Consistency Can Be a Good Thing for Young People

No matter what the particular goals of your program are, almost everyone wants to inspire certain things in youth, such as a love of learning, good communication skills, a sense of wonder and a habit of reading. When you've determined the most important goals, be sure to do something each day to reinforce them.

Repetition sometimes gets a bad reputation when we think about the "drill and kill" exercises from our childhood. They seemed to leach all spontaneity, energy and creativity from the learning process. Although the execution may have sometimes been poor, there is simply no substitute for practice, repetition and consistent modeling of the things we want children to master. In fact, practice helps teach two other important values—persistence and discipline. Our job as educators is to enhance the value of practice, repetition and modeling by keeping it fresh, invigorating and exciting.

Here are a few activities you can do every day, depending on your unique goals and the time you have in each session. They are appropriate for kids of every age, and by doing them every day, you'll inspire children to continue doing these activities on their own.

Activities to Start the Day

• Begin each day with a short journal activity that anticipates your theme or a lesson you'll be working on during the day. These activities are perfect energizers to start creativity flowing. What's more, if every day you have such an activity written where everyone can see it, the kids will learn to start working on it as soon as they come into the room. It's a great way to keep them productively occupied while everyone filters in. Be sure that you have everyone pair-share what they did. Approximate time: three minutes to explain and conduct; three minutes for sharing.

• Follow up this activity every day by reading aloud a book, poem, article or chapter from a book, preferably one that picks up on the theme of the journal exercise or anticipates some other aspect of the day's lesson. For example, your current project might be to build a Web page about animals in your neighborhood using photos you plan to take that day. With a group of early learners, you could read from a picture book about animals or, for older kids, read from and show the sophisticated photos from a book depicting a famous artist's portfolio. Or maybe you'll read part of Charlotte's Web or Frog and Toad. You don't have to be literal, but make sure there's some connection to the day's work. Approximate time: No more than five minutes; this exercise is supposed to energize and prepare the kids for the day.

• Have a meeting with the kids in the morning to discuss your goals and the projects you are going to work on. It's a grounding moment that helps kids get focused and feel safe, and it instills a sense of belonging.

Other Everyday Activities

• Beginning the day by reading aloud should be only the start of your emphasis on daily reading. Institute related reading activities at several points in each day as appropriate to your activities; make them seem regular and natural, not forced or mechanical. You don't simply want kids to read—you want to inspire a love of reading. In the middle of talking about a community project, you might read a short poem that reflects its value. Read a chapter or part of a chapter from an exciting adventure story.

• Have some silent reading time, as well, to give kids time to read their own books—but you have to read, too. Kids aren't dumb, and they'll know when you're not really into it—so don't try to fool them. If you're going to have silent reading time, make sure you have something you really want to read. If you try to fake it or keep looking around to see if everybody's reading, the kids will catch on. It's all part of good modeling.

• Work at least one community-building activity into every day, especially at transitions. Do them just before or after times when the kids have to sit still for a while and you notice attention drifting or behavior problems. They're not punishment, but fun techniques for getting kids to work together and generate (or expend) energy.

• Try to make sure that every project has a language component so you have the opportunity to work for a few minutes on vocabulary or similar language skills every day, even if it's just a mapping activity to get a project or lesson started.

• Always leave some time for sharing and reflection; it doesn't have to be part of a specific project. At the end of the day, take a few minutes to ask what the kids liked, what they thought about the day's activities, what they learned or what they're looking forward to tomorrow. A good question to ask occasionally to help reinforce ideas of sharing and community is, "Whom did you help today?"