Know

在你的计划中应该有一个良好的每日时间表。儿童和青年应该知道时间表，对他们的期望，以及下一步要做什么。有许多方法可以创建和维护计划。尽管在你的课程中，常规是必不可少的，但它们应该是灵活的，并且对儿童和青少年的需求保持开放。

Creating an effective schedule is like putting together a puzzle or a favorite recipe. There are certain ingredients, or elements, that go into an effective schedule. The order and style of those elements is up to you. This lesson will introduce some elements to consider in schedules for school-age children. Then you will have a chance to consider how best to arrange these pieces for your school-age program. The schedule is the “big picture” of the main activities that you and the children and youth engage in daily. Routines, on the other hand, are the steps done along the way to complete the schedule. Routines help provide a pattern and predictability to one’s day (Ostrosky, Jung, Hemmeter, & Thomas, 2007). This lesson will also address how to create and support your program routines.

Smart Planning and Organization: Potential Parts of a School-Age Schedule

Each school-age program is different, so it is important to discuss with your trainer, coach, or supervisor to see what the expectations of your setting are. You may wish to ask him or her if there should there be a brief whole-program meeting each day, for example, or if all children and youth must eat snacks together at the same time. Below we outline the important daily elements that are part of most school-age programs. You will want to consider these elements when structuring your program’s schedule.

1. Free-Choice Time

Children and youth need many opportunities to engage in play and to follow their interests. An easy and effective way to provide these opportunities in the school-age programs is to give children free-choice time. Free-choice time is a period during which children make their own choices about what activities they engage in. Typically this involves children and youth choosing experiences at one or more activity areas in the program (see Lesson Two for more about activity areas). Your role during free-choice time is to make sure each child and youth has the opportunity to pursue his or her interests and to make the most of these learning opportunities, in other words to plan high-quality experiences and offer developmentally appropriate materials in each activity area. You may also need to monitor the number of children and youth at each activity area to make sure that certain areas are not overcrowded, and make yourself available to children and youth to support their activities. Children and youth learn best during free-choice time when teachers and staff actively scaffold their learning (Chien et al., 2010).

In many school-age programs, especially in after-school programs, a majority of the program day is free-choice time. Remember that school-age children and youth may not have many opportunities for choice in the formal school day, so by offering free-choice time you are offering a much needed opportunity to have autonomy over one’s time and ideas.

2. Outdoor Time

与室内自由选择时间一样，户外时间也是儿童和青少年一天中的重要组成部分。户外时间类似于自由选择时间，因为它通常允许儿童和青少年指导他们自己的游戏和学习，并遵循他们的兴趣。但是，与室内自由选择的时间不同，室外时间提供了更大的机会来加强大肌肉和与自然界的互动。研究表明，花更多时间在户外活动的儿童和青少年的身体活动量更大，因此，他们未来患健康问题的可能性更小（儿童与自然网络，2012年）。对于学龄儿童和青少年，建议在项目中每三小时提供狗万app怎么下载至少30分钟的户外活动时间（认证委员会）。

3. Small- or Large-Group Activities

Small-group activities offer a chance to focus on important learning goals in a personal setting. These types of activities are ideal for promoting the active engagement of children and youth. Wait time is reduced because fewer children and youth are involved, and children get to spend more time actively manipulating and using materials. Small-group activities also allow children and youth to interact with their peers and receive one-on-one attention from the teacher or staff member.

在学龄项目,小组活动take place across activity areas. You may have a staff member helping to lead a small-group theater activity or a group project around football, creating a board game or constructing a model arena. Compared to preschool programs, school-age programs offer children and youth more choice regarding the small-group activities they participate in, but this time is typically different than “free-choice” in that there is more direct staff involvement and scaffolding of a project or idea.

根据规模的不同，一些项目还可能包含一个简短的“大团体”或“整个团体”时间，所有儿童、青年和工作人员聚集在一起。当项目包含大量的小组时间时，他们通常将此作为一个会议，工作人员简要地分享当天或每周的一些活动和项目。这也可能是儿童和青年分享或展示他们在项目中所做的一些工作的时候。在这段时间里，有些节目还可以选择结合阅读、特别的外部演讲者或与儿童兴趣相关的演示。狗万充值平台

4. Transitions

Some transitions are unavoidable in after-school programs. There are times when children and youth must stop one activity and start another (e.g., cleaning up activity areas and lining up to go outside). Transitions can be a difficult part of the day, especially for younger school-age children as child engagement can be low during this time (Vitiello et al., 2012). Even though some transitions are necessary, staff members can do their best to (a) minimize transitions, (b) keep wait time to a minimum, and (c) keep children engaged during transitions.

