You are applying what you already know about skills, pathways and applications to a real plan for workplace contact.

One three-day placement is valuable. It is not the whole picture. A workplace interview surfaces decisions you cannot see by watching. Reflection on part-time or voluntary work you already have turns past hours into evidence, not just a line on a CV.

Today you will take a stance on the three forms, see what each gave one student alone, then lock a Broad Engagement Plan that uses all three.

Before you plan anything, mark what you honestly think about the three forms of workplace engagement. You will hold your stance against Aoife's case and Rory's sample plan later in the lesson.

Key terms in play: work experience or shadowing (supervised tasks, or following someone through their day), a workplace interview (a planned conversation about role and pathway), and prior-work or voluntary reflection (turning real hours you already have into specific evidence plus a named limit). Broad engagement means using all three.

First: open or create Broad Engagement Plan in your Strand 2.2 portfolio folder as an ordinary cloud document. That document is the only place you write your plan today.

Work through Aoife's case in the worked example. She combined work experience, a workplace interview and reflection on prior voluntary work. Track what each form gave her that the others did not.

Look back at your stance from the last step. If you leaned toward "placement only" or "prior hours do not count", check whether Aoife's paragraph still stands if any one of her three sources is removed.

Analyse in pairs (short notes only)

• What did the placement show Aoife that the interview could not?
• What did the interview add that watching and helping did not?
• What did the GAA reflection prove that the club placement never touched?
• Where would her learning have been thinner if she had dropped any one of the three?

Then produce your own plan

In Broad Engagement Plan, write under three headings:

1. Placement or shadowing — organisation (named if you have it, or the type you are targeting), experience or shadowing, rough timing, what you want to learn, who you will contact first.
2. Workplace interview — who (role is enough if you do not have a name yet), when relative to placement, and three draft questions that go beyond "what do you like about your job".
3. Prior work or voluntary reflection — the real hours you already have (or "none yet" and where you could get some), and two specific moments you will write up, including one limit of what that experience did not teach you.

If you have no prior hours yet, use starters like: "None yet. Reachable door within a month: …" / "Moment I will aim to earn: …" / "Limit I already expect: this will teach me … but not …".

A plan with vague "I will try to talk to someone" lines is not finished. Name doors you can actually knock on. Save the file in Strand 2.2 before you move on.

Label the sample Broad Engagement Plan below. Mark what is concrete, what is still thin, and what shows why the three forms combine. Then fix any weak spots in your own Broad Engagement Plan before you save it.

Call-back: look at the stance you took in step 2. Does Rory's sample change a "placement only", "prior hours do not count", or "interview is just chat" call?

What you covered

• Broad workplace engagement means using placement or shadowing, a workplace interview, and reflection on prior part-time or voluntary work as a set, not as optional extras.
• Each form covers a blind spot in the others: tasks and culture, unseen decisions and pathways, and evidence you may already hold.
• You drafted a Broad Engagement Plan with a next action on placement, draft interview questions, and prior-work moments (including an honest limit).
• You checked your plan against a concrete sample so vague lines could be tightened before the next contact step.

Save Broad Engagement Plan in your Strand 2.2 folder (S2.2/Broad Engagement Plan). Later lessons on first contact, conditions and placement days will run off this page.