January 19, 2018

Let’s say you come across an activity on Pinterest for middle school students called Time Budget. The description says

“Students enter data into spreadsheets about the time they spend on different activities, such as sleeping, eating, grooming, attending school, doing homework, playing, reading, spending time with family, watching TV, engaging in social media, and so forth. Then they generate pie charts to show what percentage of time they spend on these activities each day, week, month and year.”

Sounds cool! The description says the activity is “Ready to use!” But is it?

Before you ink this activity into your program schedule, here are some things to consider:

Is the activity a good fit for the students in your program? Asking the following questions will help you decide if the activity is right for your 21st CCLC program and its students, or what tweaks might be needed to make it a good fit:

• Does the activity align with program goals?
• Does it target student needs?
• Does it build skills and knowledge that will help students succeed?
• Will it engage students?

These questions pertain to designing activities that will help move students toward meaningful goals. Learn more about intentional activity design here.

Is the activity student centered? The Time Budget activity certainly seems to be student centered, as students will be using their own data to generate personalized pie charts. If some students aren’t familiar with the spreadsheet software, however, the activity could be challenging for them. If you take the time to teach how the software works, those who already know how to use it might get bored. You need a strategy for meeting the needs of all students. Maybe you’ll decide to walk everyone through the process together one step at a time, or have the students who know the software team with those who don’t. Student-centered activities meet students where they are, meet their needs and build on their strengths.

How can the activity connect to school-day learning? The math teacher might think of ways to connect the activity to the academic curriculum. Or maybe the English teacher is worried that students are spending very little time reading on their own, and he could challenge students to budget an additional 30 minutes to reading over the next week. If students are having a tough time finishing homework on time, the activity might spark a discussion of ways to budget their time to meet important goals.      

These are just a few of the opportunities and challenges to consider when adapting a “ready-made” activity from third-party sources for use in your program. Other things to consider are student interests, cultural relevance and accuracy of information. If an activity you find online sparks your imagination, customizing it to fit your program and your students is worth the effort. It might be the difference between good and great.

 

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