尽量减少过渡,考虑所有的活性ities in your day that require all children and youth to do the same thing at the same time. First, ask yourself: Are all of these transition times necessary? For example, the importance of small-group time was mentioned above but this does not mean that small-group time needs to be a separate block of time in your school-age program day. Instead, you could make free-choice time longer and include small-group activities as choices within the free-choice time period.

You can also consider if it is possible for children and youth to make some transitions on their own. For example, with snack time, you could decrease a number of whole-group transitions by offering “open snack.” Here, staff simply prepare the snack table and offer it as a choice, and children and youth come and go from this space as they are ready. In school-age programs, independence is often promoted by laying out picture cards or written directions to indicate how much food to take and reminders of what to do when finished. Open snack can not only decrease transitions, but it can help children and youth learn to be aware of the signs of hunger or thirst within their own bodies and give them greater control over meeting those needs.

There are also other ways to keep children and youth positively engaged during transitions. Like adults, school-age children appreciate knowing ahead of time when a change is coming. For example, before the end of free-choice time, it may be helpful to give children a “5-minute warning” when there are 5 minutes left of play time before it is time to clean up. This lets children and youth know they need to wrap up their play, or that they should work on finding an appropriate space to save their work or project to continue at a later point.

Finally, work to make sure you have all the materials ready for the next point in the schedule. If you are getting ready to go outside, for example, have one staff member gather all the necessary materials to take outside while the children and youth are cleaning. This decreases the “stop and wait” time for school-age children. Children and youth are more likely to act out or create their own fun when bored during wait times, so thinking proactively about decreasing this time in your schedule can help ward off these problems and make the day more enjoyable for all.

5. Routines

例行s are also an important part of your program day. Routines in school-age programs may include things such as arrival time, cleanup time, lunch time, and departure time. Many routines, such as meals or group time, are necessary and helpful for building a consistent classroom community. Planning is the key to successful routines. Routines should match a child’s stage of development. For school-age programs, this can be tricky, as there is likely a large range of developmental ability across the children and youth in your program. Although all children in your program should be encouraged to do things on their own and routines should be set up to support all children’s independence, for younger children in your program or some children with special learning needs, it is important to remember to keep routines clear and uncomplicated.

Some children and youth engage in these routines with no problems. Other children have a harder time. There are things you can do to help all children and youth make the most of these daily routines. First, you need to think carefully about what you want children to do. Think of a routine, for example, like afternoon arrival. What exactly do you want children and youth to do when they enter the room? For some school-age staff members, the answer is: Come in quietly and get started. Unfortunately, this kind of answer doesn’t give children and youth much information. What does it mean to “get started”? Think about this sequence instead: Sign in, put your belongings (e.g., backpack, jacket) in your cubby, wash your hands, find a quiet activity in an open activity area, and move your tag card in the activity management system or choice board to show you have chosen to start in that area. Can you see how children and youth would likely be more successful if they knew these details?

It is often helpful to plan your routines as if you needed to explain them to a brand new teacher or child in your program. What exact details would that individual need to know?

If children and youth are struggling with a particular routine, it can be helpful to observe where the routine falls apart. Think about a routine in your school-age program that does not go as smoothly as you would like. Maybe children and youth in your program have a hard time during the last 15 minutes before program closing, when you typically ask them to focus on cleaning up the materials in different activity areas. Spend some time watching children and youth during this time.

• Do they complete any of the steps in your end-of-the-day cleanup routine?
• What directions do you find yourself repeating over and over?

