Web site - Session Descriptions for 2008 4-H Afterschool Conference

Session Descriptions for 2008 4-H Afterschool Conference

Community Service in After-school
Community service is key to all 4-H clubs as well as it is in the after school program. As more colleges, businesses and organizations devote greater emphasis in efforts put forth by prospective students and employees in community service, the 4-H After-school program can provide valuable opportunities to involve youth in communities service projects. The Erie and Warren County educators will provide examples of community service programs developed and used throughout after-school programs. Participants will have the opportunity to compile a list of activities that they can easily take and implement at their next after-school club meeting.

Reading Makes Cents
This workshop will introduce a new curriculum, Reading Makes Cents, designed for implementation in afterschool settings. The Reading Makes Cents curriculum guide is comprised of more than 40 experiential activities developed around exemplary children’s literature that has money as a theme. The selected children's literature explores ideas, activities, and strategies that will help children learn how to earn, save, share, and spend money. Children's literature provides a rich diversity of settings, people, income levels, relationships, ethnic backgrounds, cultures, religions, holidays, intergenerational friendships all related to money messages and learning. The design of the curriculum features hands-on, exploratory activities that can be completed in an afterschool program. Each activity relates to a theme and highlights a specific financial concept, value, or practice. The literature, concepts about money, and activities are selected to appeal to children in grades 3-5.

Let's Get Real: Reducing Name Calling and Bullying With a Focus on Diversity
Bullying has reached epidemic proportions in American schools and communities. Issues of diversity lie at the heart of much of the bullying that occurs with young people. Yet, open dialogue about issues of diversity are often avoided due to a lack of training on the part of adults.

The “Let’s Get Real” curriculum is designed for youth-service providers in after school programs, teachers, community organizations, camp programs, and religious groups to begin conversations about challenging issues such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, body size, and immigration status, and to help youth make connections between these issues and rampant name calling and bullying.

Workshop participants will be exposed to the curriculum and will be engaged in a sample of the activities that are a part of the curriculum. Presenters will discuss how the program is being used in their programs.

Time will be provided for participants to discuss how the program may be implemented in their own counties.

Food, Culture, and Reading
Food, Culture, and Reading Afterschool is a nutrition education program targeted to youth in grades four to six. It uses literature to learn about food, nutrition, and healthy lifestyles and different cultures. Countries featured include: United States, Mexico, Kenya, Russia, Greece and Japan. This program can be offered in a variety of settings including 4-H clubs, afterschool, classrooms, camps and youth groups.

The curriculum is divided into six units or countries. Each unit includes six activities based on a single culture, a featured book, and a food group from My Pyramid. Within the unit, there are six components: reading, nutrition, cooking, physical activity, cultural experience and a take home activity.

The learning outcomes in completion of the program for the youth are:

Learn basic facts about living a healthy lifestyle and eating a healthy diet.
Gain knowledge about different cultures through reading and exploring international foods.
Stimulate an interest in improving their daily food choices.
Relate to youth in the world.

Conference participants will complete hands-on activities from Units One – United States and Unit 6 – Japan. They will receive several samples of the extra resources used to enhance the program.

Conference participants will also receive a copy of Unit One after they complete the hands-on activities.

Youth Engaged in Technology Curriculum
Today youth are surrounded by technology, computers, videos, video games, GPS, and cell phones to name just a few. They have easily learned how to operate these high tech electronics but most do not know how they work. For the 4-H youth development program to stay current with youth we need to be utilizing technology in our programs and projects. The staff of the Youth Engaged in Technology (YET) program has developed technology curriculum to use with high-school aged youth. This curriculum explores several areas of technology instead of just focusing on a single area. YET is designed to enhance young people’s life skills, social skills, and prosocial skills.

Technology is the vehicle through which the program creates a developmentally intentional learning experience that fosters resiliency. As a developmentally intentional learning experience, this program has three main components. First, the YET program offers opportunities for youth to build positive relationships with adults with their peers. Second, the knowledge, skills, and competencies to be learned and developed are clearly identified, along with the learning methods involved. The YET program focuses on fostering five life skills as well as knowledge gain in math and science through technology. The YET program employs multiple learning methods in delivery of the program’s content. Third, YET is tailored to the individual needs of the participating youth.

