Personal Values

Damien works to "Find Someone Who" shares one of his personal values in 7th hour.

Hard at work filling out planners during our Tutoring Tuesday.

We had a wonderful week in YESS as we further discussed our "roots" by talking more specifically about our values and morals. Our mentors did a great job guiding these discussions and I can really tell they are feeling strong about their identity and values. The mentees are a little bit more confused as we talk about things like, "altruism," and, "autonomy." We took a couple of days to work through our lesson on personal values so that each scholar really understood what he or she values and why. We even "Kagan-ized" the lesson by playing the game, "Find Someone Who..." Once we had all worked through our check-lists, indicating what is "very," "somewhat," and, "not" important to us, we then had to find someone who shared the exact same value as us (I always love getting to join in with our scholars when we do these activities!). In fact, we all had to find TEN people who shared the same values as us.

This acivity was a wonderful way to get our scholars interacting and I could see how they enjoyed the process as they better understood their classmates after we finished this exercise. We also employed the Kagan structure, "Think-Write-RoundRobin," where our scholars worked in groups of four to answer several questions regarding their personal values. They had to first share out their answer (number one asked them to identify their top three most important values, and they also had to tell why they picked these values); once they finished sharing, they then recorded their answer and the next person went. I really valued the way our scholars took the time to listen to one another. I was able to walk around the room and ask someone at a table to name another classmate's top value and they were all able to do so with ease.

Unwinding in 7th hour on Thursday after finishing our Personal Values lesson.

We were very lucky to host Dr. Diane Bassett in our classroom last week. Our YESS scholars are always overjoyed when we have a visitor, and I am very proud of our 4th hour class and the work they showed Dr. Bassett during her stay. I feel very fortunate to have Dr. Bassett's expertise this year as she will be my instructional coach. Cheers to the first of many productive visits!

Next week we will finally do our "Speed Matching" lesson where our mentors get matched with mentees. We will also vote for our class Presidents. Finally, on October 2nd we will have our first, "Mentor Monday." Stay tuned!

Presidential Elections

Ricky gives his speech during 6th hour.

This past week in YESS we finished up our time capsule letters, got to work on understanding our planners, and we hosted our annual class presidential elections. We also had a sub in early in the week, who had a blast doing the alphabet game with our mentors and mentees (this is a great team builder where our scholars work in groups to spell out letters with their bodies). I am very impressed with the letters our scholars wrote this year and I know how excited they all are to open them come the end of the year!

Breann did a phenomenal job with her presidential speech! 

One of the major requirements in YESS this year is to have a planner in which our mentors and mentees document every hour of every day they are here at school. This is so challenging for many of our scholars, and so we have taken time on our "Tutoring Tuesday" to ensure every single scholar is filling out his or her planner correctly. By Friday every single YESS scholar had a fully filled out planner and now they all feel very ready to fill out their "Weekly Binder Response" log next week. These go out in our Academic Enrichment class every Tuesday morning and each scholar states what they did in each class all week long (in addition to comments on absences and behavior). They must get the log signed and then they bring it back to their Academic Enrichment teacher. In YESS we are working hard to make sure that even our 6th grade mentees are capable and confident as they work through this process.

Breann did a phenomenal job with her presidential speech!

We also hosted our presidential elections last week, which was very exciting. Every single scholar was required to write an election speech (whether or not they actually intended to run for office!). They each had to speak to one strength and one weakness while also mentioning one way they could help others. Almost everyone was feeling anxious, and yet everyone did such a wonderful job reading their speeches. We have many candidates in each hour, and this week we will cast our votes (we are waiting on a few absent scholars to give their speeches before we move on to the voting stage).

This week we will be talking more about our personal values and we will be doing our "speed matching" lesson, where mentors and mentees interview one another and finally get "matched" up! It is sure to be an exciting week.

Time Capsule!

This past week we did perhaps one of our most exciting lessons as our scholars worked on a time capsule packet and letter to themselves. This exercise is always fondly recalled by previous mentors and mentees as they love reading these packets and letters during the last week of school. This exercise gives so much perspective on just how much one can grow in less than ten months. Before we began writing our letters, we completed a two page worksheet that really got our scholars thinking about their current likes and how they are feeling this week. They were asked to name several of their current likes--from favorite food and drink to their favorite songs and movies. They then worked on writing strong sentences about topics such as "what they are looking forward to right now" in addition to setting three goals (these included both personal and academic aspects). 

4th hour did an excellent job with their letters! 

Once they all had this information recorded we moved on to writing a draft of our letters in our journals. This allowed for each to really work on grammar and syntax so that their letters read smoothly and are easily enjoyed. I could really see a lot of frustration as we worked through this process, though it was quickly followed by pride as each realized what a detailed letter they had before them.

Drafting our letters for the time capsule.

On Friday we finished up our letters and and sealed them into folders which we placed into our "time capsule." I am already looking forward to the day when we open them all--for I too did a time capsule and am quite excited to read my letter come May.  :) 

We also did our first "Tutoring Tuesday" this past week, a day where we work with our YESS scholars to ensure they are caught up and even working ahead in their classes. This year at Shaw we have a Weekly Reflection Log that each scholar is expected to fill out every Tuesday; this document is a hard copy that they must fill out and state what they learned in each class in addition to any absences or issues with behavior they might have had; parents are expected to sign these logs every Tuesday evening.

Our YESS scholars worked hard to ensure their planners are up-to-date so that they are able to fill out this log correctly--I am proud of their efforts and I know how difficult it can be to become accustomed to filling out a planner every day. They did an excellent job! 

Very proud of the time and effort our scholars put into this exercise! 

Next week we will have our Presidential Elections--stay tuned for more news! 

Coat of Arms & Code of Conduct

Our amazing Coat of Arms! 

Having lunch on my birthday with a few mentors. 

This past week in YESS we got to work on one of our first art projects by designing a Coat of Arms. This project is tied to our Unit 1 goals of becoming effective communicators and being able to tell others about our personal goals and values as we work to build a sense of community in YESS. The worksheet asked each scholar to provide information on what they are good at now, what they would like to improve (we had to be very specific!), their most valued material and non-material possessions, their hopes for their education and career goals, and three words that they felt best described who they are.

We took a full day to make sure the information was very clear and precise; for instance, instead of saying that one would like to improve "math skills," I urged our scholars to instead write things like, "multiplying fractions" and "understanding place value when adding and subtracting decimals." By the second day everyone was very excited about their Coat of Arms and we began adding detail to make it a 3-D project.

A 2nd year mentor's project- so much detail! 

Tuesday was my birthday and I felt so much love and appreciation from all of our mentors and mentees. I had lunch with a couple of my guy mentors from 4th hour, and even had a student from last year return to give me flowers and Skittles! It was a wonderful way to celebrate. 

A great project from a 6th grade mentee.

On Wednesday we wrapped up the projects and did a gallery walk and short presentation. Afterwards we displayed each one in our room so that every single YESS scholar is represented. This also gives all of our scholars a chance to look and understand the different people who are in our program.

Gabe did a great job on his Coat of Arms project.

Thursday was a very important day as we finally set our classroom code of conduct by writing up a working document that we all signed. We are going to display them this week (we had a few scholars out who will need to sign it this week!).

We ended our week by working on our planners and general organization on Friday. We are doing Weekly Reflection logs this year at Shaw and it is my intention that every single YESS scholar has a working planner. Once we finished we had about 15 minutes to unwind and play a few games together.

It was a great week and next week we are really looking forward to hosting our presidential elections!