Zimmerman Middle and High School AVID January Newsletter

UPCOMING EVENTSJanuary 18th: Bethel University Middle School Visit Day (8th Grade class)February 7th: Feed My Starving Children Middle School Field Trip (Grades 6-8)February 16th: Feed My Starving Children High School Field Trip (Grades 9-12)April 5th: University of St. Thomas Campus Visit (Grades 9-11)

UMD Field TripOn November 16th 35 10th – 12th grade AVID students attended a field trip to the University of Minnesota Duluth. Students listened to an information session and received a campus tour.

Zimmerman’s Newest AVID ClassFor the first time Zimmerman Middle School has a 6th grade AVID class! The class is being taught by Mrs. Mettling and started at the beginning of 2nd quarter. The picture below comes from January 4th when the class did the Sum of All Skittles activity. Students chose anywhere from 1-5 Skittles and shared things about themselves based on the colors they chose. Students with purple Skittles shared a favorite dessert. Those with orange shared a college they'd like to visit. Those with green shared their favorite teacher. Those with red shared a favorite childhood memory. Finally, those with yellow shared places they've always wanted to visit. The students enjoyed the opportunity to get to know one another and recognized the need to continue developing a caring AVID community.

AVID 7 Activity Shows Why Support Is Important

Here are some shots of the 7th grade AVID class doing a link-up activity. This activity demonstrated to the students how they need to depend on each other and support each other to be successful!

AVID 8 Staying Very BusyIn 8th grade AVID we are very excited about starting the tutorial process! Students are analyzing their grades each week, identifying a problem area, and collaborating in groups with their peers and tutors to solve their problem to increase academic success. The students have been working extremely hard to learn this process and have seen improvements in their grades already! Another fun thing we have recently started in 8th grade AVID is the college conversation! We are starting to talk about reasons to attend collegeafter high school, different job opportunities there out there, and some of the logistics behind going! The students started to think about where they may want to go to college and created flagsto represent them shown here in our AVID corner!

AVID 9 Learning Real World Skills

The 9th grade AVID class has been working hard and having fun this year! They have become very close as a whole and are enjoying working together on various activities and class homework. We started the semester with learning about how to fill out an application, write a cover letter, and interview for a job. Lately, AVID 9 students have been focusing a lot on writing. The students have been writing personal narrative essays in their English classes, so we have also dedicated time in AVID to write goals essays that the students will distribute to their teachers. Students came up with both short-term and long-term goals that they have for high school, college, and future careers. They have been practicing proper formatting in Google Docs, using creative word choice, organizing ideas, using various sentence structures, and editing and revising. With the semester coming to an end this month, we plan to work on improving grades and preparing for finals.

AVID 10 Completes Community Service Project

One recent project the 10th graders worked on was coming up with a community service (volunteering) project that they would complete, then write a reflective paper about the experience. Students chose to help out at restaurants, Feed My Starving Children, nursing homes, and other community places. Once they completed at least 5 hours each, they reflected on why it is good to help community members, and how it made them feel. Students did a very nice job reflecting on the project and had a fun time too!

AVID 11 Preparing for ACT Test

Before break, students in AVID 11 focused on ACT Prep.  Students were able to spend some time with ACT questions in the four subtests, identify strengths and weaknesses, and get a baseline score.   We will continue to work on this throughout second semester.  A panel of ZHS AVID graduates visited with us about what college is really like.  They shared advice and stories of successes, failures, and lessons learned during their 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of college.   This month, we are moving into personality and career interest inventories and preparing for the end of the semester.  

AVID 12 Getting Ready for College

Before break, AVID 12 students spent some time with personal finance and budgeting to prepare for college.  A panel of ZHS AVID graduates came to visit with us about what college is really like.  They shared advice and stories of successes, failures, and lessons learned during their 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of college.  This month, students will put together a mock college schedule from actual college syllabi.  They will also experience simulated college lectures from statistics and political science classes.