Last Value Board Activity

Values.
Traits that help build a responsible and caring citizen.
I know that this is rocky area when it comes to public schools. Parents will begin to question "WHO'S VALUES"? Is it the Catholic's values? The Mormon's values? The atheist? The Jehovah's Witness? Scary that VALUES are being taught.

This line of thought reminds me of a situation my professor shared when I was in my last year of my teacher training. He shared that as a 5th grade teacher he had been teaching the kids about being honest and not stealing. He had a very upset parent come to his classroom and tell him to stop telling his child it was wrong to steal, that their family did it all the time, and it was not the school's place to tell his child that it was wrong.

WOW! I thought to myself, "How can a parent see things this way?"

For me, values are not attached to a religion, but to a belief that all people have the ability to do good. Values simply provide a generic framework for people to follow. I have truly appreciated the amazing posters and values traits that values.com has provided for me to use. They have provided the poster and inspiring story, I have self-created activities and challenges to support those posters.

Over the past year, I have taken a values poster and focused on the highlighted trait. Traits like Rising Above, Compassion, Hard Work (scroll down), Living Your Dreams, and more.

This final month, our value of study is Vision. I choose this value because I truly believe that in order for my class to survive next year in high school (yes, high school. We don't have a jr. high or middle school. My students go to 7th grade in the local high school) they will need to really have Vision.

I have to admit that I felt truly inspired as I pondered an activity that would support this value poster. As I read about Erick Weihenmayer I knew that I wanted to inspire my students to conquer their "Mount Everest". So I designed an activity that required them to share their greatest challenge and then the plan they would use to overcome it.

I have included many examples from my students. I was a little let down that most wanted to put something related to sports or friends. I was truly hoping that my students would take the discussion that we shared previous to the activity and really strive for an academic goal. A precious few did, and they set some amazing goals for themselves. I even copied their papers this month so they could have they as a reminder of the goal they set.

As I go to the school tomorrow to prepare for the week, for family literacy night on Monday, and to "clean up" after the guest teacher I had on Friday, I will hang these student "Everest" papers for all students to read. I hope that by seeing that EVERYONE has a challenge they want desperately to overcome, they too will realize that it takes VISION to see the solution, and working together to achieve the end results.

Later...

Live Your Dreams (Make Sure You Have Some)

With tomorrow being the end of the month, I wanted to share this month's values focus. I got a few new posters this past month and was thrilled to have this be one of them. I talked with my students about the importance of having dreams and goals, and then for our activity, I created a dream "bubble" where the kids drew a picture of their dream. I posted some of my favorites below.

 This is the whole (almost- few didn't ever turn in the their dreams...lol. I wonder if that is a sign for the future) class together.

 This is my son's. He wants to be a photographer (or, at least this month he does.) I lay the blame for this one squarely on my good friend Jason Zimmerman. Thanks Jason. No... I really mean it. Thanks.

 This student wants to be a doctor. I love the operating table with the person all cut open. Almost makes me pass out just looking at the picture. lol. My reason for selecting this one? This is one of my most challenging students. I was ecstatic to see a dream like this.

 Loved the thought that went into this one. This student wants to either be an artist or an architect. I explained that is some ways they are one in the same.

And what DREAM poster collection would be complete without the standard answer of ROCK STAR? lol.

It has been fun to learn about the featured stars on the Values posters. I always hope that it makes a difference in their lives. Time will tell.

Later...

It's March Again?!?!?!

Wow! Where does time go? It was about a year ago that things were starting to wind down to our baby girl being born. Hard to believe that that whole experience has been almost a year ago now. More on that at a later time!

It has been fun the last couple of weeks to eat out a bit more than we normally would. Not that we can really afford to eat out (I mean, who can), but it is fun to be out with the kids. I mean look at these two crazy little boys. How can you NOT love them.

The last couple weeks have been a real challenge for me. I am not sure if it is my personality or the hormones of 11-12 year-olds, but our classroom has felt a little off. I am currently working to adjust some of the weekly assignments and have stopped doing other things that were extremely time consuming and not effective (such as a parent newsletter. After 12 years of making a monthly newsletter, I have decided to stop making them. It will free up a lot of time for me to do other things, especially with my kids at home, and I didn't feel it was being utilized by parents and students). I have also adjusted out weekly word work to try and tie in more grammar based skills- like part of speech, dictionary skills, antonyms and synonyms. I hope to start looking more at root, prefixes and suffixes.

