Monday, August 29, 2016

Ranum Week 2

Hello!

Our first full week of school is complete and we participated in a lot of team builders to begin the trust and relationship building process. We started the week by creating our journals that we will use for the rest of the year to work on our literacy skills and also as an outlet for anything that is on our minds that we do not want to share out yet.

We continued the week with introducing some things about ourselves such as our family structures, what we want to be when we grow up and other interesting things we haven't shared yet. We also discussed the difference between a student and a scholar and how they have been referred to as students their whole lives and it's time to change that into an attitude that they are scholars and they care about all the work they do.

Classroom rules and procedures were also developed and they loved having their voices involved in that process. We wrapped up the week by playing more team builders; one of which was the M&M game. The M&M game has questions that align with the color M&M you choose so you must answer that question before eating the M&M. Some questions were silly but it was a good mix of silly and serious and so were their answers.

Overall another great week of getting to know one another and the mentors can't stop asking when are we going to finally pair up with mentees!







Sunday, August 21, 2016

Welcome Back Ranum!

Welcome to the 2016 - 2017 YESS Program at Ranum Middle School blog!

Wow, summer flew bye! Although it seemed short, it was great and relaxing but now it's time to shake off the rust and get back into the swing of things.

The first day of school was spent with our Knighthood Families. Knighthood Families is a new initiative this year, kind of like a homeroom, with a focus on developing the personal and social skills of students through "circle-ups". I had a group of 6th graders the whole day and it was a great way to get them acclimated while calming their nerves as they entered middle school. Throughout the day we played some team builders and we went over some school procedures.

Here's a note from a student in my Knighthood family. Looks like we'll have to work on some literacy skills.


The rest of the week we were back to normal schedule and I got to meet the new group of mentors and mentees. The mentors energy was so great the first week that it made all of the mentees immediately comfortable and excited for class. We played a lot of team builders and activities to get everyone acquainted. One of those team builders was a ball toss name game where students stood in a circle and you had to continually throw the ball to the same person, but before you threw to them you had to say their name. With 1 ball it was pretty easy but as the game progressed I threw in multiple balls to make it a little more challenging.

Overall the kids had a lot of fun this week and it'll be exciting to see how their relationships will continue to grow.