The Context and Content in After School Literacy

Abstract

Teachers, youth workers, librarians, and extended care workers remove backing from thin copper tape with sticky backing to connect coin cell batteries and LEDs (light emitting diodes) to create light-up notebooks at a workshop at the Free Library of Philadelphia. These small books will collect fiction or nonfiction writing using the light on each page as a focal point. Participants learn about circuits, on/off switches, and conductivity. They actively analyze problems and try new solutions, follow complex directions, fill in background information and create an original presentation. Participants are engaged from both the passion of the workshop trainer as well as from the intrinsic allure of science. They pause to think about what they will need to do to take these ideas back to their organizations and create hands-on, low-stakes, interesting activities for youth in their after school programs. With a copy of a book about electric circuits, they are poised to show youth how to gain information from nonfiction and spark their curiosity. In this science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workshop, participants leave with an activity to try, a model for inspiring inquiry, and ideas for creatively infusing literacy into compelling content.