Science Comes to Life at SES
In June, I was able to attend the HSU STEM Center’s STEAMING it up with Art and Science professional development. We took each letter of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and did sample lessons that related to Art. As an Art Educator, I was overjoyed at the thought of including STEM in my classroom and connecting it to the subject of Art. Later in the month, I attended a session on Coding. I was not very familiar with Coding, and honestly scared of it. I knew about it, what it was, and that students participated in the Hour of Code, BUT I had never tried it out personally. It was extremely informative and gave me enough encouragement to be excited to include coding in the classroom, and to find other iPad apps that involve coding. As a result, I have now redesigned my Art Centers into STEAM Labs. The spaces are labeled to correlate to each letter of STEAM,and will have guided lessons for each “Lab”. I have the expectation that this plan will help students understand and develop their own appreciation for the flexibility and connectability of Art to the real world. I know the students will not be the only ones learning from these changes & I look forward to what all they will teach me!
-Jeri Newberry, SES Art Teacher
TeamWork Makes DreamsWork
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| Just a Few Smiles Heading to a Two Day Team Building PD |
SES and EEE had the ultimate PD experience!! Two days and one night at Ferndale were jam packed with revisiting our Core Beliefs, establishing goals, data exploration, analysis, and interpretation and setting SMART Goals along with developing an Action Plan. We rocked Team Building activities and had bonding time with our peers from EEE. Along with this we received all our back to school information…. Guess who is looking forward to our new school year….EVERYONE!
-Dottie Goode, SES Librarian
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| Mrs. Corley leading Mrs. Arnold through the Mouse Trap Game |
While attending a professional development at Ferndale, I learned just how important it is to have everyone working together as a team. One activity that sticks out in my mind is the mousetrap maze. During the mousetrap maze, two people work together as a team. One is blindfolded and the other must talk them through the maze without setting off any mouse traps. The blindfolded person has to have full faith in their partner. In this particular activity, I was paired with a co-worker from a different grade level that I did not know as well as my fellow grade level teachers. She had to led me through the maze, so I had to put all doubt and fear aside and learn to trust her judgement. Once the fear was set aside (on both sides), we successfully made it through. This activity reminded me a lot about how the staff in our school should be. Even though we teach different subjects or grade levels, we should stop fearing the worse and begin to listen to each other and trust them. We all have the same goal in mind. At the end of the day, we want to inspire and empower our students to be the best that they can be. We cannot accomplish this goal alone. It takes a team...the administration, teachers, counselors, parapros, janitors, cafeteria workers, and even the bus drivers to accomplish this. We all have to put faith and trust in each other in order to guide our students to be successful.
-Lou Arnold, K-3 Special Education Teacher
Remember the days of church camp or girl scout camp? Sleepovers with your best friends? Those were the best days! Have you ever been on an overnight trip with your staff? Well, we at SES had that opportunity to go to Ferndale to build relationships. It was an awesome time to get to know the people on our staff. We did team building activities. We learned who the leaders were, the competitive ones were. We just had a good time. Have you ever played Heads Up with your staff? We have. Those will be some memories that we need take into our school year...That we need to be cheerleaders for our kids. That all kids learn differently. I can’t wait what our awesome bosses have in store for our next. Some people say you need to keep your personal lives out of the work place. I disagree. I believe we need to feel like a family. You need to have loving, caring people around you at all times.
-Missy Overton, Kindergarten Teacher
The team building P.D. that we attended this past week was great. I feel like it also has made us more of a family. It helped to open up new relationships not only across grade levels but across the district. As I was working with other people in our school that we normal don’t interact with, I was able to make new colleges. I feel this new relationships will help our students grow to become better students. I will feel more comfortable going to and talking to other members of our team. Being more comfortable talking to other member’s help all of my students succeed.
-Billie Corley, Kindergarten Teacher
It's All for the Students
There is an exciting trend taking place within our district! We are adding new and diverse tools to our toolbox in order to teach kids who are struggling with reading and spelling. One of these new tools is the DuBard Association Method for reading, spelling, and language. I was privileged to attend the training for this program this summer! The DuBard program is multi-sensory, systematic, and researched-based. It is unique in that it uses Northampton Symbols rather than the traditional 26-letter alphabet to teach children to combine sounds for reading and spelling. I cannot wait to use this program with some of my students and put these tools to use! I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be trained in this program!
-Carrie Clay, Speech Therapist
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DuBard Participants
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| Coding at Sheridan |
Coding 101
Several teachers attended coding professional development throughout the summer to learn more about how to implement into their daily instructional activities.