Through this presentation participants will learn the structure of the YET after-school program, implementation of the technology curriculum, how to secure community support, and possible funding sources to implement a technology club. The participants will receive hard copies of the notes from the session and they will also receive a CD-ROM of YET Resources. The CD-ROM contains the curriculum, marketing and recruitment materials, evaluation tools aligned with the curriculum, parent involvement guide, and working with behaviorally challenged youth. The CD-ROM contains all they would need to initiate and maintain a YET club.

Heads On, Hands On: The Power of Experiential Learning
Experiential learning, or learning by doing, is the most effective way of helping children gain knowledge, since it actively engages learners, encourages them to think and puzzle things out for themselves, makes them work harder, and ultimately, helps them learn more. Every staff member and youth in an after school program can benefit from 4-H’s “learn by doing,” hands-on approach. Adults act as facilitators, guiding the learning process.

This workshop will:

Introduce the experiential learning model
Define the steps in an experiential learning cycle.
Allow participants to experience activities and apply the model concepts to their work.

Why use experiential learning?

Using multiple senses increases retention
Multiple teaching methods can be integrated to maximize creativity
Child-centered learning becomes the focus
Discovery of knowledge and solutions builds competence and confidence
Youth can learn life skills that will be used, plus subject matter content
Learning is more fun!

Steps in the experiential learning model

Experiene – The activity, perform it
Share – The results, reactions, observations
Process – By discussing, looking at the experience, analyze, reflect
Generalize – To connect the experience to real-world examples
Apply – What was learned to a similar or different situation; practice

Skills needed by adult facilitators of experiential learning:

Focus
Observation
Support and Feedbak
Debrifing

Participants will view a brief video of an after school setting where students are learning by the experiential learning method. They will be encouraged to watch the video for steps of the cycle, and then discuss what they saw. Participants will be able to apply what they learned while preparing to facilitate an activity from “A Sampler of 4-H Afterschool Activities”.

Kitchen Survival Skills for Kids
This workshop series is designed to teach low-income, middle school youth how to plan and independently prepare food items they would be willing to eat and share with others.

The participants have the opportunity to learn how to make what they consider basic “survival foods”—items such as pizza, chocolate chip cookies, lasagna and Chinese food. The instructor talks about and demonstrates each step, but the youngsters in the group physically complete each step of the process.

While they learn to follow recipes and measure ingredients, they also learn about kitchen safety and safe food handling practices. Participants are responsible for all clean up. An adult member from the participating community sponsor group is required to be on-site and responsible for all discipline issues during the time of the classes.

With input from an extensive group of community sponsors and interested individuals, we modified an Oregon Extension 4-H program presented at the 2005 NEAFCS conference. Through the use of several pilots, we determined that in our locale, a series of 4 or 5 workshops, each lasting 2 hours, and preferably composed of a single gender grouping, worked the best.

During the initial workshop the class is given a list of 12 to 20 healthy menu items and they vote to select the 4 items they will prepare during the series. The youngsters are almost always fully involved and interested by the end of the first class and enjoy getting to consume the items they prepare.

If the sponsoring agency wishes them to “take home” sufficient ingredients to repeat the meal or snack preparation exercise, the items must be provided by the sponsor or outside funding is used to secure the “take home” food stuffs.

Pre and post evaluation data has been indicative of significant improvement in safe food handling skills.

Discovering the Fun in Science
4-H is nationally recognized for making learning fun through hands on experiences that encourage kids to try new things for themselves. More importantly these youth learn critical life skills through the experiences. Through the Discovery Science curriculum youth learn critical thinking skills and that can then be applied to other parts of their lives and their surroundings.

Participants in this workshop will experience lessons from the Discovery Science Curriculum (4HCCS Publication BU-07915) and learn about the application in afterschool and school enrichment settings. Topics for the lessons include: meteorology, Spiders, Oceanography, Forestry, Space exploration, and Environment and Conservation.

