YouthQuest Students Reflect on the School Year

It is a bittersweet time of year for students. The academic year is coming to an end, but with it comes summer activities and new possibilities for the upcoming year. As the year ends, YouthQuest students have the chance to remember the year with this month’s theme: Reflections.

“It is important for students to think deeply and carefully about what they have learned through the year,” says Cheryl Adkins, YouthQuest program director. “This helps them to learn the importance of holding on to memories so that they are not forgotten.”

Some activities students will participate in this month include:

• Positive Words: Students will fill out a Positive Word Form about their classmate, writing one to three kind words that describe each person in their class.
• What’s on your Mind: Students will create a visual art project that answers the question “what’s on your mind?”
• Tin Can Ice Cream: Students will make ice cream without an ice machine, an activity they voted to bring back from a previous month.

To extend students’ learning beyond YouthQuest, families can use some of the following activities to keep youth engaged at home:

1. Talk to your student about an unforgettable memory that you have and explain why it is important. Discuss how memories connect our past, present and future, and how they connect us to one another.
2. Create a memory maker such as a memory cube. Take a piece of paper and fold it into a cube, then let your student use markers, crayons or colored pencils to draw their favorite memories on each side of the cube.
3. Encourage and use storytelling to retell events that happened. Through stories, students learn the importance of giving a voice to memories, impressions, feelings and events that may be otherwise held inside and forgotten.

YouthQuest is made possible through the generous support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and 21st Century Community Learning Centers.

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