Welcome to my College and Career Awareness site!
All the information given in CCA is free, but I do have many other awesome lesson plans that are available on the Utah Teacher Portal for free, or you can check my store on Teachers Pay Teachers if there are any other lessons that might interest you for your other classes.
All the information given in CCA is free, but I do have many other awesome lesson plans that are available on the Utah Teacher Portal for free, or you can check my store on Teachers Pay Teachers if there are any other lessons that might interest you for your other classes.
Career Cluster Escape Rooms
I have just recently added some VERY EXCITING lessons for 6 of the career clusters--they are Escape Rooms that use either Google Sheets or Excel. Very interactive--kids can work together to solve puzzles and figure out the clues, and in the meantime they learn all about the pathways within that cluster. My students LOVE THEM! Right now I have six, which you can get separately or as a bundle. Each one probably takes over 20 hours to make, so they are not freebies.
My Career Plan
I created a new file called My Career Plan. The idea is that students open this up in Google Sheets and add to it as they do the career lessons all year long. Then, as they complete it, they will always have a reference of the results of their cluster tests, etc.
This is designed to a great artifact when submitting your end of the year summary stuff. I went through the strands and standards and made sure to cover everything I could--like education opportunities and scholarships, pathway completer/concentrator, soft skills, etc.
This Google sheet includes SEVEN different sheets/activities. Use it as you will, but my team of four will do it this way:
This is designed to a great artifact when submitting your end of the year summary stuff. I went through the strands and standards and made sure to cover everything I could--like education opportunities and scholarships, pathway completer/concentrator, soft skills, etc.
This Google sheet includes SEVEN different sheets/activities. Use it as you will, but my team of four will do it this way:
- All teacher complete the My Career Options page 1st quarter. I have made a video for it on Youtube so you can easily make this an online lesson kids do at home.
- One teacher completes the Education portion every quarter with each rotation (As the business teacher, I am doing that. I have a powerPoint and a video linked below for that portion.)
- Another teacher does the My Goals portion. This one sets goals for the future and talks about the career values (helping others, making money, etc). I have nothing else made for this one, though old PowerPoints from previous career lessons might work for it. Our tech teacher is doing this one.
- Another teacher does the Skills section. This goes over the difference between soft skills and hard skills, and they rate their own level of skill in several areas. Our FACS teacher is doing this.
- Another teacher does the Pathways section, which lets them pick a cluster and then find actual classes that are linked to that cluster. Our Info Tech teacher is doing this one--it's probably the most difficult one to do.
- All teachers complete the Clusters page during 4th quarter. This is like a little quiz, where kids have to define and give examples of each cluster and indicate where they learned it.
- All teachers grade the Summary Sheet, which generates automatically. Kids don't have to do anything on this page. You can have them print it or just turn it in.
my_career_plan_-_education.pptx | |
File Size: | 3691 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
I don't have a video for every section--just the Career Options page and the Education page.
Crazy Law Madlibs
crazy_law_madlibs.xlsm | |
File Size: | 179 kb |
File Type: | xlsm |
I know that I want to cover the Law cluster, and it's been overlooked in the past in CCA. No one has really covered it. I still have a lot to create for that pathway, but here is a fun assignment I created called "Crazy Law Madlibs". It requires EXCEL (not Google Sheets) and is a fun activity for opening up a conversation about laws and how they come in to play. It has one crazy law from each of the 50 states that has been turned into a Madlib!
Excel Sample and Blank Schedule
I plan my classes in Excel. I thought I would provide you with a sample schedule of CCA--this is just basically the order I teach it in, but it can be useful when making your own plans. The second file is a blank one that you can use to plan your year. I have used this template for years, tweaking it occasionally. You will have to make your own changes to it--like coloring the rows where there is no school or making your prep period a narrower column.
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Career Cluster Orientation Activity
This is the new activity I created for introducing the Career Clusters, and shared at the 2017 Summer Business Conference for CCA. Below you will find the download for the instruction sheet and the images for the labels.
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Orientation Activity - Business Rotation or Lab with PowerPoint Preferred
I spent all morning getting this thing ready! This is what I am doing on DAY 1 with my students in College and Career Awareness. It will require the students to get into PowerPoint to do the lesson, though it might be possible--though less fun--to do it without. I like the idea of kids getting on the computer right off the bat. The file below has full instructions on how to teach it. I can't give you a time frame, since I haven't taught it yet, but I plan to do it all in one day. We'll see how THAT goes! At the end, students will turn in a simple PowerPoint that will tell you their names, interests, personality type, hobbies, and what pathways they are already interested in. Useful information! Might be fun to look at it again at the end of the year and see if it's all still true!
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cca_orientation_files.zip | |
File Size: | 7856 kb |
File Type: | zip |
Career Buttons
Here are the files for the 50 career buttons I made for my badge machine. This is also a great orientation activity. I have 13 laminated pages with a picture on one side and the name of the cluster on the other side. I introduce all 13, and then the students place the badges where they belong under each cluster. I have an Excel sheet with the key, but know that many careers can be placed in more than one area--for example, a flight attendant could belong in Transportation & Distribution as well as Hospitality & Tourism.
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The PDF File above has the 13 signs I created for the clusters. They are meant to be printed with the image on one side of the paper and the title on the other side. I hang up the images on my board and have the students place a magnet (pictured below) with their name on it under the image they relate to the most. Then I flip them over one by one and introduce them, and the students get a chance to change it.
Above are the same files but with all sixteen clusters, if you are from a state other than Utah, where we only do 13 (which is stupid, I know.) They are zipped and each is saved as a PDF file.
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Career ConnectionIn an effort to take a little bit of the "worksheety" feeling out of this section, I did something a little different for the career connection this quarter. Sometimes I do it at the beginning of a unit, or at the end. I ordered these awesome magnetic sheets that the kids or I can write on, then put on the board and flip them around as needed. So I wrote the occupations, the level of education, and then yearly income on the sheets, and then had the kids arrange them next to the job description they thought it went with. It was way more fun an interactive than having them fill out a worksheet.
The magnetic strips are not particularly cheap, but they can be used over and over again for so many reasons. I got them at Magnatag, and these are the 2x6 siz. I ordered five sets of the same color, so I have 50 of them and it cost me $120. I used my grant money to buy them. Super useful and the kids think they are cool. I just like the ability to rearrange stuff with them. I feel like they have really helped the kids make a real connection to the careers in each area, and recognize the end of one section and the beginning of another. |