If you notice that children often leave the activity areas without cleaning up to go gather their belongings from their cubby or locker when their family members arrive, this can give you important information. Your indoor environment and schedule may be set up in such a way that distracts from this end-of-the-day routine. Perhaps the cubbies and lockers are too far away from your activity areas at the end of the day, so children, youth, and their families may feel rushed to get their belongings before closing time. Perhaps there are so many choices at the end of the day that it feels overwhelming to clean everything up, especially at a time when children and youth may be excited to reconnect with their families. Consider offering just two or three simple activities near closing time, so there are not so many areas to clean up at once. Think about designing your program and schedule in such a way that it guides children and youth into successful routines. Perhaps at the end of the day, you can offer a clear path from your few open activity areas to the cubbies and lockers and the sign-out sheet. Think the same way about other routines.

• Are snack spaces situated near the sinks and kitchen supplies?
• Are garbage cans located conveniently around the room?
• Are there sinks, smocks, and cleanup materials near the art or messy project areas?

All of these factors can help ease transitions and minimize distractions.

最好的例行公事有明确的开始和结束。例如，对于一个进餐程序，孩子们会知道“我洗手，坐在桌子旁，自己上菜，把碗递给别人，吃我的食物，然后打扫卫生。”一个程序程序应该像一台润滑良好的机器一样流畅。别忘了，大人经常需要直接教孩子和年轻人这些习惯！还要记住，一些学龄儿童可能会受益于提供有关日常活动的有用提示的视觉效果（例如，如何安全洗手，吃完零食后做什么）。

Structured Schedules and Routines

Structured routines are important for children and youth’s cognitive, social, and emotional development and well-being. Regular, predictable routines help children and youth know what to expect and to feel secure. The repeated nature of routines helps children and youth learn what to do in your program. For school-agers in particular, who should have more autonomy regarding how they use their time (Council on Accreditation), structured routines and schedules can help support their own time management and decision skills. For example, if a child in your program knows she wants to try the constructing robots activity and the hip-hop dance party in the gymnasium that day, knowledge of the predictable schedules and routines in your program can help her choose what to do when, so that she can satisfy her desire for both.

By carefully planning your routines and teaching children and youth how to be successful in those routines, you can maximize learning time. When children and youth actively engage in playing and learning, challenging behavior is reduced. Structured routines are especially important for some children with special needs or behavioral difficulties. These children often rely on routines for consistency and security. Thus, both you and the diverse children in your classroom will benefit from well-organized, consistent, predictable routines.

你每天日程安排的另一个重要方面是你自己的时间管理。有一个有组织的日常例行公事将有助于保持你和孩子们的任务。时间管理对于长期项目也很重要，比如花园和集体壁画，或者是邀请来访的主持人。

灵活的日程安排

Flexibility is an important aspect of daily routines. Although it is important to carefully plan out your routines and to teach these routines to children, it’s also important to stay flexible. If a routine is not working, rethink it! Be comfortable with making the most of unexpected events. On the first warm spring day, it is OK to stay outside longer than usual. If a child needs more time to finish his or her homework, it is OK to give that child time to finish. Spontaneity can be good; it builds your enthusiasm and keeps routines fresh for you and the children and youth in your care.

Your program’s schedule should cater to the needs and interests of all children, youth and their families. It should remain flexible enough to include the current and changing interests of children and youth. Your schedule should also be flexible enough to include current events from throughout the world or close to home. This is especially important when working with military families because overseas events may affect these children more so than nonmilitary children.

要知道，并不是每项活动都会完全按照你的计划进行。有后备活动很重要。你可能开始一项活动，并意识到它太容易或太难，或者可能孩子们只是不喜欢它。如果需要的话，你应该准备好改变方向，然后转向更吸引人或更合适的方向。此外，重要的是不要混淆灵活性和混乱。灵活性仍然意味着你在遵循一个计划；你可以简单地延长或缩短你花在每项活动上的时间。请观看下面的视频，以了解更多有关学龄期课程的时间表和惯例。

时间表和例程

Keeping a Balance

In before- and after-school programs, you are responsible for striking a balance between time spent playing and time spent on homework or other educationally enriching activities. It is important to speak with your trainer, coach, or supervisor to understand what is expected of the school-age children in your program. You may want to ask questions like:

• 孩子们在家庭作业上必须花多少时间？
• 孩子们是否需要在所有区域轮换，或者他们可以选择他们希望在每个活动区域呆多久？
• 如果儿童和青少年在您的学龄期计划中交换区域或房间，他们必须有成人陪同吗？如果有些孩子能够自己在空间之间移动，在什么年龄可以接受？

Families may also have specific requests for their children. A family may want their child to complete all homework before visiting another area, or they may wish for their child to play with friends in your program and to focus on homework at home. Again, it is important to speak with families and your trainer, coach, or supervisor to understand what is expected of the school-age children in your program.

