External Resources

Attendance Works works to advance student success and close equity gaps by reducing chronic absence.  Their website offers a variety of resources to help understand and address chronic absence.

The Afterschool Alliance is a valuable and effective advocate for out-of-school time education.  Their website offers fact sheets to help you advocate for your own program.

The Attendance Awareness Campaign is a nationwide recognition of the connection between school attendance and academic achievement.   Help spread the word with parent handouts, coloring pages, and more!

Reading well by the end of third grade is a critical milestone toward academic success.  The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading  has extensive research on the causes and consequences of the grade-level reading crisis, as well as recommendations for success.

The Education Data Initiative is a team of researchers with a mission to collect data and statistics about the U.S. education system and organize them in an accessible, comprehensive fashion. For example, check out this recent report on refinancing student loans.

Project Appleseed offers you 25 weeks of ideas surrounding family engagement. Each week contains an explanation of ideas or events as well as links to further information.

This resource provides resources for ELL students and families.

A to Z Teacher Stuff offers simple lessons plans for family involvement, conveniently divided into four categories: Preschool, K-2, 3-5 and 6-12.

After describing the benefits and challenges to family involvement, this guide provides promising practices for supporting families, communicating and building trusting relationships with families, hiring and developing family-focused staff, and building linkages across individuals and organizations. It includes profiles of several programs that use the highlighted practices and concludes with ways that evaluation may be used to improve family involvement.

This guide from the U.S. Department of Education talks about how parents can help students at home by setting up a time and place for homework, by guiding and monitoring the homework, and by talking to teachers about school work. Available in English and Spanish.

This resource includes 17 suggestions for improving attendance at activities and workshops as well as examples of how some afterschool sites have implemented the suggestions. The resource also includes a sample parent/guardian interest survey and a letter for recruiting volunteers to help in a program.

The U. S. Department of Education provides multiple resources, in both English and Spanish, that are designed for parents who wish to support their children’s education. Topics relate to preschool, elementary and high school students and include multiple subject areas such as homework, science, mathematics, reading and history.

This brief draws from research and discussions with practitioners and youth to identify 10 practices that are associated with higher levels of youth participation and improved program quality, one of which is to foster engaged and involved parents and families. Effective strategies include building rapport with families and sponsoring family activities where children can share what they have learned.

Teaching Tolerance offers four loosely structured lessons. Each one introduces a topic with a short video, poses questions, offers points of discussion and provides printable, downloadable resources.

This set of lesson plans is organized in three grade bands–PK-2, 3-5, and 6-8–and includes teacher guides and student activity sheets.

From the National Credit Union Foundation, Biz Kid$ is a financial literacy initiative that includes an award-winning TV series, free financial literacy curriculum, outreach activities, a website and a social media presence targeting children 9 – 16 years old. Its focus is to help kids make and manage money.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has resources for both adult and youth financial literacy. The Bureau’s youth program supports K-12 teachers, education leaders, and practitioners by providing information, tools, and resources that lead to more effective design and delivery of financial education.

The Council for Economic Education provides both printable and online interactive curriculum tools, pedagogical support, and a community of peers that instruct, inspire and guide practitioners through the facilitation of financial literacy instruction.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation website provides tools to help teach financial education including lesson plans, videos, and other resources. Resources include a financial education program, an online resource center for educators, consumer news and a youth banking resource center.

This website provides free lesson plans, activities, and readings to teach economics and financial literacy. It offers flexibility and real-world connections to help prepare students with 21^st century skills for college and career readiness. Activities incorporate storybooks and English literacy skills for youth and include more detailed resources for adult family members.

This bilingual program is offered by Sesame Street as a multimedia program to help families share experiences in developing financial basics that will impact their children now and in the future, including a variety of short videos, guides and other resources that can be helpful for informal educators working with young children.

This free online course empowers middle and high school students to effectively manage their finances, make sound decisions, and become stewards of their financial future. Interactive exercises challenge students to make choices in real-life scenarios to achieve important goals around saving, education and career planning and budgeting.

