What's Happenin' at Shaw Heights

Happy snowy Monday!  Even though this was a short week, gosh did it seem long!  (The kids agreed, too!)  We saw two big snow storms which made many kids stay home (lucky them!) but the kids who were here still had a great week!  And speaking of snow, HOLY COW.  So many kids gone today as well.  Lucky them...I sure would love to be on my couch watching a movie right now.  Anywho, back to last week: On Tuesday the kids thought about the goals they have for themselves and their future.  These goals could be academic, behavioral, far future goals, anything!  They then had to think about words that would get them to their goal like confidence, organization, and focus. After some brainstorming and working in pairs, each kiddo came up with a Word Goal for this semester.  It was great to see so many kids take time and put effort into choosing their word and coming up with action steps to achieve it.  We'll review these goals througho...

What a great week! Each class was on a slightly different page this week so there was a lot going on!  But on Monday, we were all able to have our first Mentor Monday of the new year and with all of our new mentors!  I had the former mentors share out advice for the new mentors on what it's like to mentor then we looked closely at four leadership quotes.  These quotes will guide their work as mentors this semester. The rest of the week was Speed Matching or Spaghetti Towers, Scholar vs. Student and new expectations for Tutoring which is now on Thursdays.  We ended the week with decorating our YESS t-shirts with sharpies and enjoying a snowy, chill day together.  The kids are looking forward to finding out their new mentee/mentor matches today!  Hope everyone had a great long weekend despite the Patriots once again winning the AFC Championship game.  Ugh...

This week was all about building our community back up and welcoming many new faces to each class!  A lot of mentor/mentee pairs are changing this semester too but so far good relationships are forming and some kids already know who they want to be paired with!  On Monday new expectations and introductions were made while a roll of toilet paper was passed around.  The kids chose between 1-10 pieces but had no idea why.  We then got into a circle and made introductions then the kids had to say one thing about themselves or their holiday break with each piece of toilet paper.  Some kids lucked out with 1 while others really had to think with 10.  It was a fun way to start the year.   Tuesday we played a fun game of Telestrations, it's like telephone only on paper!  Kids started by writing a sentence of their choice then handing it to the next person to draw a picture of their sentence.  After this the first sentence is hidden and...

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. ...

What a great week! Monday and Tuesday were our usual mentor meetings and tutoring time.   Wednesday we reviewed stereotypes by playing Kahoot!  The kids LOVED it and sure proved they learned a lot.  Winning teams earning food...go figure.  Haha.  The end of the game lead into a brief discussion about racism to aid in our conversation on Thursday. We did a Circle Talk on Thursday to discuss racial identity, culture, and racism in their lives.  Each period lead to extremely different conversations and outcomes, but it's evident that racism is real for my kids and affects them in many different ways.  I truly enjoyed these intimate conversations with my kids and loved that many of them were willing to share about this tough topic.  After each talk, I allowed the class to decide our next steps; let's either continue this conversation and dive into this topic further or move on to Unit 2, Relationships.  Stay tuned next week for what e...