What's Happenin' at Shaw Heights

We accomplished so much last week!  We started the week with introducing our mentee/mentor in small groups.  The kids did google slides or posters.  They turned out great!  On Tuesday we talked about the expectations for Tutoring Tuesday and then the mentors checked up on their mentees.  Most of the kids were in other classrooms checking with their mentee's teachers on their grades and behavior.  The kids really enjoyed starting tutoring that day! Wednesday the kids watched a quick video on a time capsule buried 100 years ago and found in Florida last year.  They then answered questions about themselves and wrote a letter to themselves to put into the time capsule.  We'll also include a photo of each mentoring pair in their time capsule.   Since we had no school on Friday, it was fun Thursday!  The kids had 20 minutes to create the longest paper chain using only one piece of paper, scissors, and glue.  The winning team earn...

The kids finally found out their mentor or mentee!!  I wrote their match on a card and when everyone had theirs we flipped them over and I got to see all of the kids' reactions at the same time!  It was great!  They are happy to finally be with their mentor or mentee and I can see that they now know the purpose behind YESS. The kids spent the week getting to know each other through fun questions, reading each other's autobiographies, and by creating a presentation to introduce their mentor or mentee to their peers in the class.  The kids could create a poster, Google Slides, or a speech to introduce them.  The kids worked hard and their final projects look great.  We'll share them on Monday so we can keep Friday for fun!  Woohoo.  We went outside in one class to play football and did an A-Z competition in the other classes.  It was a great end to our week! I also started a new behavior incentive in class that ended this week.  We had...

This short week went so fast but we accomplished a lot!   We started the week taking a look at famous people who have had mentoring relationships to show how successful this idea is.  The mentees shared what they hoped to get out of having a mentor and the mentors talked about what they were looking forward to in being a mentor.   The kids created questions to ask each mentor/mentee for our Speed Matching process to find a mentor or mentee!  The kids "interviewed" each other then listed their Top 3 mentors/mentees.  Today they find out their match!!  Fun Friday was spent playing Scattergories! The kids sure enjoyed competing against each other and had some hilarious ideas for each category!  We sure had fun together! In other news, our room is extremely hot so a few boys found a great way to keep cool... haha As always, I'm looking forward to another great week with the kids and especially excited to see how the first days of mentor/...

I hope you all had a great long weekend!  We had a great week together, once again! Last week we focused again on getting to know each other, building relationships and our class community, and we started the YESS curriculum.   The kids created a Coat of Arms or a tattoo to visual represent themselves.  The kids used drawings, sketches, and key words to describe what is important to them and what they value.  We shared them with a Kaegen strategy that uses an inner and outer circle so the kids were able to share with at least three of their peers.  They turned out great! We also spent two days talking about what Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is and what it looks like in YESS and their everyday lives.  I taught each domain, there are five of them, then the kids created skits to describe a time in their lives that that domain may have been used or presented.  They had so much fun and the kids really connected to the SEL ideas of YESS b...