Weekly Objectives for 9/4/14-9/5/14

Overview - Welcome Back Everyone!!!  It is a brand new year and we are all so excited to see the new faces of STEM.  This year will be jam packed, with new learning experiences, that center around project based learning.  You will be challenged in new ways each and every day.  So, jump aboard and enjoy the ride. Let's discover the real world issues out there together.  This week we will simply focus on rituals, routines and small group activities.  Students will be coming home with planners to sign and forms to be filled out.  Please, be sure to return to the form right away. 
      Thursday - 9/4/14 - Today we met as one large group and basically introduced ourselves.  The students got a chance to learn about their teachers by participating in a Jeopardy game that focused on cool facts about us. Behavioral expectations were laid out, Class DOJO was established, a small projects was performed, and they managed to get some practice in on their lockers.  We have a very busy year ahead of us.  Tomorrow, we will continue to lay out our principles that guide the STEM program, continue to learn about our students, and complete yet another group project.
     Friday - 9/5/14 - The students attended a fundraising event in the auditorium from 8:30 until 9.  The STEM group then returned to the LGI (Meeting Room) to go over some last minute rituals and routines that were not covered previously.  A new group activity was assigned, in which small groups of students created posters of positive character traits.  The groups had to create ten examples of a positive character trait, then capture photos that acted out certain traits.  The top 14 groups will be rewarded with a laminated poster , which will hang in the hallways for the remainder of the year.
       In my homeroom, we continued to work on opening our lockers and going over forms that still need to be turned in.  We finished out the morning with a writing activity.  Students partnered up with someone new and began interviewing them.  They were required to take notes about each other to be used later. Groups were given ten minutes to complete this task.  After that, they were no longer able to discuss or question the other person.  The students had to then draft a biographical piece on the information collected about each student.  This was just an activity to let me see where there writing skills are at, and to get to know someone new.