September 17, 2021
What is middle school advisory?
Advisory is a 15 minute period at the beginning of the day. Advisories are mixed grade level and provide an opportunity for students across grade levels to get to know each other.
What do students do in advisory?
Advisory is mainly focused on building community, though we also work on executive functioning skills, character education, and social-emotional development. Each day looks different. On Mondays, students do academic check-ins with their advisor or have Drop Everything and Read time. On Tuesdays, students have a lesson from their current character education unit. On Wednesdays, we watch CNN student news and discuss current events. Thursdays and Fridays focus on building community– students may be journaling and sharing, doing a team building activity, or participating in a get-to-know-you game.
What character education units are taking place this year?
This year, we’re focusing on building social and communication skills. Our first unit will focus on making friends and, in turn, being a good friend. From there, we’ll focus on online communication. This unit will focus on issues such as digital drama, cyber bullying, mental health and social media, and finding media balance. After that, we’ll discuss establishing and communicating healthy boundaries, developing our communication skills, and learning about how to effectively resolve conflicts.
So far this year, advisory has focused on getting to know one another and on establishing the middle school rules and procedures. Advisories have played get-to-know-you games; in fact, we spent one Friday afternoon with the advisories spread out across campus, playing a series of team-building challenges.
We’ve also discussed effective organization to help get the year off to the right start. Liddy Stewart, our learning specialist, put together a series of lessons about organizing their backpacks, binders, and Chromebooks, as well as how to effectively use their agenda and prioritize their homework.
In addition to organization, we’ve discussed the TDS core values and the middle school rules and policies.
We’re looking forward to another great year with our advisories!
