Monday, October 31

Happy Halloween, Capstone students!

This week we are transitioning into the Storytelling part of the Ashoka Youth Venture program. Through our Storytelling unit we will be thinking about and understanding ourselves by asking:

• Why me? why now? What is my narrative?
• What do I care about? Why?
• What can I do to make a difference?

For your Do Now, please click here. If you do not have an iPad, please describe how you use storytelling in your everyday life. Also write down two specific examples of how you used storytelling in the last day. We will be sharing these examples with the class.

We will do a quick vocabulary lesson with the words STORYTELLING, COMPELLING, and NARRATIVE.

Next I will read a spooky story to get us in the mood for Halloween and start to identify key elements of effective storytelling. We will discuss the story, including what it was about, how it made you feel, what made the story compelling or not, and what specifically did you like or not like.

We will then listen to a story from the storytelling repository called The Moth. As you listen, think about how it makes you feel, what is compelling about it, etc.

Story from The Moth: http://themoth.org/stories

We will discuss a basic story graph, or plot diagram. This may be something similar to what you have seen in Language Arts classes in the past. As a class we will draw the story graph for The Raven. In your groups, you will draw one for the story we listened to from The Moth. 

Next we will develop and compile a list of key elements of a good story. These will help guide us as we listen to more stories, create our own, and help each other develop the best story they can.

For your homework, you will write a story, only one sentence for each stage of the story graph, that includes all the key elements of a compelling story. Read it to a classmate/friend and have them tell you whether or not it was compelling.

Click here for your exit ticket.

Thursday, October 27

Good morning, Capstone students!

Today we're going to have a brief meeting about bullying and then move into more personality tests. After we have looked at the personality tests, we will write a reflection about what we have learned about ourselves and how we think this causes us to act the way we do, make the choices we make, and if it determines who we will become.

For your Do Now, tell me how you accurate you think the Personality Test you took on Tuesday was. Do you agree with the results you were given?

Click here to submit your response.

For our talk about bullying, we will be looking at this website and watching a few of the videos about teens and bullying.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/11/living/bully-proof-kids-hetter/?iref=obnetwork

Please click here to take more personality tests: www.123test.com. Please take the Team Roles and DISC Personality tests.

We will discuss the results and what they tell us about ourselves.

Tuesday, October 25

Good morning, Capstone students! Happy Tuesday and happy Galileo Testing!

This morning we are going to reflect on our goals we set last week. To reflect on your goals, please click here. If you do not have an iPad, please use a piece of paper to answer the following questions:

1. What was your goal?

2. How did you do?

3. Did you accomplish your goal?

4. Why or why not?

5. What do you wish you had done differently?

6. What did you learn about goal setting?

7. What did you learn about yourself?

We will talk about the path we'll be taking through the Ashoka Youth Venture Journey. This will help us know where we are starting and where we will end up. We can also see how quickly the end of the year will come upon us! Yikes!

Next we will develop community agreements. These agreements will keep our classroom a safe environment for our journey. We have already discussed what respect looks likes and what a respectful conversation looks like. But today we need to develop actions that we can all agree to take in order to keep our classroom community safe and.....AWESOME!

Finally, we will round out our time looking more into Ashoka Youth Venture and have a class meeting.

Wednesday, October 19

Good morning, Capstone beauties!

DO NOW:

On a piece of paper, write down ONE (1) goal you have for yourself for this quarter (from now until December 13).

Write down TWO (2) ways or things you can do to accomplish this goal.

We will be focusing our time today on learning about goal setting through a number of different activities. 

1. Turning vague goals into specific goals. For example, "I want better grades" is not very specific. "I want to raise my grade in Science from an F to a C by the end of the quarter" is very specific.

2. Setting step-by-step plans for goals. Any goal can be achieved through careful planning.

3. Setting short-term personal goals. Goals do not have to be life goals. They can be over a short period of time. For example, "I want to schedule an eye appointment by the end of the week."

Time permitting, we will begin looking into Ashoka Youth Ventures, exploring what the next step in our Capstone journey will be.

Your homework for Friday is to have one short-term, personal goal set. You must accomplish this goal by Tuesday, October 25!

Monday, October 17

Welcome back, students! I hope you had a wonderful Fall Break!

To start things off, you need to survey at least three classmates about what they did over Fall Break.

1. Write down the students' names.

2. Ask them what they did over Fall Break.

3. Ask them what they wish they had done over Fall Break.

Be sure to record all of your answers. We will compile the responses together as a class.

Finally, work with your partners. Compile and analyze the data you got from surveying the younger students. Make a table for all of your data; see if you can make any conclusions about the answers you got.

Ask each other if there are any common heroes between the students you interview? Does it seem that students of a certain age group like a certain type of hero? Do heroes change as we get older?

Write down your conclusions to share with the class.

If time allows, all the groups will share their conclusions and we will see if we can answer our driving questions with the information each age group has found.

Driving Questions

Do our heroes change as we get older?

Do different groups of students have different types of heroes?


For your exit ticket, please click here (if you do not have an iPad, please answer the questions below on a sheet of paper).


Based on the results of our surveys, do you think our heroes change as we get older? Why? What data did you see tho supports this?


Based on the results of our surveys, do you think different groups of students have different types of heroes? Why? What data did you see to support this?

Monday, October 3

Good morning, Capstone students!

I am so sorry I'm not able to be with you this morning. I got stuck in Philadelphia and wasn't able to get a flight until today. Please be on your best behavior for the substitute and get as much done with your survey analysis as possible.

To start off today, please survey at least three classmates about the following questions. Remember to write down their names, too.

1. What will you do over fall break?

2. What do you want to change about next quarter? For example, complete all your homework, study more, never be late to a class, etc.?

Once you are done, we will compile your data about what everyone will do over fall break, just like we did last week. The data needs to be organized in a table just as we did last week.

After it has been organized, make conclusions about the information. For example, what is the most common thing your classmates will do over fall break? Are the young women doing similar things? Are the young men doing similar things?

What other conclusions can we come to about what people will be doing over fall break?

Again, as a group, compile, organize, and draw conclusions about your second survey item: what do students in the class want to change about next quarter?

Finally, work with your partners. Compile and analyze the data you got from surveying the younger students. Make a table for all of your data; see if you can make any conclusions about the answers you got.

Ask each other if there are any common heroes between the students you interview? Does it seem that students of a certain age group like a certain type of hero? Do heroes change as we get older?

Write down your conclusions to share with the class.

If time allows, all the groups will share their conclusions and we will see if we can answer our driving questions with the information each age group has found.

Driving Questions

Do our heroes change as we get older?

Do different groups of students have different types of heroes?


For your exit ticket, please click here (if you do not have an iPad, please answer the questions below on a sheet of paper).


Based on the results of our surveys, do you think our heroes change as we get older? Why? What data did you see tho supports this?


Based on the results of our surveys, do you think different groups of students have different types of heroes? Why? What data did you see to support this?