On March 11th, seventy Music and Art Educators from around the region participated in the 5th Annual Fine Arts Day. Music educators met in the morning and Art educators met in the afternoon at the Johnson City Learning Center. Both groups spent time with Stacy Smith from BT BOCES PLIC learning about the five social-emotional learning competencies. Stacy taught the group strategies for teaching the SEL skills through content and instructional practice.
Throughout the morning the music educators had the opportunity to participate in various breakout sessions aligned with their content and age level. Examples of sessions included composition with elementary ensembles, recruitment, teaching music theory using solfege, instrument repair, and ukuleles. These sessions were designed and facilitated by local music educators. Thank you to Ernest Bakus (V), Drew Allport (CF) Jackie Kovacs (ME), Meggan Olds (SV), Ken Starr (CF), Dan Pace (CF), Julie Drozdowski (V), and Eileen Miller (SV) for sharing their expertise and experience with the participants! The morning concluded with content and age specific round table discussions where participants engaged in questions about best practice, standards, curriculum, and student engagement.
During the afternoon session, Art educators worked with Rick Bray from the PLIC team learning how to create stop motion animation within Google Slides. They connected this work to both the media arts standards and the NYS Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards. Thanks also to Samantha Olbrys (G) for sharing strategies for teaching printmaking in all grades. Participants had the opportunity to make their own piece of printmaking art and discussed the links this project has to the responding and connecting visual arts standards. Lastly, the art educators participated in grade level round table discussions.
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If you are interested in learning more about the Fine Art professional learning opportunities available at BT BOCES, please contact Erin Wilday: ewilday@btboces.org.
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Middle School Math Collaboration |
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On March 17th, Regional Math Specialists Paul Volkert and Cody Osterhout joined nine teachers for the final session for this year’s Middle School Math Collaboration series. The day began with a review of the things they have done in the Middle School Math Regional Collaboration thus far. These activities include data discussions on spiral activities to fill potential gaps in student learning, and contributing to our regional middle school math materials Padlet. On Padlet, teachers have the opportunity to share and view resources from other teachers in the area! During this session, teachers presented strategies from the Padlet to the group so that they could explain their thinking around each resource. This led to a group discussion, where each teacher had the opportunity to share how they structure their State Test review, strategies to increase student motivation and engagement, instruction that uses technology to enrich lessons, and fun ways to practice math facts at the start/end of class.
Teachers also took a deep dive into the Next Generation Math Standards with all of the supplemental resources, and began to plan how next year could look when these standards are fully implemented. This was a great way for teachers to hone in on their knowledge of the revised standards, and have the ability to extend their thinking to their classroom.
If you didn’t have an opportunity to participate in this year’s sessions, consider joining the group next year!
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Creating a Community, Virtually! |
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BT BOCES’ Virtual Learning Academy (VLA) has had a busy year! Currently we are at 197 students enrolled in our K-12 classes. Students come from 15 different districts to make up a virtual community of learners. Many have asked, how do you create a community virtually where students feel connected?
Here are just some of the highlights from the school year:
K-6 Classrooms
- One School, One Book: The World According to Humphrey! During the month of March we all read this wonderful book told by Humphrey, the world’s most favorite classroom pet! We had daily trivia, spun Humphrey’s Wheel of Prizes, and had special Hanging with Humphrey afterschool events where we sang, danced, solved puzzles and more! We also had full school assemblies to kick off our month and ended with a final celebration where we were challenged to breakout out of the cage!
- Spirit weeks! So far we’ve had Wacky Wednesday, Crazy Hair Day, Hat Day, Favorite Color Day and more!
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Our 7-12 students have been coming together as a group at their morning 9:30 check-in. Here they have gotten to know each other by sharing ‘Would you rather…’, playing an escape game for Palindrome Day, and learning all about life like how to fix a car, survival skills, public speaking, entrepreneurship, and even creating a plan to survive a zombie apocalypse!
Students have also created a virtual Cloud Cafe which is open on Fridays from 11:00-12:00. In this Cafe they have played virtual board games, wrote poems and short stories, had a songwriting workshop, shared favorite songs, and some days just came together to talk.
More coming this Spring! We are busy planning for our K-12 VLA Art Show (Kicking off on May 18 at 7:00pm), VLA Fitness Challenge in May, and senior graduation on June 22, 2022 at 6:30pm.
Can we connect virtually? You better believe it! #WeareVLA
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Making the Most of Google Shared Drives |
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Google Shared Drives are a critical collaboration tool for Professional Learning Communities, buildings, and school districts. Shared Drives are owned by the organization or district and are not impacted by changes in staffing. Files and folders remain in the Shared Drive and are not attached to an individual owner. Consider using a Shared Drive if a large batch of files or folders needs to be accessed by a team, especially if team membership may change over time. |
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Create Your Shared Drive
Within Google Drive, right-click on the Shared drives tab and select “New shared drive…”
Name your Drive and begin adding members. Manage members by setting their permission levels. Depending on the access required by your team, you can give members access to view only, comment only, add and edit files, or manage content and people.
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Manage Folder-Specific Permissions
You can also add members to individual folders within this Shared Drive. This allows you to set varying permissions and access levels. For example, you may add an entire building as viewers to a Shared Drive, but give individual Professional Learning Communities access to edit a folder. Right click on the folder and select “Share.” Then update the individual permissions to the access required.
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Email Shard Drive Members
Another useful feature of Shared Drives is the ability to email members. Right click on the Shared Drive title and select “Email members.” From this view, you can choose who receives the email based on permission levels and you can even send yourself a copy of the email.
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LEARN . COLLABORATE . EXPLORE
REGISTER TODAY!
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PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
PK-12
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Adaptive Schools
for Professional Learning Specialists and Leaders
Starts July 20
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Collection, Selection, & Objection
Policies, Laws, and Professional Considerations for Supporting Diverse & Representative Collections
May 13
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35th Annual
Leaders Academy
(Includes Request for Presenters Link)
July 27 - 28
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Suicide Safety
for
Educators
May 23
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Looking for more Professional Learning opportunities?
View our SUMMER calendar and catalog here!
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