Project SMILE: Week of Jan 16th

This week, Project Smile finalized the order form for the lanyards we will be selling to support the Muscular Dystrophy Association. After contacting and being contacted by the company “Imprint” (by phone and email), we finalized every detail of the lanyard to make it most presentable to sell. Aside from the lanyards, we continued to discuss with the Confidence Project about a Dine to Donate. We feel that by teaming up we will be able to spread the word faster and at a larger spectrum outside of Colts Neck. Finally, we continued to talk with Speak Up about helping them with their preparation for Wordstock. Right now it appears that our group will be spearheading the advertising for Wordstock. That’s all for now, Project Smile out!

The Confidence Project, Third Week of January

The Confidence Project has made a lot of progress with regards to the Striding Towards Confidence 5K Race we have been organizing for the past couple of months, which will be held at Colts Neck High School on April 22nd, a Sunday. We have updated the website from last year and have started working with Race Forum and the US Track and Field Association . We are looking to advertise in local newspapers and magazines to assure a large attendance for the race, and hopefully will soon be featured in The Colts Neck Journal. Aside from the race, we have presented a lesson to the class about psychological effects of bullying and.had our classmates ponder several scenarios. Though the debate was a tad rowdy, the topic produced a lot of valuable and interesting conversation. In February, we will modify the previous lesson we presented to LPS so that we can have it shown to the entire school. We have also contacted Joey Kemmerling to arrange for him to present to our school. Be on the look out for Dine-to-Donate flyers; we are going to speak with the Perkin’s of Colts Neck this Saturday.

Speak Up Week of: 1/16-1/20

Speak Up had a very productive week this week. First we attended Cedar Drive Middle School on Wednesday, and met with the class we have been attending twice a month for the last time. To wrap up our sessions with them we played the games the students had the most fun with and benefitted the most out of. The games we played were bus stop, the party game, and freeze. Since the teacher Mrs. Sullivan has a new class after the term ends we will be attending a new class in the upcoming weeks. We also took pictures of the class this time while participating in the games. This week we also will be attending the ELL class this friday and continue our lessons with the class and hope to seek improvement. As a group we also have been meeting with Mr. Hein to plan the Wordstock event. We scheduled it in the library for February 14th and already drafted an email that will be sent to all the English teachers to inform them of the event. We are just waiting for a reply and approval from Mrs. Bruno and then we will continue to set up the event.

Project Provide 1/16

This week Project Provide went into Mr. McClain’s economics class and taught them our lesson, “The Cost of Living”. We taught the class about how the cost of living impacts poverty in America. The class was very responsive to our lesson. In our closing questions they told us that they learned alot and appreciated the lesson. Also this week, Project Provide got in contact with the lawyer defending Tent City in their lawsuit. We are setting up a date to interview him for our video project. He invited us to go to his court hearing on Jan. 31 and interview him after, or to conduct the interview at his office in Roseland. We hope to meet with him at the court house so we can conduct our interview, and we are excited to go to Tent City next month to interview the residents about poverty and their stories.

Project Provide taught their lesson this week about the cost of college. We thought the lesson was successful, and received great feedback from the class. Learning about the cost of college is important for students, especially seniors, because it is something that they are about to face. It is important be fiscally responsible when considering colleges because the job market for first year graduates is bad.

 

Week of 1/16/12 – 1/20/12: Project Fit

This week Project Fit prepared for today’s Freshman Health Class lessons. All week we came up with our lesson plan for Friday, which was essentially the first lesson we ever taught. We started off by introducing ourselves and our project, and then broke the class up into groups of 5-7 and brought them into the hallway to participate in the body activity. They kids had fun tracing each other and most were thoughtful in their labeling of body parts that are affected by eating/not eating healthy and exercising/being inactive. Following the activity we had the kids explain their posters, and then went into a powerpoint about the affects of eating healthy. We then went into the MyPlate lesson, beginning with having the students draw what they thought the food pyramid should look like, and then explaining the new MyPlate with two videos and a powerpoint. To end the lesson we played the “Guess how many calories are in these popular foods” game. Overall, the lessons went over really well and all of the classes were really engaged, particularly with the body activity. We are definitely interested in going back with another lesson at another date because we thought that it was really beneficial and the students enjoyed and learned some new things from it.

