With many schools around the world open for students, in-person extracurricular activities are an option again. But why bother? Shouldn’t students be spending their time catching up on the learning they lost during the pandemic? Or actually, finishing school, going home and doing things they enjoy outside of school?
Well, research tells us, time and time again, that we should bother. Indeed, a study published in 2019 showed that extracurricular activities had significant positive impacts on student retention, academic performance and graduation speed (especially for students with lower years).
1. Have a purpose
At the end of the day, whenever we ask our students to do or engage with something, we need to have a reason why. For example, it is fine to run a film club but when we do that, it needs to be more than simply, sitting and watching movies - they can do that at home.
This doesn’t mean “down with film clubs” - you could run a perfectly decent one by having the students watch a film, one scene each session and then act out the scene/talk about what the director wanted the people watching to think and feel. Then the purpose looks a bit more like this: for the students to develop their understanding of plot development through discussion, acting and analysis.
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2. Student engagement and teacher input
Student engagement and teacher input is at an all-time low during passive extracurricular activities. Teacher input doesn’t mean rote learning or lecturing the class but rather, while the students are expressing creativity and engaging the activity, monitoring them, and offering feedback and suggestions.
One way I did this in my English as an additional language communication extracurricular activity last year, was to move between groups of students that were playing communication board games, and give them support with pronunciation or offer them additional new words if they seemed to be under-challenged.
3. Outcome
Outcomes are everything. What is the take-home? What is the skill? What do they develop? What do they actually get out of taking part? At my school, the outcome of the extracurricular activity needs to be demonstrated at the end of the nine-week programme each term. This is done through images of student work, clips from performances, demonstrations of games and shared on the parents blogs.
4. Something that makes it fun or different
Extracurricular activities are a chance for students to explore new things and figure out what they like and who they are. Choice is a key part of self-determination theory; here is the part of the school day that the students get to choose what they try. Why not run a beat-boxing club? Why not run a cartoon character sketching club? I first learnt guitar in an after-school session and have played for more than 10 years now. Give your students the chance to find themselves in the same way.
Gregory Adam is a primary teacher at Nord Anglia Chinese International School in Shanghai. He released his first book last year, Teaching EFL, ESL & EAL. A Practitioner’s Guide
