By Daniel Laurendeau | Vice President of Operations
For the 2014-2015 program year, Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland Metropolitan Area adapted some new components to our existing Literacy programs. The intent is to serve a broader number of youth across the organization with the intent of monitoring the impact of these programs to demonstrate outcomes that are tied to their school success. The new components involved the implementation of new curriculum and taking on some new strategies that met the needs of a broader scope of youth across the six Club sites, while expanding services to several additional extension sites across the Portland metro region.
The primary addition to the Literacy & Education programs was the addition of Interactive Novel Studies, described below, the addition of this component is a phase 1 approach for the 2014-2015 program year.
Interactive Novel Studies (phase 1)
Youth are divided by grade level reading groups and focus on specific reading curriculum based on novel studies that align with school district’s curriculum. Each curriculum is spead out over 4-6 weeks. In addition to reading the daily materials, staff engage participants in high yield learning activities and hands on projects tat directly relate back to the assigned reading topic. This multi-sensory approach to reading and engagment of participnts in a hands-on experiential learning activities, provides a strong connection to reading assignments and comprehension of the reading material. Youth participate in, and complete a number of staff guided projects to help reinforce and demonstrate their comprehension of the readings, these projects include high yield activities such as:
Projects are designed to be fun and engaging while also encouraging teamwork and the development of independent interests in learning. Reading Curriculum is designated by Program Administration in conjunction with Literacy Staff, so that sets of books can be rotated throughout the individual site locations, creating a consistent agenda of reading materials, curriculum and high yield learning activities that are easily planned and transferred from one site location to another throughout the program year.
The addition of this new curriculum component is a valued resource, but also provides an important connection between Club members learning activities during afterschool hours that keeps them engaged in the same materials that are used in their local schools. The addition of the high yield learning activities which is provided at the Boys & Girls Clubs provides youth a learning environment which is strongly reinforces a childs comprehension of curriculum, and engages them in activities which are directly tied back to the Interactive Novel Studies
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