Our Last Week!

Final week(week 10)

For our final week, our group has just been working on getting  our TED talk put together. We have almost completed our outline and we are finishing up our presentation on google slides. 

Due to this busy exam week, we have not been able to work out times to meet with our students. Though, we have been helping out with our siblings at our own homes with their work. 

Overall, our project did alright. We didn’t meet with as many students as we’d originally planned because we didn’t have many students sign up. The ones we did meet with enjoyed our help. We didn’t perform any surveys. Instead, we talked to them about their experience with us in person. They appreciated our help and understood that this idea was also new to us so we were learning how to improve. 

We hope to be able to help students in the future!

Week 9

This week we helped one grade 8 student study for an upcoming social studies exam. The exam is on June the 18th. We worked on definitions and basic facts. This social studies unit covers the main ancient groups in history including the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, and the Chinese Dynasties. We also covered the time of the Homo Sapiens, Homo, Erectus, and the Homo Habilis. We looked over the tests and projects from those units and made corrections to some of the answers she got wrong. We also talked about organizing her time during these busy weeks leading up to exams, since she was worried about completeing all her project and finding time to study. We taught her to set time aside each night for studying so that the work won’t pile up and cause her to be stressed.
This mentoring session was very successful and we could tell she benefited from this time because she left less stressed and more positive.

Week 8

This week has been another quiet week. We haven’t had anyone contact us for help. We have asked a few students if they need extra help studying, but they are not very busy at the moment. We have spoke to one young girl who says that she has lots of projects and exams coming up, so we expect that our students will need more help in the month of June.
Here is the exam schedule for the month of June.

Week 7

      This week has been slow for us. We haven’t gotten any new students and nobody was in need of help. The students we have helped have been very successful in their work, this tells us that we are on the right track and the students have benefited from our program. The people we have helped are wanting  to continue working with us and we have been keeping in contact with them.

Picture from google.ca

Week 6

Last week we met with 2 students from grade 8 and we helped them study for their test on ancient China, it went pretty good and at the end they were ready for their test. We played a game with them to help them study, we wrote questions on flashcards and asked them the question and whoever answered first got the point and the person with the most points won. The game helped them with quick thinking and knowing their basic facts. This week we haven’t gotten any requests for help but we are hoping to get lots when it’s time for exams.

Week 5

This past week we have met with 2 students, both from grade 8 for about 30 minutes at lunch time. They needed help studying for a Social Studies test that will be on Friday. The topic is Ancient China, and they have a list of study questions they need to answer to prepare for their test. We helped them find answers within their notes and online. We are meeting again today (which is Thursday) with both students at lunch hour. I am planning on making a quick quiz from their notes and questions just to see what we need to work on. Since Emily and Femke are away today, Avery will be there as well in case we need any extra help.

Overall I think we are gaining students at a comfortable pace, but I think in the future we should talk to teachers and/or do a presentation to the classes to try to gain students who may need more help.

                                                                                                          Megan

Week 4

Week 4

This week, we had 2 new students sign up for our mentorship program. We now have 4 students all together. We helped our first student to study for her upcoming science test about the states of matter. We spent about 30 minutes with her. She didn’t need a whole lot of help, for she had already organized a study guide, but we helped her review some terms and questions and asked her to explain some basic information.
We have been keeping contact with the other students that have signed up. We discuss if there are any specific topics or tasks that they need help with and arrange times to meet.

Picture from pintrest.com

Week 3!

             This week we had 2 girls sign up! We are planning on talking with them to find out what they need help with and what day they want to meet with us. Since the girls are friends we are thinking of  meeting with both of them so that they will have a friend with them. So we will meet in the library at lunch hour one day next week.

If we don’t have anymore kids signed up by next, we are planning on giving a short presentation to the grade 7 and 8 classes to explain what we are doing and how they can sign up.

Megan, Femke, and Emily

Week 2!

Week 2

Throughout this upcoming week, which happens to be the second week for our mentorship program, our goal is to get plenty of work accomplished and get our program up and running.

Today, our group has completed little advertisements with a section to sign up. We have hung these bright posters up around the school in hopes to catch the attention of the students. Along with our advertisements, we came up with the idea to email a couple of teachers for student recommendations.
In our email, we described our program and our purpose. We explained that we would really appreciate recommendations, and that nobody will be forced into this program.
Once we have caught the attention of a couple students, which is one of our goals at the moment, we will meet with them and find times to accommodate the both of us!
It would be great if we could meet with a couple of students by the end of this week to start planning our sessions with them!

Our First Week!

     Hi, we are Megan, Femke, and Emily, and this is our first blog for our 20time project! 

     For our 20time project, we aspired to choose an idea that was unique, and something that each and every one of us felt passionately about. This lead to the idea of a mentorship program, a program that would provide extra support to any students who may face challenges with their studies or homework. We thought, If we are already opening a door to these students for school purposes, why don’t we make this a place where all the students can feel safe to join us, even if their sole purpose is not for homework? Not all problems that students encounter are associated with their classes, some students may be struggling to fit in, or to feel accepted in the school’s environment. All three of us have been through that. We can be a friend to them, let them know that they are welcome to talk to us, and that they are not alone in this school. Our overall goal is to help the students to develop the confidence, self-esteem and skills they need to be successful in school and life, typically at school.

    In order to see if we are making progress and being successful, we will have to evaluate with the help of the students. Our plan is to take polls from them and provide them with the opportunity to give us feedback. Our goal in our first week was to develop a more substantial plan for our idea. Each week, we don’t have a set number of people that we expect to show up, but we do have a goal to have at least a couple students attend by the end of the week. The beginning is expected to be slow. Our polls and surveys will be taken once a month to monitor our progress. As for this week, we have expanded on our idea and made sign up sheets that we will hang around the school. We have found the time to talk as a group and compile our suggestions. To kick off our mentorship program, we have began to orally spread the word. It is very helpful because, out of our group of three, two of us have siblings who are students at this school. We have encouraged them to participate in our program and do the same with their friends! Our intent, however, is not to force anyone into joining. This program is 100% optional.

     We have started our website using the app weebly, which has been overall easy to use. We are working on putting pictures and a description of us on the website so that students and parents get an idea of who we are. We also started an email for our program and included our email address in the website under “Contact us”.We would like to encourage teachers and parents to contact us and tell us what the students are struggling with and what they need to work on. If we have trouble finding students, we are planning on talking to teachers to see if they have anyone they would like to recommend. But we will not force anyone, it will be their choice to join.

If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to contact us though our email.

Thanks, 
Emily, Megan, and Femke.