The curriculum is organized into two volumes. Volume 1 focuses on basic science exploration with activities with few consumable supplies that are easily made into self contained activity kits. Volume 2 provides more in-depth coverage on specific topics. This curriculum is supported by a website of supplemental information and resources managed by Rutgers University at www.discoverscience.rutgers.edu

Further discussion will focus on supplementary materials that can further support topics in further depth and future career opportunities to keep youth engaged to “Keep Discovering” more opportunities for the future.

“Get in the Act” Workforce Preparation Program
Being introduced to positive workforce traits and career opportunities are important as youth grow into young adults. The 4-H workforce readiness curriculum entitled “Get in the Act!” is designed to offer middle school aged youth a variety of valuable topics associated with attaining and keeping a job. Youth who take part in the program will develop life skills needed for success in the workplace. This is accomplished as youth participate in activities such as: learning how their interests and skills can help them choose a job, what career choices are available, positive character traits to enable them to be successful in the workplace, and team-building, leadership, and communication skills. The activities offered in the curriculum are hands-on, experiential and fun.

Time will be provided for participants to discuss how the program may be implemented in their own counties.

The Science of Energy
In conjunction with the National 4-H mandate for new programming in Science, Engineering and Technology and our goal of reaching 1 million new youth with SET programming, the “The Science of Energy” session will be an introduction to the newest DOE/NEED project curriculum materials. The session will feature curriculum titles, “Heat & Heating,” “Light & Lighting,” and “The Science of Motion.” Participant activities will be highly interactive with participants using actual curriculum materials as they conduct energy experiments to learn basic and advanced concepts.

Operation: Military Kids, Building a Community of Support
In Pennsylvania, military youth are often geographically isolated. Operation: Military Kids assists communities of schools, child care providers, and other local resources to build support mechanisms for children who find themselves “suddenly military.” Learn how to begin to bring together communities to support these children and their families. Learn about deployment cycles, Hero Packs, Speak Out Military Kids, and issues faced by military families and their children. The session will be hands on with an opportunity to begin developing strategies to support children in your program.

Playing the Grantsmanship Game
Participants will examine the grantsmanship process and the various funding mechanisms available related to programming for children, youth, and families. The workshop’s goal is for participants to gain an understanding of how to write a grant proposal to implement programming that will make our communities and organizations better places that foster the positive development of our children, youth, and families.

After the School Bell Rings
After the School Bell Rings is a staff development tool that is being used statewide to assist afterschool program supervisors to train their staff about the seven principles of promising afterschool programming. This training will assist you in understanding of the components of a quality after school program and with methods to train afterschool staff personnel. The After the School Bell Rings tool kit contains a training guide, a staff notebook and a DVD with program examples.

You will be provided an experience to review the tool kit’s modules on the following after school program components: Quality Programming, Community and Family Involvement, Research, Evaluation and Knowledge Base, Financing, Staff and Training, Management and Administration and Policy and Advocacy. These basic principles of a quality afterschool programming form the foundation of the tool kit’s training guide.

You will learn how to use the tool kit’s modules to increase staff’s understanding of the basic components of afterschool programming. Participating in this session will:

Expand participants ability to provide staff training for afterschool program staff to increase their understanding of components of quality afterschool programming.
Increase participants ability to encourage program staff’s professional development.
Increase participants ability to provide program staff with skills and knowledge to be more effective in addressing the needs of students and families in afterschool programs.

Nature Journaling & Children
Nature journaling is a simple yet effective activity that is doable almost anywhere. It enhances communication skills, critical thinking skills, science processes, creativity, bservation, recording, and connecting to the natural world. This session will explore the use of nature journaling and its application in afterschool programs. Nature journaling ties into several new waves in education often referred to as called “place-based” and “environment as an integrating context.” The strength of these new approaches is that they provide students with the autonomy and responsibility to use their own experiences in the world around them to make what they read, write, draw, and observe meaningful to them, thus increasing their own desire to learn and discover.