Fall 2007

MEC is proud to announce the following grants totaling $7720, awarded in Fall 2007.

J.F. KENNEDY MULTIAGE
Lori Call – Biomes Field Trip

John F. Kennedy Multi-age K-1-2 students will visit the Biomes Center in North Kingstown. They will work in teams as they take turns visiting the twelve learning stations including four hands-on exhibits. Students will see over 100 different species of locally collected marine life in over 60 different exhibits. Students will also visit four petting stations featuring tide pool animals, eels, horseshoe crabs, and sharks! Set up in a “scavenger hunt” style format, students will find the answers to grade appropriate questions about the animals in each station, followed by a live animal demonstration at the end.

J.F. Kennedy, Forest Ave. & Aquidneck
Claire Johnson & Jennifer Vaillancourt – American Folk Ensemble Concert

American Heritage is the theme for this American Folk Ensemble concert, involving three musicians/ dancers. Instruments, including the dulcimer, mandolin, banjo, pennywhistle, and folk percussion instruments, will be used to perform an array of American Folk Songs, with dances such as step dancing, clogging, and folkdancing. Audience participation is also included. Aubrey Atwater and Nate Donnely, along with Kevin Boyle, have performed throughout the country to excellent reviews, and are from Jerimoth Hill, in Rhode Island. They will travel to all three elementary schools where all students from all grades will participate.

AQUIDNECK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Michelle Fonseca – Toying with Science

Calling All Authors is an enrichment literature project that will include students from all grades K-4 as authors, who will create literature that will be shared with the entire school population of 353 children. The students will come either before or after school or even during their recess time and utilize the computer room to create literature that may include interesting stories, or interviews, or essays, or poems, or even plays that would be published for the school.The purpose of the literature project is to encourage writing for all students at JFK and, most importantly, to celebrate the success that students have made in writing.This project could become perpetual as long as there is a person who would volunteer to meet with children before school, during recess, or after school to allow them to use the computer to hone their writing skills and publish their writing.

GAUDET MIDDLE SCHOOL 5th Grade, Cluster 2
Patricia Dougherty – Festival of Cultures

Festival of Cultures is held in Shriners Park, Warwick, RI and presented by Green Meadows Farm. This outdoor event includes several shows that encourage student and teacher involvement. Students will learn about tribal games, stories about village life told through song and dance, and gain an understanding of Native American, West African, and Spanish American cultures. “We provide a unique balance of education, entertainment and a “hands on” learning experience that creates an ideal learning atmosphere for both children and adults.” The purpose of this trip is to help children develop an understanding of other cultures. Throughout the school year our Social Studies curriculum covers colonization, the American Revolution, and the time period through the Civil War. Using a variety of learning materials in the classroom students gain an understanding of how different cultures are affected during these time periods. The Festival of Cultures is a natural link between classroom studies and hands-on experience allowing students to gain a deeper understanding of our country’s history.

GAUDET MIDDLE SCHOOL
Debra O’Bryan – Starbase Atlantis Program

Starbase Atlantis Academy is a U.S. Navy program sponsored by Congress to serve local community youth by providing training opportunities in math, science, goal-setting, and teamwork skills. It will involve all Grade 5 students. The 5-day program exposes students in Grade 5 to real-world applications of math and science through experimental learning, simulations, experiments in aviation and space-related fields, sea-going vessels, and more. Each of the fifth grade classes would take part in a 5-day program at the Academy. The program itself is funded through Congress, but the cost of transportation to and from the Academy is not. MEC has awarded a partial grant, along with the Gaudet PTG, to fund transportation.

FOREST AVE. KINDERGARTEN & MULTI-AGE
Karolyn Bowley – Stories on Stage

This grant is being written for Mrs. Bowley’s Kindergarten class, Mrs. Moy’s Multi-Age K-1 class, and Mrs. Sullivan/Ceglarski’s Kindergarten class. The Kindergarten curriculum for readers’ workshop includes two authors, Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. The Kindergarten teachers at Forest Avenue will incorporate a 5-week creative drama program with these author studies in January 2008. Stories on Stage will explore both authors and their literature by introducing the children to the basics of acting by using their voice, body and imagination. The children will learn basic theater techniques, improvisation and stage movement by “acting out” well loved stories and fairy tales and playing theater games. This program is held in a non-competitive and nurturing environment and will include a culminating performance of the three classes for the parents and Forest Avenue student body.

AQUIDNECK SCHOOL 4th GRADE
Michelle Fonseca & Jenn Holubesko – Yearbook Staff Photoshop

The Yearbook is as an enrichment activity for interested fourth graders at Aquidneck School. The members of the yearbook staff have applied for, and been assigned, specific jobs (photographers, journalists, layout designers and sales people). They will be trained and supervised in these positions so that they are able to put together the yearbook themselves utilizing the Photoshop software.

MIDD. HIGH SCHOOL/ DIR. of TECHNOLOGY
John McDeavitt – Video Analysis Project

The Video Point, a graphing software package, will allow each student to extract and analyze data from a digital video that they themselves have recorded. The students will initially be using the software to study speed and acceleration. It will then be used throughout the year for free fall, gravity, projectile motion, Newton’s laws, momentum, energy, wave mechanics, etc. This program will serve all Middletown High School students with an innovative and effective means to both collect, analyze, and report data and make possible the analysis of some situations that would not otherwise be possible. An example could be an analysis of the kinetic and potential energies associated with a bouncing ball. A student would first record their ball bouncing. They would then be able to use the software to examine the energy conservation as the ball rises and falls after each bounce and also examine the loss of total mechanical energy during each bounce. The video analysis project we would bring our students’ experiences in their physics course to a new level while they perform exciting experiments in mechanics using the computer, motion, sound, and pressure sensors and video-based motion analysis.

GAUDET MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH PROGRAM
Melissa Kerins – Exemplars

Exemplars pioneered the field of performance assessment tasks that meet national standards to improve assessment and instruction. Founded in 1993, Exemplars began by assisting educators using K-8 mathematics problems and assessments that met NCTM Standards and are now also aligned to state Math standards for Rhode Island. They have also created differentiated tasks. Different levels of the same task can be used at varying developmental levels with the same classroom. Scoring rubrics and annotated student benchmark papers are included. This program could be used in perpetuity as long as the content of the problems remains relevant.

FOREST AVE 4th GRADE
Carol Hutchinson – Fort Adams Field Trip

Two 4th grade classes from Forest Avenue School will go on a field trip to Fort Adams in June to complement their studies of RI history that pay special attention to Aquidneck Island history since Newport was the first capital of RI. On their tour through the fort, students learn why this particular site was chosen as well as information about how people inside the fort made provisions for navigating inside the fort if it were under siege. It is an experience that not only relates directly to what is being taught in the classroom, but it also gives many children the experience of visiting a historic site that many would not ordinarily visit.