Building Literacy and Life Skills Through Hands-On Learning Afterschool
Afterschool programs many times seen as a place for homework help or merely adult supervision.
However, when designed intentionally, afterschool programs can become places that foster real-world literacy and arithmetic, increase student engagement, and build real-world skills that will last for a lifetime.
In today’s educational environment where education seems to evolve around testing reading, writing, and mathematics, much real-life learning has been cast out of curriculum.
Classes like Home Economics have been put to the wayside to make room for more academic classes.
Therefore, many skills that were once taught in schools have to now only be taught in the home, assuming a family member has that skill.
Student disengagement and gaps in skill levels are consistently concerns in the education realm, especially at rural, Title I schools.
As educators, we have to use afterschool enrichment time with real-life skills as well as academic growth.
Through the Afterschool Centers on Education (ACE) Program at Gonzales Junior High School in Gonzales, TX, I have worked with the program leaders to design hands-on enrichment activities.
These hands-on enrichment activities are candle making, canning pickles, baking, making bath bombs, bath salts, soaps, lotions, sewing buttons on, and cooking.
Although these activities are seen just to be recreational, they are research-based practices that help promote literacy, improve motivation, and even entrepreneurial thinking.
Engagement for Literacy Growth
A major factor in improving literacy is student engagement.
When students see relevant activities, they tend to be more motivated in what they are learning; comprehension and persistence improve (Wigfield & Guthrie, n.d.).
Traditionally, literacy instruction often struggles to connect with students who don’t see a relevance to what they are learning applying to their lives.
ACE will give students unique opportunities to fill the gap.
For example, during candle making, the students must read and comprehend procedural texts, follow the multi-step directions given, measure ingredients accurately, and present and explain the process of their finished candle.
Each step that the students complete has components of ELAR within them.
The steps require understanding vocabulary, reading comprehension, oral communication, and sequencing.
Click here for a step-by-step guide to candle making!
Students are engaged in real-world tasks like following a recipe, and the outcome is a usable, tangible product.
Likewise, making pickles incorporate informational texts about food preservation, procedural texts, scientific vocabulary, and discussions about cultural traditional recipes.
These texts will align with research that literacy improves when it is implanted in meaningful and context-rich experiences (Rasinski et al., 2017). When students understand the “why” behind learning to read and write, their motivation to do so increases.
Life Skills and Entrepreneurial Thinking
Apart from literacy, the enrichment experiences listed cultivate life skills and gives students a more entrepreneurial mindset and skills to pursue it.
Schools are called to prepare students for not only tests, but adulthood. Learning from experiences helps foster problem solving and critical thinking skills, gains responsibilities, and gives awareness to finances.
During candle making sessions, students learn how to calculate measurements of batches and costs, discuss potential pricing if for sale, consider what their brand would be, their sales markets, and analyze their product quality.
These discussions benefit the students by introducing business basics and concepts in a way that is fit for their age group.
Students start to understand how supply and demand works, how profit works, and about aesthetics and customer appeal.
Finally, after this process is done, students will have gained the confidence to begin creating on their own and potential products to sell.
Home Economics sessions through ACE have components of finance, preparing food for themselves and the community, and recognizing potential future business opportunities.
Home Economics sessions reinforce household and business management skills, planning, time management skills, financial understanding, accurate measurements, and understanding health standards.
Research supports active learning experiences enriches both academic and self-improvement development (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017).
Furthermore, when students participate in hands-on activities that incorporate literacy and real-world skills, they build their portfolio of transferable employability skills to go with them throughout their life.
Afterschool Programs Build Equity
Afterschool programs, for many students, offer access to ventures that they may not otherwise have.
Especially in Title I schools, ACE enrichment can help equalize access to introducing students to different careers, giving them creative, potentially profitable outlets, and opportunities to display leadership qualities.
Additionally, family engagement will also strengthen when students bring home usable items that they have created and prepared.
Discussions in the home will transition from the basic “What did you do at school today?” to real life conversations about finances, budgeting, cooking and baking, and designing brands and products.
In fact, meaningful family engagement improves student outcomes when families feel connected to learning (Henderson & Mapp, 2002).
All in all, when a student can excitedly share a jar of pickles that they canned or a homemade candle that they created, students are showing and sharing literacy, science, and business strategies clothed as enrichment activities.
Afterschool Academic Investment
Conclusively, after school programs like ACE should not be viewed as just adult supervision or homework help, but an extension of academics.
When sessions are structured intentionally and innovatively, academic goals can be met.
By integrating real-life projects into the curriculum, students will gain increased literacy skills, engagement and motivation, and build lifelong foundational learning.
As educators involved in this program, we must continue to find creative yet meaningful activities that will maintain student interests to improve academics.
Hands-on activities aren’t just extra-curricular but are displays of learning in action.
ACE offers an opportunity to prepare students for not only traditional literacy and mathematical skills, but real-world, practical skills that will support them for years to come.
References
Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective Teacher Professional Development. https://doi.org/10.54300/122.311
Henderson, A., & Mapp, K. L. (2002). A new wave of evidence the impact of school, family, and community connections on student achievement. Austin, TX Southeest Educational Development Labo ratory. - references - scientific research publishing. (n.d.). https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=796577
Wigfield, A., & Guthrie, J. T. (n.d.). The impact of concept-oriented reading instruction on students’ reading motivation, reading engagement, and reading comprehension. Handbook of Research on Schools, Schooling and Human Development. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203874844.ch29