Enrichment Clusters: A Practical Plan for Real-World, Student-Driven Learning

In today’s high-pressure atmosphere to “get the scores up,” teachers and students find themselves faced with more and more highly-structured, prescripted lessons that allow for little creativity and exploration.  However, both students and teachers deserve a balanced education that includes exciting opportunities to delve into areas of strong interest.  Student-driven enrichment clusters challenge the entire school family (students, teachers, staff, parents, and community volunteers) to investigate and engage in topics as professionals, applying advanced content and authentic methods to develop products and services for real-world audiences. Step-by-step guidelines show school staffs how to set up an Enrichment Cluster Program within the regular school week, train staff and community volunteers, create successful clusters, assess student products, evaluate the program, and more.  Easy-to-use staff development activities and dozens of reproducibles help schools quickly get the program up and running with minimal time and funding. 

Grades K-9