The First Days of School

We had a wonderful first two days back!  You'll find a few photos below.  You'll see us trying to determine the area of our newly painted cork board, playing Bowl-A-Fact, and building newspaper towers.  Building newspaper towers is a team building activity students do to help them think about what makes a group work well.  Each group of 3 was given some newspaper and a roll of masking tape, and the challenge is to build a tower at least as tall as the tallest member of the group using only those materials.  After the building was complete, we had a conversation about what makes a group work well.  In their words:

• Instead of one person doing the work, everybody pitches in and contributes ideas.
• Listen to other people.
• Everybody does some work.
• Combine everybody's ideas.
• Have fun with it--don't be mad if it's not going well.
• Know when it's time to take a step back.
• You don't have to agree, but you have to be agreeable (Don't act in a bad way.).
• Make formal or informal jobs for everyone--assign based on talents.
• You have to be positive, even if you don't like something.
• You have to communicate.  You have to listen and talk, and you have to use a nice tone.

At the end of the discussion, I asked them to distill the ideas about group work into keywords:

• together
• listen
• partners
• compromise
• communicate
• positivity
• confidence
• responsibility

Welcome back!

~Lauren

The First Days of School