb).

Click here for ordering details.

Click here for information on the Australian pilot of The Real Game.

Click here  to download a copy of the final report for The Real Game (12-14)  survey of usage, which contains information including: current usage levels of the Game among those who have purchased it; perceptions of the Game (in terms of effectiveness and enjoyment); and perceived outcomes for participants.

Note: You need Acrobat Reader to read PDF files. Free Acrobat PDF reader software is available to download from the DEST software page. Tools to help make Adobe PDF files accessible to the vision impaired are available from access.adobe.com.
 

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Any comments or queries should be sent to: wwweditor@dest.gov.au

This page was last updated on Wednesday, 22 December 2004
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