Rigor, Relevance, Relationships: A Formula for Success

What does it take to make champions? Dedication! Discipline! Desire!

Portville Pride has been showing its colors these days as the community celebrates the honor of having their very own Voices of Harmony named the 2006 National Champions of High School A Cappella. The quartet members; Danielle Campbell, Heidi Giberson, Alison Tigh and Olivia West, competed in Washington, DC, against top teams in the country. These ladies further distinguished themselves by all receiving the coveted soloist award for the competition. Having four-awarded soloist was a first for this competition! Our congratulations to their vocal coach, Katie Archer and the families of these young ladies for providing them with the support that allowed them to pursue their love of music.

The Voices of Harmony have hundreds of hours invested in their area of interest and have grown together as a working unit in order to achieve their goals.

Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships - to listen to the Voices of Harmony, click hear :)

--Lesa Dionne

Regional Math Initiative

If you are seeking professional development opportunities to improve your understanding of how children learn math, then join us in our mission to make mathematics a comprehensive learning experience! Through our partnership with Buffalo State College and our integrated professional development programs, we seek to service teachers as they strive to improve math education for all students in our region. Professional development offerings include math coaching, teacher collaboration, and technology integration with a focus on best practices in curriculum design, differentiated instruction, and assessment analysis.

Workshops and ‘In-District’ Professional Development Offerings:

· 10 Instructional Strategies for Every Math Teacher
· Using Children’s Literature to Teach Mathematics
· Design Lessons using Classroom Manipulatives
· Explore Digital Content For Math Instruction
· Problem Solving Strategies for Elementary
· Integrating Math Internet Resources
· Data Analysis Linked to Instruction
· Teaching Math through BLOGS
· Develop Layered Curriculum
· The Brain and Mathematics
· Math Literacy Strategies
· Project-Based Learning
· Math Coaching 1:1
· Lesson Study

For More Information Call (716) 376 - 8331
For Math Initiative Dates click here.

--Mary Morris

Ten Reasons Why Hands-on Science is More Important Than Ever

As I sit at my computer contemplating the words of wisdom I’m about to share, I can hear the peep, peep, peep of a batch of chicks incubating next to my desk. Today is the 21st day of their incubation…the day they will use their egg tooth to emerge from their brittle shells. Did you know you can hear baby chicks peep from the inside of their shells? It wasn’t until I experienced incubation first hand that I actually “understood” this and many other fascinating things about bird embryology. I must have learned about the lifecycles of birds in some of the many life science courses I took throughout my years in school. Why is it then, that this is the very first time I really “understand” the lifecycle of birds? As the famous Chinese Proverb states:

I hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand

With national attention focusing on reading and math, science educators have felt the need to defend the importance of hands-on science. Now, more than ever we need to share what we’ve always known about teaching and about how children learn. Science, by its nature, calls on a child’s curiosity to understand the world around them. Science teaches children how to question and how to search for the answers to those questions. Teaching hands-on inquiry-based science is important for so many reasons; here are just 10 for your consideration.

1. Because children ask and then answer most of their own questions in science, they begin to take more responsibility for their own learning. They are empowered to continue to seek answers.

2. Children learn how to organize and manage materials.

3. There’s a double benefit of interweaving content and process, which helps them to understand new ideas in any subject area.

4. Hands-on science is taught the way science is done in the “real world” – as an on-going experiment rather than a set of facts to be learned.

5. Hands-on science models the way that children learn best. This problem-based approach can and should be used in other content areas.

6. More than one method of learning is accessed and information has a better chance of being stored in the memory for useful retrieval.

7. Students remain more “on-task” because they are “part of” the learning process. This is effective for all students, but especially helpful for those with auditory deficiencies, behavioral interference or ESL learners.

8. Hands-on science is brain compatible. Students are:
· moving around and kinesthetically involved
· discussing outcomes and collaborating
· emotionally drawn into the problem being studied

9. Provides numerous critical thinking opportunities. Models Bloom’s taxonomy, which describes six levels of increasing complexity. (I could take this further, but this is an article in and of itself.

10. Hands-on science is fun! Don’t underestimate the importance of having fun in your classroom. Fun is motivating!

Now, more than ever, we need to see that hands-on science has had it right for a long time. The 3rd grade student who germinates seeds in the dark, has irrefutable evidence from personal experience that plants do not need light to grow. “WHAT?”, you say. For years, you thought that plants always needed light to grow. Yes, well that’s true only after the stored food energy is used up. Now, do you think that a textbook would have helped your students understand that?

If you would like more information about hands-on science in your classroom, contact Laurie_MacVittie@caboces.org.

--Laurie MacVittie

Podcasting Dr. Seuss

Jonathan, not John, who seems to end all of his sentences as if they were a question wanted to make sure I edited his mistakes. “Mr. Weinberg could you make sure you edit out my mistakes?” Jonathan was also my student helper. Using the free program Audacity, we recorded students reciting their poems in the style of Dr. Seuss. When I pointed to Jonathan he would click the record button and when I pointed to him again he hit the stop button. These mistakes that Jonathan makes mention of have to do with Podcasts that we created.

Nancy Walters’ first grade class, every year on Dr. Seuss’ birthday, write poems in the style of Dr. Seuss. This year Nancy and I decided to Podcast these poems. What is the advantage to Podcasting these poems? Now, that these poems are digital more people than the students’ parents can read them. If the student brought home his or her paper only the people in that household would have seen the poem. With the poem online grandparents, friends, and aunts and uncles can see the poem. Not only can they see the poem, now they can listen to the poem. Listening to emerging readers read their own poetry is much different than viewing paper versions of them.

Students seemed to be very concerned with what their poems sounded like. They seemed to put more pressure on themselves when they realized that the whole world could hear their poem. To listen to the students’ poems go to http://waltersfirst.blogspot.com/ Feel free to comment on the students’ poems. You may get a response from a first grader telling you what they were thinking when they wrote their poem.

For more information on how you can create podcasts with students, please contact Rick_Weinberg@caboces.org.

--Rick Weinberg