Even though last week was short, we enjoyed a productive time together. One of the more interesting achievements was that I assigned students to new cooperative learning groups. Even though mentor/mentee pairs remain in tact, sitting with a different pair creates a new feeling within the classroom. Some groups are already getting along famously, but others are working to overcome obstacles. The goal is that all students will learn how to positively interact with their peers, even if they don't always agree.
We began with Tutoring Tuesday, during which students brought homework from other classes or practiced their literacy skills in NoRedInk. Many of the YESS scholars brought math or social studies to work on and much progress was made.
I allow our students to journal at the beginning of each day and I require them to use the PEAL process (this is a framework for creating thoughtful paragraphs). Through this work, I have discovered that many students struggle with providing evidence for their answers and then supporting that evidence with an analysis. This is something we will focus on during the coming weeks.
The YESS Institute lesson we completed was called Time Capsule. Ordinarily, this is something we would do at the beginning of the year, but I wanted to students to be able to contemplate how their school year has been going so they may set stronger goals. Once the scholars completed the task, they sealed their time capsules and gave them to me. I'll keep everything safe and secure until we revisit them at the end of the year.
On Friday, we participated in team builders like Fact or Fiction (students tell two truthful statements and one false statement while their team tries to guess the lie), Alphabetical Lists (teams collaborate to create a list of items based on a category), and 4 Corners (a running game that lets kids burn off some energy).
Overall, it was a fabulous week and I'm looking forward to more adventures!
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