The dreaded session review! Do you do it?

I started using session review sheets when I was a local authority youth worker, and took them with me when I went to work for the third sector, I did a lot of editing and changing, so it was shorter and more useful 2 sides of a4 instead of 5.

Having done that and edited some more after using it for a while I settled with one and have used it ever since sometimes its brief other times it runs over to more pages depending on the session.

I do find them use full, sure not at first, but later as I was planning sessions and trying to improve my practice as well as individual activities the reviews suddenly started to be use full, my favourites were ones where young people were involved with evaluating the session or activity, as they injected some much needed humour and provided valuable insights, after all its there session!

It doesn't need to take long 5 Min's at the end of the session to talk bout it, asking what went well what didn't go well, what happened in the other room? Listen to your team and young people think about what they said and spend another 5-10 Min's writing up your session sheet or if your like me you get your lead youth worker to do it. (thanks M)

 

I found that reading them after each term or set amount of weeks was really valuable, you can pick up on patterns and Thames which help when you are looking at what you are planning to do in the future. They can also help in other ways depending on the details you add, like stats, how many young people, ages, gender etc good for funding bids and keeping the board happy(because they think its all about numbers!)

 

Evaluation doesn't need to be a chore, make it interesting and fun, but above all make it useful, make the time spent doing it count, and use the forms after, dint just file and forget. They can help if you want them to.