Longfellow Elementary teacher Fariba Masoumi knows the importance of exciting after-school care for students. It’s a valuable opportunity for additional learning and a chance to build deeper friendships. To make the most of that time, Masoumi put her PEF Teacher Grant toward a new, well-rounded curriculum for her after-school program, one designed to give students room to build, create, and explore. This included new supplies and learning resources to support the students’ growth.
Over the course of the school year, Masoumi’s students, who range from transitional kindergarten through fifth grade, took part in a project she called “Active Minds, Creative Hands, and STEM Explorers.” Masoumi built the program around pairing academic growth with social-emotional development across four areas: physical play, arts and crafts, STEM challenges, and language arts.
Masoumi developed a list of rotating activities for the students to participate in to keep every day an exciting surprise. Cooperative relays, ball games, and obstacle courses gave students a chance to build coordination and teamwork. For arts and crafts, they created team banners and decorated their own equipment, practicing fine motor skills and vocabulary along the way. Activities that offered STEM-based challenges had students design and test mini ramps for balls, measure how far they traveled, and explore motion and force, using simple math to record their scores and times.
Many of Masoumi’s students are dual-language learners at varying stages of Spanish and English learning. To accommodate this, as a teacher, Masoumi placed an emphasis on aspects of language arts throughout all the various activities. Some of the ways language arts were involved included students writing team name ideas, journaling about their designs during arts and crafts, communicating strategies for the mini ramp designs, and presenting finished projects to their community.
The project’s format of activity and project based learning was a major success. Masoumi noticed that even students who were nervous to participate at the start of the year, excitedly hopped into group projects by the end of the year. Students felt more confident in themselves with the additional learning time they received by having fun completing their activities and projects. With how successful this learning format is Masoumi will continue to develop the project further.