If your program allows children free range to pick how they spend their time (i.e., they are not required to rotate through some activity areas each day), it can still be useful to observe, over time, the different activity areas children and youth visit. If you notice that some children consistently visit only one space (e.g., the gymnasium for indoor gross-motor play), it can be helpful to figure out what these children’s interests are and think about ways you can incorporate those interests into other activity areas to help children and youth try a variety of ideas and experiences (e.g., art, writing, theater). With school-age children, you can even ask them to help you craft activity ideas. For example, “I notice that you all have been spending lots of time playing football in the gym the past two weeks. I wondered if we could work together on a project about football. Would you want to construct a board game with me to help teach the other kids in the program more about football? What about creating a model of the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium?” Try to get their ideas and brainstorm together what materials would be needed. You can also decide as a group the best space in your program to carry out this new activity plan.

促进某种意义上of Ownership

Children and youth learn best when adults incorporate their interests. Whenever possible, adults should provide materials that capture children’s interests and extend their learning. For example, if a few children become interested in making friendship bracelets, you could turn a portion of the art or toy and games area into a “jewelry factory.” Provide a variety of beads, string, rubber bands, fabric, natural materials, recycled materials, and so on to help spark children’s imagination. You could include books that show jewelry from a variety of different cultures and areas of the world. You could work with the children and youth to research different kinds of homemade jewelry on the Internet, and perhaps work together to create some materials. You could even create a display case to show off some of the jewelry creations, asking children to create labels so viewers would know the artists’ names and the titles of their pieces.

Children’s interests and needs should always be reflected in the planning of routines and activities. Staff members should integrate children’s interests and explore what activities would be more interesting. School-age children will enjoy giving suggestions and providing input about what they would like to learn. This practice will make the children feel valued and important and give them a sense of ownership over their learning environment. Furthermore, having a choice in their schedule often gives children and youth more pride and responsibility over their learning environment, which in turn motivates them to clean up after themselves and to respect the program. The video below shows great examples of ways to give children a choice over their activity.

See

Schedules Routines: Choice Boards

Do

Design an Effective Schedule

All of these elements will help you create an effective, developmentally appropriate schedule. Within your schedule, you have freedom to design activities, interactions, and materials that meet the individual needs of children and youth in your program. Here are tips to help you make the most of your day:

传达你的日程安排

Once you have designed an effective schedule, it is important to communicate this schedule to the children and other adults. You can eliminate many problems simply by helping children and youth understand the schedules and routines in the program. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of a written and visual schedule. Visual schedules use pictures or objects to represent times of the day, which can be helpful to younger school-age children who are still learning to read. Often these pictures are combined with words to help encourage literacy skills. Visual schedules provide children with a sense of predictability of what is coming next and are a great tool for children who may need supports during program events or transitions.

Visual schedules work best when they are part of your daily routine. Many school-age staff members may say, “My kids know the routine by heart. They don’t need me to post a picture schedule.” While it may be true that they know the routine, a visual schedule can be helpful in many situations. You never know when a new child or youth is going to transition into your program, or when a personal event is going to make a child cling to something familiar like a visual schedule. Here are ideas for making schedules work for you:

• Make it a part of your daily routines. You could use your visual schedule to help communicate the different activities you have available in various activity areas that day. For example, perhaps you have added the words “jewelry factory” and a picture of jewelry to indicate the planned experience that is currently available in the art area.
• Give children choices. School-age children can handle more responsibility. Let the class vote on how to arrange your schedule together. For example, ask them whether outdoor time should come right after arrival or after indoor choice time.
• Individualize it. Consider making individual picture schedules for children who are struggling. Particularly in school-age programs, where children may use choice boards or activity management systems to select where to spend their time, or where open snack may be more common, some children may need more help in arranging their time or learning how to select their time appropriately.
• Remember to create a schedule to share with adult coworkers and families, too. This can be typed and posted on a bulletin board or sent home to families. Everyone feels better when they know what to expect each day.