COGNITIVE GAME OCCUPATIONAL LOTTO

“Occupational Lotto” is a card game for persons aged 12 and over, designed to support learning about different occupations and stimulate discussion about the importance of personal qualities in choosing an occupation. The game was developed on the initiative of the Euroguidance Centre Lithuania.

The game consists of 80 cards and informative supplements: 40 occupational title cards with a short description of the nature of the occupation on the reverse side, 40 sets of personal qualities cards corresponding to the occupations described, as well as a list of personal strengths and a list of occupations. To facilitate the work of the career counsellor, the occupational title cards and the personal attribute cards are numbered, with the corresponding occupational cards bearing the same numbers as the personal attribute cards.

Each profession requires a particular personal quality or set of qualities - for example, a teacher needs patience and curiosity, while a firefighter needs courage and a willingness to help people. This tool encourages a deeper understanding of the professions and a reflection on what personal qualities are needed for specific occupations.

The cognitive game "Occupational Lotto" is a tool for career counsellors to shed light on the criteria for choosing an occupation in a different way. However, it is not an alternative to the vocational guidance tests. The instructions for the game point out that the sets of personal attributes indicated on the game cards are not exhaustive and are not replaceable, but can be added to or changed. No two people are identical, and therefore no two professionals are identical - we all have a set of personal qualities, and it is up to us to make the most of them in the job we choose to do. “Occupational Lotto” can be used as an introduction to topics dealing with personal development and soft competences.

“Occupational Lotto” can be used for both individual and group counselling. The most suitable group size is up to 8 people, but it can also be used in larger groups with multiple units.

The range of options for working with this methodological tool is very wide: for younger pupils it is possible to use the occupation cards alone, while for older ones the occupation cards can be combined with the personality cards. Depending on the topic to be discussed and the form of counselling (group, individual), different variations of the cognitive game can be used. “Occupational Lotto” can be used as a stand-alone tool to stimulate conversation about occupations or as a tool for deeper self-discovery and career choice, in combination with another Euroguidance methodological tool, the “Feedback Game” cards, or by using the list of personal strengths included in the game kit.

The game manual describes the different ways of applying the methodology (for individual or group counselling) and the aims of the application - for deeper knowledge of professions, self-knowledge, future modelling.

Here is an example of how the methodology can be applied to group work:

A career counsellor reads out a personal qualities card and the group tries to guess which occupation is best suited to these qualities (depending on the group's capacity, the list of possible occupations is either given or not, leaving more room for application of the existing knowledge and for active reflection). Up to 10 professions should be chosen for this option. The participant with the highest number of correct answers is the winner. This is followed by a discussion on which profession was the most difficult to guess, what personal qualities the group would add to the list given, why the qualities mentioned are important for a particular profession, what qualities can compensate for the lack of specific personal qualities, how to develop the qualities discussed, etc.