Week 1: Personal Identity Cards

Every student wants her or his identity affirmed and appreciated. Invite students to create an ID card in which they can self identify using various descriptors: country of origin, race and ethnicity, gender, groups, organizations, pop culture icons, products, music, media sports and others with whom they identify. Have advisees share their cards with the whole group. Pay attention to what they say about themselves so you can make connections throughout the year.

Week 2: Ladder of inference

Watch this video (Ladder of inference) with your advisory group and then let every student reflect on one specific situation in which they stayed on the last rug of the ladder. How could they stay low on the ladder of inference? What can we create when staying low?

Week 3: Mapping your Personal Pathway

Print the personal pathway handout in this Link (or pull it up on the screen and have students draw it themselves) for students to map out where they’ve been and where they want to go. Do this activity as a reflection of the past school year and the first month of class, in order to make adjustments and improvements. Encourage students to draw and share their maps.

Week 4: Reflections about me

Develop a personal inventory to find out more about your advisees, including what they care about, what interests them, and what they are concerned about. Here is Link to the activity.

Week 1: What is Growth Mindset (videos with discussion questions)

Week 2: Growth Mindset Discussion (Discuss a time when you overcame a struggle in learning and learned to solve a problem. As a teacher, share a personal story about a time you had to work hard to get better at something)

Week 3: Letter to a Future Student

Ask your students for a short story about a struggle they had when they were learning. How did it make them feel? How did they overcome it, and what did it teach them? Tell them to write a letter to this future student to tell them about their struggle, what they learned from it, and any advice they could give for the student. Collect their letters, and save them in order to give them back to them during difficult testing periods, such as final exams.

Week 4: The Power of Belief

This particular video is about how a growth mindset is proven to help students succeed. For students who might be resistant to the idea that intelligence can change, we suggest starting with an activity that helps students understand the neuroscience of how the brain changes. Then, you can use this activity to show the power of believing that the brain is malleable.

Week 1: Making advisory a safe, friendly and welcoming place for everyone .

Directions:

1. Do a 2 minute quick write on index cards, using the following question: what are the qualities of a good friend?

2. Share responses with the whole group and invite students to brainstorm the differences between being friends and friendly friend or friendly.

Week 2: Acknowledging your assets:

Ask your advisees to prepare a skill journal by doing the following: “Write down something that you are very good at that has nothing to do with school, and then write one personal skill and qualities that help you to do this well”. Invite students to share what they wrote, and develop a skill list for the class. Why are these skills so unique and special?

Week 3: CPR Cooperation:

Greetings: Snake Greetings (see advisory book - this is a specific way of saying hello)

Sharing: Partner share: Tell about a time in your life when teamwork was important, in or out of school. A couple of volunteers share with the whole group.

Activity: Helium Hoop or Shrinking World, page 235 from the Advisory book.

Week 4: CPR Assertion

Greetings: Choice of Voice Greeting. Pick a greeting from The Advisory book page 217.

Sharing: Individual Share: Tell about a time when you stood up for yourself or someone else.

Activity: Honey do you love me? Or What are you doing? Page 235 from the Advisory book

Week 1: Personal history museum

Invite students to create a display of at least 5 artifacts with accompanying descriptions that communicate who they are, who their family is, what’s important to them, what they are grateful for, and what their hopes and dreams are for themselves and their families. This can be done digitally by having them make a Canva/PDF.

Week 2: Reflecting on the week that was Link here

Week 3: Three good things Link here

Week 4: Reflecting on the week that was Link here

Week 1: Marshmallow Challenge (Google Doc) or (second step)

Students work together in groups to see who can build the tallest tower using marshmallows and uncooked spaghetti. The objectives is to work together in groups to build the tallest tower

Materials needed for each group:

20 uncooked spaghetti noodles

1 marshmallow

1 long piece of string

1 long piece of tape

1 measuring tape or ruler

Week 2: Score a Goal (second step) or (google doc link)

Groups try to score goals by throwing a ball into a basket under different challenging conditions.

Materials needed:

1 waste basket or box

3 small toys or balls

1 set of challenge cards

Week 3: Repurposed (google doc) or (second step)

Students work in groups to think of unintended uses for an everyday object, using different strategies in each round, then compare their results.

Week 4: Back to Your Old Self (second step) or (google doc)

Students write descriptions of their personalities when they were younger, then try to guess as a class who wrote each description.