How To Create A Youth Work Session Plan – Part 2

Last week we shared the first 7 items to include when creating a youth work session plan.

Here are the other 7 items I include in my youth session plans – not only do they help me plan accurately for most eventualities in a session, they provide a log for monitoring and evaluation that helps with my reporting for internal and external stakeholders.

1. Aims – The goal for each activity (e.g. Ball Name Game – Each person to learn the names of everyone else in the group)
2. Objectives – Identify how you know the goal was met (e.g. 100% participation in activity). Remember to set SMART Targets or SMARTER Targets
3. Teaching Syle or Group Facilitation Method – Write down if it’s a group discussion, individual activity, worksheet or lecture-style activity. This helps me to mix up the activities for each youth work session, ensuring we don’t just have discussions or only activities
4. Learning Style – We’ll talk more about youth learning styles in coming posts, but I would identify if an activity was designed for auditory, visual or kinesthetic learners. This helps keep activities relevant for all learners, ensuring maximum learning potential
5. Risk Assessment – Does the activity need a risk assessment? If so, you can link to the document that includes the risk assessment
6. Notes – A section to jot down ideas that you might want to make sure you cover during the activity
7. Session Evaluation – A youth work session evaluation should be done to evaluate each activity at the end of the session with the other staff available (and youth evaluations) to inform future programs and keep records for reporting.