Drama students practice for their own unique version of "Billy Goats Gruff"

This school year MATI has begun a drama program for middle school students at Beach School. The drama class recetly performed unique versions of fairy tales for some of the younger students at Beach School.

I’m sure that you enjoyed reading our Humboldt Journalism class’ first newspaper, Penguin Press. Now you are in for another treat because we’ve released our second newspaper issue. Take a look at the special features, and a new cartoon featuring our mascot penquin, Patrick! MATI and Humboldt Journalism class students proudly present you with our second issue of Penguin Press. Click to see the full newspaper!

Second issue of Humboldt Journalism class newspaper

The first issue of the MATI class in Humboldt elementary school has been published online. The students voted for the name – Penguin Press. The newspaper includes several sections ranging from general school news, community, to arts and entertainment. Students reported a wide varieties of what happened in the school, what were (are) growing in the learning garden, what is the latest fashion in the students’ lives. For detailed newspaper, please visit the Penguin Press website for the latest news.

First issue of Humboldt Journalism class newspaper

After five weeks of hard work, students at Open Meadow (OMMS) presented their first project!
In a typical MATI-OMMS class, students start the class by filling out their objectives for the day and then each one responds to a check-in question. This gives each child an opportunity to hear his/her voice and begin to focus on the class process. OMMS students can be pretty energetic most days making the class a fun challenge for all. With a ratio of 1:2, adult to students, MATI’s dedicated volunteers jump in with the instructors to help keep kids focused and on task!

Over the past five weeks, MATI instructor Bobby Abrahamson and OMMS art teacher, Tab Waterman introduced the concept of “One-way versus Two-way communication.” This is a special technique companies use to sell their products. Students spent a fair amount of time exploring how companies employ popular “lifestyles” to sale their products. For example they discovered how companies identify their products with positive lifestyles: “By wearing this product, you are strong!” “By driving this car, you show others that you have a relaxed life style.” Finally, students divided into small groups and began to create their own advertising campaign. They decided to promote a virtual cola product they called, “Kool Kola.” The task was to decide on the type of audience they wanted to appeal to then design and create a poster for their product.

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This fall MATI started its first Journalism class at Humboldt with twenty-one students ranging from 5th to 8th grade. These amazingly, talented kids have the opportunity to create their own school newspaper under the team guidance of MATI’s Journalism teacher, Sarah Dyste, and Humboldt’s very experienced teacher, Sean Waller.

In the first few weeks, students learned how to gather information for news stories by conducting interviews. They practiced interviewing school teachers, classmates, and MATI volunteers. In a special September class, two special guests, Clariner Boston and Chris Poole-Jones, shared their stories with the class giving students opportunity to ask interview questions and then write a news article. On the same day, MATI had special visitors from the Robert D. & Marcia H. Randall Charitable Trust, Brenda Randall and Angie Hoffman, who came to see our class in action!

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