CAREER EDUCATION AND CONSUMER, FAMILY AND LIFE SKILLS
Frameworks for Career Education and Consumer, Family, and Life Skills Standards
Curriculum integration is the seamless and effective use of 21st century skills within an instructional setting to support students and teachers in the learning process with administrative support and evaluation. Curriculum integration:
- infuses 21st century skills across all curriculum areas in a relevant learner centered environment that engages students and increases achievement;
- effectively implements technology that requires teachers to develop teaching strategies that lead to academic success for each student;
- supports higher-order thinking skills such as information-gathering, information-organizing, evaluating, problem solving and decision making, while working as a team member and developing communication skills; andd
- requires support of all stakeholders within the community.
For further information on 21st century skills, go to http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/.
When the State Board of Education adopted the State’s graduation requirements, it indicated that career education and consumer, family, and life skills should be integrated across the curriculum. At the high school level, there is a five-credit requirement for those students starting grade nine in the fall of 2004. Please see the High School Graduation Matrix at www.nj.gov/njded/a;s/info/grad.htm.
In order to help districts and schools develop and implement curricula related to career education and consumer, family, and life skills standards, several documents have been developed to assist teachers, curriculum directors, and administrators. A horizontal design can be found at (Insert web link). The purpose of the horizontal design is to show when students need to be able to complete the cumulative progress indicator (CPI) and what would follow.
Committees of people from districts worked on developing framework examples for standard 9.0 career education and consumer, family, and life skills during the spring and summer of 2005. Those framework activities will be posted on this website over time. Please refer back to this site for new examples during the year. Many of the project-based activities developed in Chapter 6 of the New Jersey Cross-Content Workplace Readiness Curriculum Framework: A Road Map for Learning may also be used. See the link at http://www.nj.gov/njded/frameworks/ccwr/. (Be sure to go to Chapter 6.) Framework activities have also been developed related to standard 8.0 technological literacy. Many of the activities that have been developed related to technology also address CPIs under career education and consumer, family, and life skills standards. See these framework activities at http://www.nj.gov/njded/aps/cccs/tech/frameworks/.
The new framework activities were developed for elementary (K-4), middle/junior high (5-8) and high school (9-12). The chart below lists titles of framework activities used in an integrated approach by grade level. Teachers may want to look at lower or higher levels of activities depending on the particular group of student’s interests and abilities. Many of the framework activities have activity pages or sample assessment strategies.
Other useful information:
- A possible way of assessing a student’s overall skills in Career Education and Consumer, Family, and Life Skills is through the use of a portfolio. See Chapter 3 of the New Jersey Cross-Content Workplace Readiness Curriculum Framework: A Road Map for Learning found at http://www.nj.gov/njded/frameworks/ccwr/.
- For those teachers looking for information related to Instructional Adaptations for Students with Diverse Needs go to Chapter 7 of the New Jersey Cross-Content Workplace Readiness Curriculum Framework: A Road Map for Learning found at http://www.nj.gov/njded/frameworks/ccwr/.
- To learn more about project-based learning refer to Chapter 2 of the New Jersey Cross-Content Workplace Readiness Curriculum Framework: A Road Map for Learning found at http://www.nj.gov/njded/frameworks/ccwr/.
- Another tool for teachers is a list of the standards, indicators, and CPIs with short references to the New Jersey Cross-Content Workplace Readiness Curriculum Framework: A Road Map for Learning found at http://www.nj.gov/njded/frameworks/ccwr/. Included in this document is also a brief listing of possible activities that might be further developed by teachers for classroom use. This document will be available soon.
