Connecting to School Day Learning Standards

By Kim Wiley-Schwartz

Connecting afterschool activities to school day learning is an essential component of any program in today’s results-driven environment. We all understand the impact that our programs have on academic outcomes, especially as the frontline help for homework and tutoring each day, but we often have difficulty expressing and demonstrating this impact in a formal way. It is vital for programs housed in schools to work with principals to align their work with the school’s educational goals and to demonstrate how programs outside of schools reinforce school day learning by incorporating math, science, reading and applied learning.

In New York City, we have two such grids to work from: the New York State Learning Standards (NYSLS) and the New York City Performance Standards (NYCPS). The core subjects are Arts, Career Development, English Language Arts, Health, Physical Education and Family Consumer Sciences, Mathematics, Science and Technology, Social Studies and Languages other than English. Most core subjects have four specific learning goals which should be emphasized in lesson plans. Full descriptions of these standards are available in the following locations:

NYSLS:

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/pub/standards.pdf (basic standards)

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/nysatl/standards.html (interactive)

NYCPS:

http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/TeachLearn/OfficeCurriculumProfessionalDevelopment/nycps.htm

These standards can be incorporated into lesson plans to strengthen your work with the students and to allow you to demonstrate connections between your afterschool program and school day learning to parents, principals, funders, and other stakeholders.

Let’s explore an example: You are putting together a twelve-week curriculum for a third and fourth grade Visual Arts class. The first exercise is a self study, one that participants can do easily and with success. Students draw a large circle on a piece of paper, trace their own hand inside it, and decorate the circle with images that reflect their identity. This lesson plan will easily connect to the Arts (A) standards. However, to further the learning and include English Language Arts (ELA) and Social Studies (SS) learning standards, you can show them “sacred circles” from other cultures and include some reading about them. They then can write about themselves and the reasons that they chose their symbols in journals or sketchbooks when they are done with the project. You can connect these activities to specific learning standards in the following ways:

This example uses the visual arts, but it is important to note that any lesson plan can be organized this way, building on planned activities and making connections to additional standards on the rubric. You can add ELA standards by adding a reading, writing, and facilitated discussion component to any activity. You can add an SS component by looking at examples from other cultures or studying professional examples and discussing their social relevance or value. Any time that you can apply mathematical concepts in a real-world setting (such as comparing numbers and size; understanding geometry; or working with basic addition, subtraction, or algebra) you are using the Math, Science and Technology (MST) Standard 3.

Making connections with the NYSL and the NYCP standards ensures that you are teaching and reinforcing the learning that students are doing every day at school and showing them a different approach to that learning. It enriches the content of your program and aligns your lessons with other disciplines and skills, creating a solid educational approach that principals and parents can get behind.

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