Your First Club Meeting

Home > Coaching > Outline

The first club meeting is a time to build camaraderie, generate excitement, and share information. Begin by having everyone sit in a circle. Go around the circle and ask each student to say his or her name, what they like to do with computers, and one hobby or interest other than computers.

Then explain a little about Computer Challenge and what they will be doing this semester. Tell them that Computer Challenge is a network of after school computer clubs for middle and high school students. Each semester the club will pick a theme: robots, animation, Web, or video. Next semester they may continue with the same theme or pick a new theme. Over the course of the semester students will work with this technology and make projects. Our motto is "Create something!". At the end of the semester we will travel to a Computer Challenge festival or event and enter our projects into the competition.

Then give a quick intro to the theme for this semester. For example, if the theme is Lego Robots, show them a robot or the Mindstorms box and tell them briefly how they work and why this is cool. You will have learned this at coach training.

Next tell them about the Challenge Award system. Go over the requirements for the Challenge Award for this semester.

Set the expectations - students are expected to attend regularly, create a project, complete a Challenge Award, and attend the end-of-semester event. The end-of-semester event is not just for students who have nothing else to do that day and feel like coming - it is a requirement of the program. Computer game playing and Internet surfing should be limited to not more than 1/4 of the meeting or banned entirely.

Now tell them about the techclubs.org web site. Give them a tour of the features and information. Tell them to use this site for information on the technologies and events. Also explain that getting information from Web sites is a crucial skill.

Give participation forms to all students and require that they be returned signed by a parent.

Hopefully all this talk will last less than 30 minutes. Now jump into the first project! Using an on-line tutorial in techclubs.org as a guide, explain how to get started with the chosen theme. Then turn them loose to work on it. Generally 75% of a meeting should be students working on their projects, with 25% or less being group discussions.

Look through the Challenge Award requirements for the chosen activity. Some will be completed automatically, such as build a robot as part of a team. Check them off as soon as completed, and point out the completion to the student. Other requirements require group discussions or a career exploration visit. Plan these into your club meetings.