Team Building: Tower of Power

Being able to work in a group is a skill that will be beneficial throughout someone's life. Through collaborative activities, AVID students are able to learn how to more effectively work with students from a variety of groups.

The challenge this week was called Tower of Power. Students were sorted into groups different from their regular table groups. Each group was given the same set of materials:

stunt doubles were used for this pic

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• paper bag
• 3 index cards
• 2 pieces of paper
• 2 large paper clips
• 3 small paper clips
• a straw
• 1 rubber band
• a small plastic drink lid
• a ruler
• a paintbrush

Groups were given 15 minutes to build the tallest tower possible with only the provided materials. Towers had to be free standing and remain standing during the measuring process. The group in each class that designed and built the tallest tower won one of our fabulous AVID prizes. The tallest structure out of both classes was 40 1/4"  with second place coming in at 33". After the activity, each student was given an opportunity to evaluate the group process and identify areas of frustration. 

This may be my most favorite AVID pic EVER

 The winning tower: 40 1/4"

Updates... A Bit Overdue

Now that school is back in full swing and the 1st six weeks is behind us, it is time to try to slow down and catch my breath. The end of a grading period brings a rush of activity, but perhaps the most important thing to the AVID students is (or at least should be) Content Based Assessments (CBA), or in other terms, end of period exams. CBAs were given in each core subject area and are standardized across the district. While there is still a lot of work to be done before we're all ready for a full slate of high school honors classes, the AVID CBA results were encouraging. In all subjects (Math, English, US History, and Science) the AVID students outscored both the school and district - sometimes by double digit percentages!

At the end of the grading period the AVID students calculate their Grade Point Average (GPA) and we do a ranking, based on GPA, of the AVID 8th graders. The main purpose of this activity is so that students can see how they compare to their peers and so that they can see how daily academic achievement translates into longer-term academic success. And because you get double GPA points, another great point that comes out of class rank is the importance of taking Honors courses. The highest ranked students almost always are our students who are enrolled in the most Honors level classes.

Project Human - more photos

As I was looking through my pictures from our Project Human activity I realized there are way more pics that needed to be shared...

Team Building: Project Human

As we begin a new year together it's very important that we are all comfortable working together to accomplish both academic and social tasks. To kick off the year, the 8th grade AVID students participated in ProjectHuman. Upon entering theAVID classroom each student was instructed to select one piece of recycling (bottles,cartons, boxes, etc.). Studentswere then split into random groups and given a few more materials - a coffee straw, popsicle stick, sheet of card stock and a roll of masking tape. Each group was give 20 minutes to create a "human" using only the materials they had.

At end of the building time, groups were asked to"debrief" their experience. Discussion questions included:

• Now that you know the project, would you have changed what item you picked? Why?
• What challenges or frustrations did you have during the process?
• Did your end result match your original vision? Why or why not?
• How can we relate this experience to our life together in AVID?

New Year... New Group... New Adventures

The 2011-2012 school year in into it's second week and things are beginning to normalize. The newest group of 8th grade AVID students has their AVID Binders and are ready to go. I look forward to the adventures we will have as a class this coming year.

One big change for our campus this year is that ALL students, in ALL grades are required to maintain an "AVID-like" binder. This came as a request from our teachers, almost all of which attended the AVID Summer Institute this summer. All classes and teachers will also be using the Cornell Note format this year. Because of these two things, the AVID strategies, and hopefully successes, will be spreading across our school.