Walk-in Activities FAQ

Splash and Spark run a special type of class called a walk-in activity. Walk-in activities are set up in Lobby 13, where students can drop by whenever they have extra time and drift in and out of the activities. They can be anything from duct tape construction to playing SET—something fun (and hopefully educational) that can accomodate a shifting group of participants. Other ideas are styrofoam block building, telephone pictionary, Rubik’s cubing, paper airplanes, fractal building, improv, Ricochet Robots, Faraday cages, LN2 ice cream...teach anything!

Q: Why should I teach a walk-in activity?
A: Walk-in activities are different from normal classes in their "drop-in" nature. You can still teach whatever you want, but the students you are teaching will be coming and going and changing the whole time, so activities need to be able to incorporate a rotating group of participants. You probably will see a lot more students than a typical Splash or Spark class, just not all at once.

Q: How does content differ from typical Splash or Spark classes?
A: Walk-in activities are designed to be more interactive than traditional classes, and depending on what you're teaching, your role might be more like a leader or director of the activity than like a lecturer of a class. The walk-in format lends itself to less-structured, less-advanced material (imagine trying to teach calculus with students coming and going at will!), and it can be a great way to hold fun and informal activities, games, demonstrations, and the like.

Q: Should my class be a traditional class or a walk-in activity?
A: If your class can accommodate students coming and going throughout the class period, then it can be a walk-in activity! Lectures or discussions usually make better classes; anything less formal can be made into a walk-in activity. Some examples of walk-in activities from past Sparks and Splashes include: rock-paper-scissors tournaments, a Monty Python marathon, bracelets and beading, card games, Frisbee, physics demonstrations, dancing, board games, solving linguistics problems/crossword puzzles/math problems, smoothie making, post-it Pokemon art, epic cardboard box fort building...anything you can think of!

Q: How long do walk-in activities run?
A: You can teach a walk-in activity for as long or as short as you like, just like a regular Splash or Spark class. The duration can be any multiple of one hour. As a teacher, please arrive 15 minutes early to meet with the walk-in activity directors in Lobby 13 (after checking in to the Bush Room) so we can make things are set up the way you want.

Note: when specifying the length of a walk-in, please put the length as the size of the contiguous hours in which you would like to teach the class, and the number of sections as the number of distinct blocks you'd like to teach.

Q: What age are walk-in activity students?
A: The only age limits are the program age limits. For Splash, walk-ins are open to 9^th–12^th graders, and for Spark, they are open to 7^th–8^th graders.