Generic Examples
The activities and projects included below are intended to be used as idea stimulators. Several of the ideas listed will also be seen in the Youth Leadership, Family and Community components. Through this connectedness we are practicing the concept of: It takes a village to raise a child.
Many of the suggestions may already be well integrated into your daily school lives. If they are, you are likely well on your way to making a difference in the lives of those you teach and work with in assisting all of us develop communities of HOPE.
- Act out a skit at halftime encouraging positive parent behaviour at sporting events.
- Announce daily affirmations (on that month’s theme)
- Ask youth to write anonymous essays on how anger hurt them and read them aloud to the class so students will understand what can happen if they don't manage their anger appropriately.
- Assign research papers on different cultures telling how cultures show respect to one another.
- Award coupons throughout each month to students displaying the monthly theme, prizes provided through a draw at the end of each month
- Conduct awards program focusing on the practise of theme of the month
- Conduct Cultural Camps
- Conduct monthly assemblies
q A definition of the theme can be shared
q Leadership could be practised with the SRC or a class leading the assembly
q Skits, songs, stories can be shared that gives meaning to the theme
· Create public service announcements
· Develop activity kits for children at a hospital or shelter
· Discuss how to express feelings in healthy ways (children can be encouraged to share their feelings verbally, or through art or other creative outlets)
· Create a HOPE Chain Reaction – students, staff and visitors in the school can create a chain link upon which they depict the monthly theme. These links are linked together to demonstrate unity within the school.
· Discuss how to think critically (children need to learn how to assess messages they see in advertising, the news media, sports and entertainment personalities, adults in authority, and friends)
· Display library books that focus on the monthly theme
· Donate to worthy causes
· Evaluate School Goal
· Facilitate a Come Read With Me Program – a Literacy Program in which parents come to the school to read with their child, do a craft and enjoy a snack together
· Facilitate healthy lifestyle presentations with health care professionals such as the Dental Nurse and the Health Nurse
· Facilitate Internet Pals – as the Youth HOPE Chapters expand across the province, youth from participating schools or community groups can be assigned internet pals from other schools to brainstorm ideas and create friendships.
· Form a Youth Chapter
· Hang works of art that depict the monthly theme in the hallways
· Have a Care Partner Program in which older students are partnered with younger students in the school to help them during recess, assemblies and whenever help is needed.
· Have a speech contest where the topics are related to the HOPPE themes
· Have older students create children’s books that demonstrate positive ways to manage anger. Then read them to elementary school students or donate them to the local library.
· Have students write a journal entry of “things I can do.”
· Help with Spring Cleanup – Pitch In Day
· Hold a jingle writing contest on the monthly theme
· Hold a school talent show
· Hold movie nights that show movies that exemplify the monthly theme
· Initiate field trips
· Invite community leaders to visit in classrooms and at assemblies
· Invite Elders and Seniors to your school
· Launch a mentoring program with your local police department through which students are mentored by police officers
· Learn about positive approaches to stress reduction such as time management, hanging out with positive peer influences, listening to music, writing and yoga
· Make a video to show at a school assembly
· Make daily announcements – members of the Youth HOPE Chapters and other interested students can have a spot on the daily announcements to remind the staff and students of the HOPE theme. They may choose to give a related quote from a famous thinker or make up their own thought for the day.
· Newsletter inserts on a monthly basis
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Definition of the theme
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What do we look like when we practise the theme of the month?
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What is taking place in your school with regards to the theme?
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Suggested family activities
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The youth could organize a “Thank a Mentor” item in the newsletters highlighting the story and achievements of someone in the neighbourhood that the youth admire
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The Youth HOPE Chapter may choose to put together a HOPE column in the school’s monthly newsletter addressing issues of interest to the students that are related to the month’s HOPE theme
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Suggested community activities with a focus on the monthly theme for family members and the community as a whole to participate in
- Prepare bulletin board displays presenting information and pictures about the monthly themes
- Provide information sessions on drugs and alcohol
- Provide Drug Awareness and Date Smart sessions
- Publicize a good deed or an act that embodies the HOPE theme that one of the students in the school demonstrated that month
- Recommend a movie that depicts the qualities of the monthly theme
- Review poetry and other literature that examines anger and how it can be released in healthy ways
- School newspaper articles
- Share projects with other classrooms
- Show a related video if possible (arrange a schedule to show it “in-house” for every classroom, or devise a schedule to have the video rotate from class to class).
- Sponsor a decorate-a-door contest on ways to handle stress or manage anger for homeroom classes.
- Use physical education classes to demonstrate healthy ways exercise can be used to release anger and stress
- Visit an elementary school or local shelter and perform a skit based on “How to Treat Others”
- Volunteer in the community
Year End Activities (suggestion)