This program from the National Endowment for Financial Education includes a variety of instructional resources for financial education with students in grades 8-12, including  teacher lesson plans, student guide booklets, PowerPoint presentations, activities, handouts and performance-based assessments.

Jump$tart is a coalition of diverse financial education stakeholders working together to educate and prepare our nation’s youth for life-long financial success. Jump$tart offers tools and resources to help practitioners implement financial literacy best practices such as National Standards, an online resource library, and Reality Check, an online calculator that helps students determine the income needed to support their dream lifestyle.

This series of 19 short (under a minute) engaging videos from PBS includes a variety of money topics for children and youth in grades 2-10.

Money Math is a four-lesson curriculum supplement for middle school students that teaches math concepts using real-life examples from personal finance. Specifically designed for grades 7-9, the teacher’s guide includes lesson plans, reproducible activity pages and teaching tips. 

This website is a product of the Congressionally chartered Federal Financial Literacy and Education Commission.  It provides resources for youth, educators and researchers that aim to strengthen financial capability and increase access to financial services for all Americans.

Dedicated to inspiring empowered financial decision making and providing financial education along with practical information to people at all financial levels, this website provides youth and adult financial education resources, training tools from the classroom to the workplace, research and consumer surveys.

In addition to a library of free resources for educators, this organization offers fee-based professional development on financial literacy specifically for after school staff working with high school students, and they host scheduled events from time to time.

These free materials include lesson plans, activity sheets, and assessment strategies for teaching about money and financial concepts in PK-college, with a home-page link to Spanish-language resources on financial education.

WOW!Zone is comprehensive financial literacy program created by TD Bank.  The goal is to provide children and teens with valuable information about money, saving, banking and investing. It’s designed to be educational, fun, and interactive while still providing a solid foundation for everyone to create a strong financial future. 

Making real-world connections to classroom instruction is an important goal of educators. This website, from the IRS, provides an interactive tax education program for middle school, high school and community college classrooms that includes detailed lesson plans and instructional simulations.

Hands On Banking is a free financial curriculum that provides the essentials of financial education, real-world skills, and knowledge that every student can use.  The curriculum is designed for four age groups: Kids (4^th and 5^th), Teens (6^th-8^th), Young Adults (ages 15-21), and Adults. 

This article explores strategies and techniques for promoting literacy skills in English language learners.

BookNook is a rigorous digital intervention and guided reading program for K-8 students.  Check out their free lesson plans and worksheets!

Jumpstart produces educational games for students.

K12 Reader provides free instructional resources for parents and teachers.

The Center for the Book offers free reading materials and instructor resources for users.

This literature review focuses on literacy practices in afterschool settings.

The National Writing Project is a network of sites that provides professional development, resources, and research for educators.

PBS provides videos, interactives, and lesson plans for teachers.

Read, Write, Think offers videos, resources, and professional development trainings for educators.

This report explores strategies for implementing effective summer and afterschool literacy programs.

This article defines organizational culture and then elaborates on various aspects of organizational change, from diagnosing current culture to managing change. Helpful graphics and diagrams are also included.

A highly influential management consultant, Jim Collins uses his website to offer articles that condense years of research and experience across several industries to bring you stories of growth and change.

This webpage on the youth.gov website provides links across a variety of organizational culture topics: announcements, articles, publications, resources, tools & guides, webinars & presentations and youth topics.

A website devoted to strictly “join the movement to prevent ACEs, heal trauma and build resilience.” Information includes blog entries, speakers and trainers and community resources. 

Information regarding how to effectively educate children of trauma including the psychological and behavioral impacts across the age span.

This webpage provides graphic organizers educators can use with students who are struggling with the writing process.

Pediatrician Dr. Nadine Burke Harris explains how abuse, neglect and other adverse childhood experiences can affect the development of the brain and places children at high risk in adulthood for severe health diseases.

This is a podcast that explains the importance of graphic organizers and the various ways they can be used effectively.