February 2019
The Professional Development & Resource Center (PD&RC) Pride is a monthly email communication celebrating the work facilitated by BT BOCES PD&RC to advance teaching and learning. This is also an opportunity to highlight resources available for loan as well as upcoming regional events. We hope you find this communication helpful and welcome your feedback.  
Stretching Towards Mindful Technology Integration
This year, the Maine-Endwell School District has launched a plan to help push forward the mindful use of technology in each classroom throughout the district. With the help of district administration and embedded technology integrators, Barb Tasber and Rick Bray , the teachers of Maine-Endwell were given the task of creating a stretch project to increase students' technology skills in a content embedded project of the teacher's choice. These stretch projects were aligned to the district’s strategic technology plan goals of implementing a K-12 technology skills scope and sequence, and creating, developing and implementing new opportunities to integrate technology into the curriculum and expand learning pathways for students.

This process was kicked off during the October Superintendent’s Day with a discussion around Richard Riley’s quote that we are “preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist”. District employees looked at services that many of us commonly use today that didn’t even exist when the Class of 2019 were in kindergarten (Netflix, iPhones, etc.), and were tasked with imagining what the world may look like when the current crop of kindergarten students graduate as the class of 2030.

Knowing that technology is constantly changing our environment, teachers in grades Pre-K through 12 (as grade level/content area teams) were invited to look at ways they could mindfully integrate technology into the classroom to help be “future focused” for our students. These “stretch projects” were designed to be based in a strong connection to content/standards, and address some of the student technology skills the district has been working towards. While creating the stretch projects, the teams were asked questions like:

  • What prior skills do the students need?
  • Do you, as a teacher, need any professional development to complete the project?
  • How are you going to share the project with colleagues?

In keeping with the district’s core value of professional learning communities, the district administration supported the teams’ requests to meet with the embedded technology integrators to help reach their goals. Examples of team goals include: student created digital portfolios to showcase his/her/their work from year-to-year, using coding and robotics to teach mathematical relationships, connecting with classrooms in other areas/countries to share knowledge, leveraging digital resources to provide more student choice and ownership of learning, and students hosting a TEDx style symposium, called SPARTANx, where they share a presentation on a personal passion.

It has been wonderful to see all of the great work happening throughout the district; Maine-Endwell is certainly making great strides towards their technology vision to empower a collaborative community to inspire innovation and develop responsible learners.
Picturing Science Through Literacy
On January 29th, teachers from our region came together with JoAnn Hawley and Maureen Smith to participate in Picturing Science Through Literacy , a workshop designed to take participants through an educational model that highlights the connections between Literacy and Science.

Teachers started their day by reviewing the new Science Standards for their individual grade levels, identifying the direct connections to the ELA standards and discussing how these connections could be implemented in their classrooms. From there, teachers worked through the 5E Model of Instruction (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate), which is a constructivist model that is designed to foster an environment where students are actively involved in the Scientific process.

Participants experienced first-hand a set of lessons that were not only aligned to ELA and Science standards, but that also utilized the 5E Model of Instruction as well as multiple forms of media including picture books, non-fiction texts and online media. Teachers left the session with new ideas and several resources for their classrooms to help them moving forward.

In case interested staff missed this session, a reiteration of this workshop will be offered in the summer, along with a prequel in the fall that will provide seasoned participants with the ability to build their own 5E model lesson utilizing multiple sources of media aligned to the Science and ELA standards. 
BrainPOP
One of our most popular resources is our BrainPOP collection which includes BrainPOP , BrainPOP Jr. , BrainPOP Español and BrainPOP ELL .  If you aren’t familiar with BrainPOP take a few minutes to check it out - with a total of over 600 entertaining and informative videos you are sure to find something to use with your students.
 
The rest of us know that BrainPOP videos are great and tons of our students have taken a BrainPOP quiz or two, but have you ever taken the time to check out some of the other features?
Many are not aware that our subscription entitles you to a FREE My BrainPOP educator account. With an educator account you can put your students into classes and assign them videos to watch. You can also build your own quizzes for them to take. In addition, you can have your students participate in some of BrainPOP’s lesser known activities including; Make-a-Map, Make-a-Movie, GameUP and Time Zone X. All of these activities can be handed in and graded. Want to dig a little deeper? BrainPOP videos are also linked to extra content including primary source documents and Newsela articles which you can use for additional research and more meaningful learning opportunities.
 
And that’s not all! The BrainPOP Educators website is packed with resources for teachers – lesson plans, printables, examples of student projects, videos, technical support and more. 
 
You can access these databases by going directly to their websites or through our Insignia Catalog . Please contact your school librarian or Alicia Sherman at asherman@btboces.org if you need your BrainPOP login information.
 
If you are ready to set up your My BrainPOP educator account, email Alicia Sherman at asherman@btboces.org or Maureen Smith at msmith@btboces.org and ask for your school’s educator code.
 
Have fun! We can’t wait to see what you do with this resource. 
Arts-In-Education provides cooperative performance scheduling of professional artists in the areas of dance, media arts, music, theater and the visual arts for component school districts. Performances occur in participating schools or at a performing arts center. Residencies in the arts are an integral part of this service and can be custom designed to fit district curriculum needs. All performances serve to enhance the regular curriculum and to integrate the New York State Learning Standards for the Arts.
Intense athleticism, gravity-defying acrobatics, and soulful artistry area the trademarks of award-winning, genre-defining PUSH Physical Theatre. 

PERFORMANCES INCLUDE:
Core subjects such as physical science, literacy and the arts that are explores within the context of health, creativity, innovation, communication and collaboration. 

WORKSHOPS INCLUDE:
Topics such as weather, healthy hero’s, simple machines, human pop-up books, metamorphosis, bullying, and the art & the brain. 

Meets NYS Arts Standard:
Arts in Theater and Dance

Syracuse Stage is the non-profit, professional theatre in residence at Syracuse University. 

The Backstory program, for grades 5-12, is a live, interactive and creative history lesson for upper elementary students through adults. Actors visit classrooms to bring historical characters to life. Audiences have the unique opportunity to interact with the character following the performance. 

The historical figure this year is Annie Easley, an African American computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist! She was one of the first African American computer scientists to work for NASA and helped develop the programming for the Centaur rockets.  


Meets NYS Arts Standard:
Arts in Theater
For more information,
please select links above, view the Arts-In-Education website  HERE ,
or contact Kathy Harasta at  kharasta@btboces.org .
  Learn ~ Collaborate ~ Explore ~ Register Today!
Looking for more Professional Development opportunities?
Check out the PD&RC calendar here !