My Mortar Board
My Mortar Board
Topic: Setting a Goal for College
Empowerment Video: Invest In Yourself
Basic Supplies:
- Black construction paper, one sheet per student
- Black foam core, black poster paper, or cardboard painted black, one 12”x12” piece per student
- Glue
- Scissors
- Rulers
- Writing utensils
- Pre-made tassels or yarn to create one tassel per student
- A Polaroid camera or another method to take student photos and print them
Video Discussion:
Ask, “Why do you think a college education is important?”
Direct students to turn and talk to a partner. After a minute of discussion, bring the class back together and ask students to share their ideas.
After watching the video Invest in Yourself, ask the following questions to discuss the video content:
- What are some reasons it’s important to consider a college education?
- Why would a college education be valuable for you?
- What challenges can you imagine standing in the way of college attendance? How could someone overcome those challenges?
- What do you envision for your future? Why?
- What topics or majors do you find interesting? Why?
Activity Instructions:
Goal setting is a very powerful tool. Setting your intentions for the future can help make sure you achieve success.
In this activity, you will be creating a mortarboard. A mortarboard is a special hat that college graduates wear to celebrate their achievement. Then, you will be setting a college-related goal.
- Get a sheet of black construction paper, scissors, a ruler, and glue.
- Fold your paper in half vertically. This is often called the “hotdog” fold.
- Unfold your paper and cut along the folded line. You now have two long, skinny pieces of paper approximately 4.25 inches by 11 inches each.
- Use glue to attach your two pieces of paper together along the short side. You will now have one long, skinny piece of paper, approximately 4.25 inches by 22 inches.
- To measure the correct size for your mortarboard, take your paper and wrap it around your head. It should wrap the whole way around your head, like a hat, with an inch or two of extra paper. If it is too long, trim it now.
- Lay your paper flat and make a fold approximately 1 inch up all along the long edge.
- Unfold the 1-inch piece. Use scissors to cut small slits from the bottom of the paper up to the folded line. Make these small slits about every 2 inches along the entire bottom of the paper.
- Wrap your paper into a circle again like you did to measure your head. Use glue to glue the short edges together.
- Place the circle on your desk with the small slits facing up. Fold each flap, made by the small slits, toward the inside of the circle. The flaps will overlap slightly! Once all the flaps are folded, you should have a flat border which you will glue onto your square foam core or cardboard.
- Get your square foam core or painted cardboard.
- Apply glue to the flat border created by the flaps. Glue your circle to the middle of the foam core or cardboard, flaps down.
- Once your hat has dried, flip it over so the foam core or cardboard is on top. Then, glue a tassel to the middle of the foam core or cardboard.
- Have a teacher or friend take a photo of you wearing your mortarboard.
- Once the photo is printed, write a goal you have for college on the back. This might be a goal to attend a certain college, a goal to study a certain subject in college, or anything else you want!
