2-17 Second Meeting Was Fun

Great turn out. 23 students attended our club meeting today. We started the meeting with introductions. We also reviewed the clubs purpose in an ever shrinking world. Next we discussed three vocabulary items, social justice, ethnicity and race.

Our snacks for the day were Chinese Cookies and coconut in honor of the new Year of the Tiger.

Here students are marking their historic ethnicity on a map of the world. We also brainstormed how we would promote ethnic pride in our school. The picture below is of the the whole group of students.

We promised the kids we would do a silly picture as a way of getting them to sit still in the picture above.

Feb. 10, 2010 First Meeting of the School year.

We had a great first meeting of the year today. Eight students participated in a mapping activity where each individual identified countries that they were connected to ethnically or culturally. Our group connected to 36 points on the map, illustrating the importance of developing intercultural skills.

In the activity pictured below we explored the distribution of wealth in the United States. Each student represented 10% of the nations population and each chair equaled 10% of the nations wealth. We learned that the most wealthy student (10%) had 7 chairs to sit in while the other 9 students (90%) needed to share the remaining 3 chairs. We concluded the activity with a discussion about why some have more than others. Did the students think it was fair?

Here we are on the computers teaching the students to access our blog.


The last picture is of the students being goofy. Who wins the funny face contest?

Year End T-Shirts

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In what turned out to be our greatest work in diplomacy, (see previous posting) we have our T-Shirt order in. Here are two sixth grade students showing off the final product of our work.

A closer look shows the arms of Earth reaching out to four faces.

A lesson in democracy, leadership and communication skills

Twenty-one students participated in a sometimes heated debate on the color scheme for our T-Shirts. While our intended plan was to have students do a series of team building activities after a quick discussion on shirt orders, we spent over an hour working out a satisfactory agreement.

Taking advantage of a teachable event, taking turns, listening to others' opinions, speaking respectfully, compromising and being assertive were all part of today's learning. We made comparisons to the legislative process and to the failure of our state leadership to come to a budget agreement.

The T-Shirt order means a lot to the students. They worked hard through the frustration to come to an agreement.

We also decided to postpone the Mississippi clean-up picnic until later in the summer or next fall, as we are running out of school year.

May 4 Meeting

One of our activities this meeting was to have student create and vote on a design for a club T-Shirt. This was the favorite.

Another activity involved adding to our bulletin board and creating an analogy between people of the world and money of the world. Click on the pictures to make them larger for easier reading.

We also talked about our year end river clean-up/ picnic. We are asking the High School club to participate with us. Were hoping a combined activity will transition our 8th grade members to the high school club.

10 students participated in these activities.

NOCHE DE CINE

41 people attended our Spanish Movie night. The audience had a mix of elementary students, high school students, middle school students, parents and at least one grandparent.

The International Club students did a great job planning, helping set-up and serving popcorn and drinks.

Spanish Language Movie Night Friday March 13th.

The MS International Club, in conjunction with the Elementary and Simley Spanish Clubs will be hosting a Spanish language movie night at the MS Library from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Popcorn and will be provided.

We welcome students to bring their families and especially their younger siblings to the night of family fun.