Healthy Living Tips
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Always have written handouts available to promote literacy. Children may want to read about healthy eating and exercise. Handouts should be fun to read and colorful.
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Invite a health expert to speak to your afterschool students.
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Ask students to create posters of the five food groups and sample "healthy" meals.
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Overcome the language and cultural barrier by providing handouts in the native language and bringing in an expert who can speak the native language.
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Create a school or community wide initiative to bring about awareness to the issue of healthy relationships.
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Developing a rapport with the children is extremely important. Get them interested by using humor, relating to their experiences and enacting role-playing scenarios.
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Tailor role-playing situations to appropriately fit the age group. (Examples: dating abuse, sibling rivalry, etc.)
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Create word puzzles that emphasize the steps for peer mediation.
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Encourage all staff to be active in detecting bullying. Staff should recognize the signals of a bully and a person being bullied.
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Ask the kids to do research on the upper respiratory system and its relationship to asthma. Then, ask the kids to develop a game around the upper respiratory system.
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Involve parents in asthma awareness by developing parent workshops.
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Math Tips
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Institute a formal "Math Time," when kids can play with math-related activities.
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Get kids to come up with their own categories for Sort It Out.
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Use Pattern Play to create a beat, then get kids to recite multiplication tables and dance to the beat.
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Have teens teach Pattern Play to the younger kids.
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Get kids to join the Cyberchase Club.
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When a party is coming up, give kids a budget and guide them through the process of figuring out how much it will cost.
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Get kids to bake cookies, and have them figure out how many they need to make and how to multiply the recipe.
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Get kids to make 3-Dimensional shapes as part of an arts and crafts project.
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Use hands-on math activities in parent-child workshops.
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Have students sort types of numbers (eg: fractions, whole numbers, negative numbers) to identify misconceptions.
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Have students walk around to gather data about the afterschool facility; then, they can sort the data.
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Have kids clean-up by "sorting" objects into their proper places.
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Have older kids make their own "For Real" video to teach younger kids a math concept.
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Tie math to literacy by having students count beats in poetry.
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Start investment programs for kids.
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Use a pencil and paper instead of a calculator.
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Science Tips
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Expand current math activities to include science experiments. You can focus on measurements and cooking.
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Implement an entire series of workshops/activities based on resource use, hands on learning, and experimental learning.
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Create a service learning project dealing with environmental issues.
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Explore the connections between sports and nutrition using Plastic Fork Diaries.
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Create terrariums -- based on plant life in the neighborhood -- to use with Backyard Jungle/ Creature Feature
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Use Drops on a Penny, supported by the Web site, to help staff understand how to teach kids science.
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Literacy Tips
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Group leaders should make time for partner reading (kids reading to one another) in addition to reading to the students daily.
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Incorporate group work and Q & A sessions with the multimedia lesson plans.
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Hold a Spelling Bee based on a theme idea. Kids can choose the themes.
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Include arts activities when reading with the kids. For example, after reading The Three Little Pigs to kindergarteners, have them make character puppets out of felt fabric.
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Have kids work as a team to brainstorm ideas for the Super Me Commercial.
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Use the Super Me Commercial to bring shy kids out of their shells.
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Have kids choose a favorite product; then, ask them to create a new commercial for it.
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Have group discussions about current events; make sure kids aren't afraid to ask questions.
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Social Studies Tips
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Use current media and current events to provoke and engage discussion from students, which leads to an expression project (journaling, debating, letters to the editor).
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Have kids choose a famous minority woman and ask if they came in contact with Jim Crow laws.
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Use a competitive trivia game with Freedom: A History of US.
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Video Tips
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Let the kids create their own endings to PBS videos.
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Show videos to parents to get them excited about the program.
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With little kids, ask them to explain what's going on while they watch.
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Coordinate your program with a TV schedule, so kids can take breaks with PBS.
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Computer Tips
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Put media files (sound, video) on a disc, then use show the clip on one computer/projector for all the students.
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Use multimedia resources (websites, television programs, video clips, sound files, and photographs) to enrich learning.
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Older kids can use Web-based activities to gain a familiarity with using the Internet.
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Students can access Web sites and learn/read at their own pace. Web-based learning is ideal for self-directed literacy activities because learners don't have the added pressure of performing in front of their peers.
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Have parent workshops with the Web sites to get buy-in.
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If you don't have computers, print out online activities and hand them out to kids.
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Take kids to the library -- it's a fun trip, and they'll have internet access.
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Classroom Strategies
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Incorporate role play to improve comprehension.
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Utilize guest speakers/personal testimonies to underscore important lessons.
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Encourage students take part in the creation/direction of activities.
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Divide students into smaller groups to allow them to share opinions and make decisions collectively.
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Use parts of the lesson plans in order to accommodate schedule and curriculum needs.
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Allow students to reflect on how a particular topic relates to their lives.
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Get students to participate in teaching.
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Have students work in groups with kids they like, but ask them to decide up front what their group roles will be.
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Incorporate breaks in the activities.
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After students have gone through an activity, ask them to reflect on what was challenging about it.
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Keep parents informed about your activities; then, they can continue them at home.
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Take time to prepare; by previewing material, you can find connections to students' lives and current classes.
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Have the staff learn with the kids in a collaborative environment.
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Ask kids to explain what they're doing when they're playing with hands-on activities.
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Use students' interests to prompt learning (eg: an interest in baseball can help kids learn about statistics).
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After doing an activity, ask kids to decide together which strategies helped them complete their tasks -- and why.
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Use the community: going to the zoo or the park can be helpful for teaching science.
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After field trips, have kids draw or write about what they see; that way, they can incorporate art and literacy into their experience.
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Post the View-Read-Do triangle.
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Give the homework to parents, too.
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Teach kids that in order to get where they want to be, they must be respectful, responsible, and always keep on trying.
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Art Tips
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Create a photography or drawing project involving history, the students' surroundings, and the students themselves.
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Create a performance piece to bring awareness to an issue that the students think is important
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Allow students to videotape an activity and incorporate editing techniques into the production of the project.
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Tips contributed by:
Jose Cruz, Phipps West Farms Beacon
Puiyan Ng, Greenbelt Environmental Education Department
Ehene Nuokeye, Friends of Island Academy
Kimberly Orcholski
Ruben Rangel
Kim Wilson, PS 86 Afterschool Enrichment Program
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Healthy Living