What's Happenin' at Shaw Heights

Last week the mentors continued their leadership slideshow and Tutoring was a success as kids worked hard to get assignments in before break. Wednesday was all about emotions.  We classified dozens of moods/emotions into one of the six universal emotions; happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise.  We talked about how emotions are very personal; one person could feel happy when calm while another could feel intense anger.  The kids then learned about triggers and discussed them with each other.  Thursday was a fun day of Kahoot review of what we've covered in emotions so far.  We also looked at the characters of Inside Out and got to see sketches of over a dozen other emotional characters that almost made the movie.  The kids are also diligently working on completing an intense emotion word search!  If they complete it, they earn fruit snacks or spicy chips! Friday was a day of crosswords and logic puzzles all based around the holidays...

This week was full of trust bridge presentations, laughter, and emotions. The mentors started a research project on a leader of their choice, past or present.  They are creating a Google Slide show to present to the other mentors.  Tutoring went well when free time and food is the reward.  Ha.  Wednesday the mentor/mentee pairs presented their trust bridges to the class.  Afterwards, four classmates asked questions or offered a compliment.  Some of the quotes from presenting were "Snakeness...lots of girls have snakeness in this school."  "Our bridge looks like a rainbow chicken because friendship is like a rainbow to us."  "There's a monster under the bridge that will EAT you and an alligator that will just bite your face off...this is all from breaking our trust."  Haha.  It was nice to see all their hard work and hear their ideas about what trust meant to each of them.   We ended the hour with mentor/mentee pairs creatin...

Whoops, sorry everyone!  I just realized I didn't post last week.  With a week off for Thanksgiving break I was a little spacey coming back!  Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and is ready for the whirlwind of December! Mentor Monday was a success in all classes.  We focused on successes and struggles with mentees then offered advice to each other.  Tutoring continued on both Tuesdays and Fun Friday was spent playing Thanksgiving games and a work day last week. In the past two weeks of class, we wrapped up our Race unit by creating projects that stated "I Am..." then we also dismissed any racist or stereotypical comments about ourselves.  The projects turned out really nice.  Some are hanging in our room; if you have a chance, stop by our room and check them out!  Thursday was a day all about gratitude; I showed a video about showing gratitude for the little things in life and mentor/mentee pairs played a gratitude game with M&Ms. ...