Teen Living Skills
Career Cluster Activities

What Do I Do?

Make a transparency of the definition of the clusters. Explain to the students that a cluster is a way of grouping occupations that have many common job duties and characteristics. Discuss with your students how the clusters vary. Ask for their suggestions about different occupations that would be grouped under each cluster.

Assign a team of students a cluster. Teams list requirements needed under each heading

• You should like:
• You should be able to:
• Possible physical abilities:
• Opportunities for experiences:

Tape a card listing on occupation on the back of each student or on their forehead without letting students see the occupation.

Students must move around the room and talk to other students to figure out the occupation taped to them. They must ask questions that can be answered by a “yes” or “no”. When students get a “no” answer, they must move to another student to ask questions.

Sample questions:

• Do I work alone?
• Do I have a high school degree?
• Do I wear a uniform?
• Do I work with data?

Guess the Cluster

Divide students into small groups. Instruct them to organize themselves into “obvious” clusters, such as male/female or light hair/dark hair, etc. 

Have the small groups will try to guess how each group clustered themselves. 

Explain that many job groupings are like this – you can tell by looking at them what cluster they belong within. 

Instruct the groups to divide into clusters that are not so obvious; that is, you may or may not be able to identify how they grouped themselves by looking. The groups will have to talk among themselves to figure out how they want to cluster themselves. 

Once again, each group tries to guess how the other group clustered themselves. The small groups are allowed to ask yes or no questions of the other group to help figure this out. Questions can be:

• Can we tell by looking at you how you are clustered? 
• Does it have to do with your jobs? 
• Does it have to do with where you live? 
• Does it have to do with your education? And so on.

Answer the Question

Write the career cluster titles on a piece of paper/poster board.  Place the titles on the floor or tape them to the wall. Ask students to walk to or stand by the cluster they believe answers the question. Sample questions may include:

• Which cluster offers the most job opportunities in your community?
• Which cluster does your occupation fall into?
• Which cluster do you think you would rather be in?
• Which cluster would your hobby or volunteer work fall into?
• Which cluster do you have the least amount of knowledge in terms of jobs in that cluster? 
• Which cluster do most of your family members' jobs fall into?

 

 

 

Updated 02.21.07