Project Provide 1/25

This week Project Provide  has worked on our ‘Guide to the FAFSA’. In the pamphlet we describe what the FAFSA is, how to fill it out, and what it is for. We plan on completing it by Friday so that we can print them and put them in the office.  This week we also worked on our video. We created a storyboard for the video, and gathered the necessary materials to complete our project. Soon we are meeting with the lawyer to interview him, then we will go to Tent City to finish our interviews.

Week of January 23rd: Speak UP

This week, since it is the start of midterm week, Speak UP has not had its same rigorous schedule.  We could not work with ELL or our class at Cedar Drive this week, but we are working on new lesson plans for ELL, which will incorporate the whole class participating at the same time in order to help the students be more comfortable in each activity.  We have also been continuing to work on organizing Wordstock with Mr. Hein in the mornings.  Corey has met with Mr. Hein during the day, and arranged times for us to all work together with Mr. Hein in the mornings.  He has helped us fill out the facility use form and we submitted it to Mrs. Bruno.  An email has also been sent out to the English teachers and they are letting us know how many classes we can expect at Wordstock.  We are currently generating emails for teachers and signup sheets for them to post in their English classes.  Next week, we hope to return to business as usual after midterms and make more strides to setting up Wordstock for Valentine’s Day.

Week of 1/9/12 – 1/13/12 Project Fit

This week Project Fit accomplished a lot! We talked to Ms. Bruno about organizing a badminton tournament in Feburary, with teams of two, and they will compete for a prize. The tournaments tentative date is Feburary 29th. Having a badminton tournament will be a new after school activity provided at Colts Neck High School, so we expect it to be a great fundraiser. Also, we talked to Ms. Bruno about holding somesort of basketball tournament in March, so we can hold our own “March Madness” type fundraiser. The tournament will consist of teachers verses students, or it will be Cedar Drive teachers verses Colts Neck High School teachers, so we can have more clientele. The last aspect of Ms. Bruno’s and our conversation was about advertising the 5K race coming up. To get more people to sign up, Ms. Bruno proposed that we create teams of runners, and create different categories where the teams can win fun prizes. The main purpose is to get more people to sign up for the race, and to create a fun environment for the runners! This week we also visited the nurse at our high school, to talk to her about possibly holding a “Biggest Loser” type competition amongst the teachers. We can’t have this contest with the students, so we offered our assistance in any way possible. The next upcoming months will be busy with sports and activities for Project Fit!

Project Provide: Week of January 9th

This week, Project Provide reconsidered our goals for the year. We set up projects and events in support of these new goals.   One new project that we decided to take on is a video about Lakewood’s Tent City. This video will take a look at the lives of the residents and what is like to live in the woods. We plan to visit the residents and interview them about their experience. We also hope to interview the lawyer defending Tent City in the lawsuit with Lakewood community. We emailed him and are awaiting a response.

Also, next week we will be going into an economics classroom to teach our lesson about the cost of living. If this lesson is successful, we will teach future lessons to this class as well.

(Short) Week of 12/19/11 – 12/21/11: Project Fit

This week we worked on lesson plans for the class. The lesson was geared towards teaching the students about the negative impact fast food has on our bodies and how to make healthier choices when we’re on the go. The lesson went really well and the kids responded positively; discussion was especially provoked when speaking about marketing strategies and also the calorie counts of normal fast food orders. Tips at the end of the lesson provided students with healthier alternatives and also taught them how to become more mindful eaters. The cookbooks were also created this week. One hundred copies of this free holiday recipe book will be distributed during school tomorrow, in order to give students and teachers healthy meals and alternatives for this upcoming holiday season! We are really excited to receive some feedback from the recipe books.