Our monthly theme for our Values Board is this one:

I am excited. I am going to have the students write a statement about their dream- what they want to be/hope to accomplish, and then have them illustrate it in any manner they choose- draw, cut out pictures, clip art, etc. I am hoping to get a large variety of designs. I think the students have enjoyed doing these each month.

But, like everything else, it get routine and then the kids view it as "boring".  I am sick to death of dealing with the words "bored" or "This is boring" or I am bored". Maybe it is because I put a lot of work into my teaching, but to hear a student say that is truly a slap in the face. If only he/she remotely knew the amount of time and thought and effort that went into a day's worth of lessons- and that goes for ANY teacher, even if they are a simply turn the page kind of teacher (which I am TOTALLY not!), they wouldn't be so eager to choose to be 'bored". I realize that somethings are just not as exciting to learn. However, attitude is 99% of the battle.

Enough of the rant. And, enough of this posting.

Later...

RISING ABOVE

 I don't think that I will post these every month, but I really like how this activity turned out. I knew that going in to a new year, I wanted to focus on an idea that would help my students think about being better and push themselves to be better. Hence, I chose Rising Above.

This is the finished board. Each student was given an arrow page that I designed (see below for more detail).

 This one is my son's. I can do that because I have parental permission to use it on-line. :) Each student wrote in the arrow one or more things they want to do this month to RISE ABOVE. I love how these turned out with all the excuses I hear from students on the bottom half of the page in a faded gray.

 This is what went in the student journals. I printed these from the Foundation for a Better Life's web page.

I know that these are making a difference for many of my students. I have several each month who ask what we are going to focus on next.

What is YOUR goal to RISE ABOVE?

Later...

Hard Work

I have started something in my classroom that I think will leave a lasting impression on my students. 

As a teacher, you can request the Foundation for a Better Life Values posters. While you can't select the posters you get, you CAN design awesome lessons around those that are sent. A link will be provided at the bottom for those educators that want to try doing this as well.

Last month our poster focused on Compassion. It was a poster with Mother Teresa on it.

We learned about her and her life. We studied what compassion is and how we show it. Then I challenged the students to look for ways to show compassion. As they found ways to serve each other and those around them, they would fill out cards that explained what they did and I stapled them around the poster of Mother Teresa. By the end of the month almost everyone in the class had filled out at least one card. When the month ended, I took all the cards, hole-punched them, and put them on a ring that is currently hanging by my desk. Since I use, edmodo (another post someday about this site), I was also able to award those students that participated a badge. 

This month, I choose the poster for HARD WORK:

I went to the Foundation for a Better Life website and printed the mini-billboard off for each student. I also printed the blurb that is provided for each poster that tells about the featured person. 

In our Think Pad journals (journals that are used only for specific activities such as these) we glued in the mini-poster, the blurb, and then I had the students write for 3-5 minutes on what they thought the topic meant/what it meant to them.  At the end of the time, volunteers shared their thoughts. Only a couple wanted to share at first, but it snowballed quickly in to a class share.

This month, for the display, I had them transfer what they thought hard word meant to the pages I had printed off. I must admit, some of the students had less than stellar ideas of what hard work is (not really shocking looking at how most youth function today), but a few really caught my eye with wisdom that truly was beyond their years.

As the students handed in their mini-poster on what hard word meant to them, I hung them around the big poster. (I will say that I had envisioned them being much easier to read, but the students used pens and pencils and they didn't show up as well. I will fix that next time.) On the bottom of the page I had it say, "This message brought to you by ______________________" and I had the student sign their name.

This is what my bulletin board looks like. It is located in our classroom. I think this could be a powerful message for other students if it were displayed in the hallway, however, I want them to see it EVERY DAY, several times. Therefore I post it at the front of the room.

The pictures above and below are examples of a student Think Pads. The one below includes the student's definition as well.

These next two pictures are close-up's of the student's definitions. 

These were rewrites of their journal definitions.

I hope that this will help to inspire you to try something new with your students/class/family.

(Oh, the site where educators can request the posters can be found by clicking HERE.)


Later...