AfterSchool KidzLit Best Practices: Creating a Positive Social Environment (Part 3 of 8)

One of Developmental Studies Center's most important program principles is to create a caring community of learners. The programs from DSC are designed to create communities and thereby to provide the close relationships that are prerequisites to learning, and the experience of supporting and being supported by the community’s other members. Why? Children need to be part of “a caring community of learners”—to experience being a valued, influential contributor to a group that is dedicated to the well-being of all its members. Building community is often easier said that done. The Boys & Girls Clubs of America shares some practical techniques that they used to accomplish this hard but so worthwhile task.

The following is an excerpt from the Boys & Girls Clubs of America guide "Best Practices for Implementing the AfterSchool KidzLit Program."* You can also read Part 1 and Part 2.

In order to achieve the AfterSchool KidzLit program’s literacy and character development goals, it is critical to create a relaxed atmosphere in which participants feel safe in sharing their thoughts and feelings with each other, practicing their reading skills, and becoming active listeners. The Club facilitators used many techniques to create this positive social environment, such as:

• Knowing each child by name, greeting them by name before the sessions, and using their names during the sessions.
• Working with participants to set clear expectations for behavior up front to ensure good interactions among group members (DSC calls this setting “Group Promises”).
• Reinforcing desired behaviors with frequent reminders to raise hands when they want to speak, using deep breathing exercises or repeating chants or phrases to help children focus and overcome fidgeting, and signaling who has the floor to speak by handing the person a stuffed animal or other familiar object. A Michigan City facilitator would say, “I’ll wait,” then stay silent until she got the children’s attention. She also kept her young participants attentive by passing out numbered index cards, then using the cards to go around in number order and ask participants questions about the book they were reading.
• Making sure to call on all participants so everyone has a chance to share at some point; this includes gently managing the more gregarious members so they do not monopolize conversations and coaxing shy members to share in pairs or smaller groups, if need be.
• Teaching and encouraging participants to be active listeners. At the Albany Club, the facilitator would introduce the Cool Words in a book before reading it, then she would have the participants listen for the words and call them out in unison as she read the book to them. At a Milwaukee middle school site, the facilitator found that participants liked working quietly on art projects related to a book while she read to them from the book. She would stop from time to time to ask questions about the book’s content, and individual participants would murmur their responses, with others chiming in if they had something to add or ask.

Carefully building a positive social environment netted the Clubs many benefits. The Clubs found that participants became quite enthusiastic about answering questions and sharing their thoughts in discussions, and the young people took to reminding each other to follow their group’s rules so everyone could share. Club facilitators were pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful, rich discussions that the books generated and discovered that participants often wanted more time to continue talking about the books.

“One young man was very shy. We took the members on a KidzLit field trip. We visited a nursing home, and the members read to the residents. After the field trip, he has really come out of his shell. He enjoys reading and has become more outgoing. The residents of the nursing home encouraged him to continue reading and complimented him on his skills. It gave him a more positive attitude about his reading skills and his ability to express himself.” – BGCs of Albany

Best of all, these discussions enabled the Club facilitators to get to know their members better and strengthen their relationships with them. The Harlan County, Kentucky, program coordinator observed, “The books were phenomenal and prompted long discussions with the kids. The conversations ranged from pets to advice each had received from their grandparents. We gained such insight into our kids that we didn’t want to cut the sharing time short. We adjusted our entire afternoon schedule to ensure discussions could continue until everyone was satisfied.”

* Boys & Girls Clubs of America gratefully acknowledges the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, whose generous funding support made it possible for Boys & Girls Clubs across the country to motivate young people to enjoy reading with the AfterSchool KidzLit program.

Note: This guide was developed by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to assist its sites in implementing the AfterSchool KidzLit program. The Boys & Girls Clubs generously shared this document as a facilitation tool to share their learnings, not as an endorsement of the program. You may download the entire guide here.

Megan Green is one of the authors of AfterSchool KidzMath and is the Manager of After-School Programs at DSC.