Developed by:  Cameron Strong

Level: 6-8

Clusters Career Search

Standards Learning  Expectations	This activity will help students acquire competencies which relate to the following standards: 4.  Career Awareness and Employment Readiness Skills 5.  Career Information and Career Goals The student will: 4.2  Locate, evaluate, and utilize skills to interpret career information based on interests 4.4  Explore and relate personal interests and hobbies to career options 5.1  Explore various occupations and classify into career clusters
General Approach	The general approach is to have each student answer self assessment questions and then to use the web to learn more about a career they were interested in already, as well as to find a new career they may not have thought about that sounds interesting to them.
Activity Steps	Have each student sitting at his or her own computer. Direct each student to the following web site: Circle your interests . Tell the students to click on the "Get to know yourself career survey." Have each student follow the directions, circling what is true for them. Tell the students to write down the 2 career clusters they had they most circles under. Have the students scroll back to the top of the page and to look for a career or two under each of those 2 career clusters they had the most circles under. Now direct the students to the following web site: Career Zone . Direct the students to click on the "search button." Tell them to type in the name of each job title they got from the previous web site. Have the students check to see if the job they searched for is in the same career cluster as it was at the previous web site. Ask the students to find a new career they had not thought about previously, possibly getting some ideas from job titles that were discovered using the search engine. If students are having a hard time coming up with alternate careers, direct them to the following web site: http://www.campy.org/ At the end, ask each student to discuss the most interesting career the found, discussing such things as education level required, salary, and things that sound good versus things that sound bad.
Time Required	This activity will require approximately 40-50 minutes, depending on each students computer abilities.
Resources Needed	Resources required are just the 3 web sites listed in the activity steps. Once again, they are: http://www.ed2careers.com/work/clusters/index.htm http://www.nycareerzone.org/index.jsp http://www.campy.org/ The web sites are written out here in case you need to write the full, correct address on the board. They are also listed in the order that they appear in the activity steps section.
Performance Indicators	Students should be able to search for careers using the web and also by using their interests. They should also be able to discuss one job with some detail.