PD on Demand

No More Lesson Plans!? Designing Effective Programs Without the Daily Lesson Plan Crunch

Not all out-of-school time providers come to the field with experience in writing lesson plans or aligning with academic standards. And not every out-of-school time program has a scripted curriculum that these leaders can pull off the shelf and use. No More Lesson Plans!? Designing Effective Programs without the Daily Lesson Plan Crunch is a course that is designed to help new leaders complete the front-end planning of their curriculum and activities, making sure that they are fun while still supporting their students’ learning needs – without the pressure of writing daily lesson plans.

Feedback Can Improve Staff Engagement and Organizational Performance

Do you get stressed thinking about employee performance discussions? Does asking employees for input on your work seem inconceivable? Giving and receiving feedback can be emotion-laden and potentially damaging to your organization’s culture when not done effectively. In this course, we will practice skills to reduce stress around feedback discussions for you as leaders and for your staff.

To Exceed, Read: Designing an OST Literacy Program

65% of 4th graders in the U.S. aren’t proficient readers. So what can we, as out-of-school time facilitators, do to improve the quality of support our students receive in our programs. We begin the course by looking at what reading requires – phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Then we will look at the matrix for reading instruction and how to design code-focused instruction using decoding strategies to support struggling readers. In the third section of the course, we discuss meaning-focused instruction and the ABC’s of leading these activities – asking questions, building vocabulary, and connecting texts to student’s worlds.