Welcome Teachers and Youth Program Coordinators!
Your students are about to embark on an exciting adventure! In a game-like learning environment, ScholarShop’’s Options for Kids can help your students build academic and life skills while at the same time strengthen the awareness and value of their personal qualities. With Garfield as their guide, the activities on this journey will promote positive youth development and instill life-long skills as your students gather information regarding careers, postsecondary educational opportunities, and the relevance of school as it relates to future goals. To learn more about what young people need for positive development to occur, visit the National Youth Development Information Center at www.nydic.org.
If you have Internet access, this unique program can easily be integrated into a regular classroom situation. The activities promote study skills, vocabulary development, reading comprehension, writing, listening, speaking, simple math application, and higher level thinking. Many of the activities will help you meet the academic, career, and personal / social standards recommended by the American School Counselor Association. If you would like to track your students as they progress through the various activities and have access to lesson plans and evaluation forms, you can subscribe to our "teaching tools" for only $50.
For more information or to subscribe, send an e-mail to cgerber@scholarshipamerica.org or call 800-537-4180, ext. 656.
The activities in ScholarShop’’s Options for Kids were adapted from ScholarShop Jr., an activity-based curriculum and multi-media resource library that is a component of ScholarShop. ScholarShop was recently described by the Pathways to College Network as a "promising research-based practice" for its work helping students and their parents develop the skills, and access critical resources, necessary to pursue a postsecondary education. For information on ScholarShop and all its components, visit our web site at www.scholarshop.org.
Because of the individualized nature of the activities, ScholarShop’’s Options for Kids is also ideal for use in community centers as well as after-school and enrichment programs in any setting including Boys & Girls Clubs and YMCAs.
The activities were designed for young people in grades 4-6 but students both younger and older may find them valuable too.
This web site is divided into four modules:
Module (模块)One: You Are 100% Smart
Young people fly through the brain to discover that they are 100% Smart. They explore their unique interests, talents, and abilities utilizing the concept of Howard Gardner’’s Multiple Intelligences. The activities are designed to facilitate young people’’s thinking about their future, to assist students in the discovery of their unique personal qualities, and to enhance feelings of confidence.
This module emphasizes three important points:
1. People possess different types of "smarts" or intelligences.
2. All of these intelligences contribute to present and future success.
3. People can develop or increase any of these intelligences.
Module Two: Exploring Careers
Young people tour a city as Module Two focuses on the general Notion of the world of careers. The activities provide information about jobs and preparation for the world of work. They demonstrate how unique interests, talents, and abilities can be indicators of possible career directions or areas of further career exploration. The activities also introduce young people to the concept of a "career path" and guide them in thinking about the necessity of long- and short-term planning to achieve potential career goals. They are asked to look at "the big picture" in terms of where they are now in the educational realm and where they need to go to fulfill their career goals.
Module Three: Educational Opportunities
To overcome misconceptions and obstacles to accessing postsecondary education, in Module Three students go exploring through a mysterious cave and see that preparing for college is Not as scary as it may sound. The activities provide young people with basic information about the nature and purposes of education after high school. Activities also link educational requirements to possible career choices and reinforce how performance in school impacts what happens in the future.
Module Four: Back to Basics
While it is too early for young people to commit to a specific career choice, it is not too early to reinforce the idea that present school success, behavior, and performance influence future career options. While engaging young people in a treasure hunt, the activities in Module Four emphasize the importance of education and link school performance with job performance. Through motivational activities, students are invited to inventory their school work habits, improve study skills, and have fun enhancing basic academic skills including reading, writing and math.
In the end, young people will see that the treasure they seek is Not only within them, but the treasure is them. Students can then print off a certificate signed by Garfield the Cut certifying that he or she is 100% Smart and is prepared to succeed in school and in life.
You are encouraged to share with your students your personal hopes and dreams, career goals and future plans as examples to help them progress through the various modules and activities. Parents and mentors should also be encouraged to join the students on this journey.
Have fun!
This passage is written for teachers or instructors for children.