{"id":422,"date":"2016-04-14T21:52:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T21:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisakingcounselor.com\/?p=422"},"modified":"2016-08-27T12:31:14","modified_gmt":"2016-08-27T12:31:14","slug":"career-centers-let-them-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisakingcounselor.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/14\/career-centers-let-them-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Career Centers: Let them Play!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Children learn though play. It’s so basic, that it’s easy to forget when planning classroom lessons. Also, easy to overlook when planning Career Day. This is the year I am branching out to incorporate centers (yup, playing to learn)\u00a0into my program. My friend and colleague Sharon Lightstone has done Career Centers for about 20 years and she with\u00a0a team of parents make it extraordinary at her school. I was inspired by Sharon as well as Sina Pickles and Teresa Sirmans of the Cobb County School District, who shared at a\u00a0best practices session at the start of the year and I decided, it’s time to jump into Career Cluster Exploration<\/strong> Centers<\/strong>. \u00a0With\u00a0the state of Georgia’s DOE expectation of all student getting exposure to all career clusters… this idea was tugging at me to do in an easy to replicate way. \u00a0I hope I can spell it out easily, otherwise do as educators do…. take the idea and make it your own.<\/p>\n

\"center<\/a><\/h4>\n
\"future<\/a>

Center 2: Architecture -Create a Lego Model Home Center<\/p><\/div>\n

\"cooperative<\/a>

Center 1: Construction- Cooperative Bridge Building<\/p><\/div>\n

How Career Cluster Centers worked:<\/h4>\n

For Career Speakers Round Robin, I typically have 4 groups of about 35 students travel in a rotation to hear\u00a0separate\u00a0speakers in 4 classrooms. Each speaker is from one of the clusters that grade level needs to learn about (according to the Georgia DOE). This year, starting with baby steps I took one of the 4 grade speakers out of the mix and added Architecture and Construction Centers. The result was a huge hit.<\/p>\n

I created this Career Cluster activity packet<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>f<\/span><\/span>o<\/span>r the Architecture and Construction Career Cluster. At first, I thought\u00a0I’d run 4 different centers in a room and have the students switch centers after 5 minutes in each center. In the packet you will see ideas and activity outlines for 4 centers. When reality set in (aka I realized that our\u00a0Ipads have a firewall preventing YouTube along with other mild debacles) I decided on doing the most kid-friendly activities and narrowed it down.\u00a0This is how it went<\/p>\n

Each class was split into\u00a04 groups and assigned to a center. So, for a group of 24 there were 8 kids assigned to either RED\u00a0Center 1, RED Center 2<\/span>, BLUE\u00a0Center 1 or BLUE CENTER 2.<\/span><\/p>\n