Box Tops Update

The deadline for round 1 of our Box Tops for Education contest is Monday, October 29th.  The 1st period class with the most box tops collected by Monday will be permitted to get in the lunch line first for the entire month of November.  At last count, Mr. Dziack's class held the lead, but there were several classes within striking distance. 

Why is this box top collection important?  So far, we have collected about $650 worth of box tops.  This money will be used to enhance our middle school library resources.  With new Common Core State Standards that will take effect in the 2013-14 school year, our middle school reading collection is in need of an update and upgrade.  Each box top collected gets us closer to that goal.  We thank you and your children for participating in the contest each marking period and wish each class good luck as they push toward victory.

PDE Officials Visit Central Cambria

On Thursday, October 25th, Dr. Carolyn Dumaresq, Deputy Secretary of Education, and two other PA Department of Education consultants visited Central Cambria to learn about and receive feedback on the new teacher evaluation system that is being piloted this year.  As you may be aware, all teachers will be evaluated starting in the 2013-14 school year using a new rubric developed by PDE.  The rubric contains 4 broad domains containing a total of 22 components of effective teaching.  Through evidence collected during classroom observations, pre- and post-conferences to discuss performance, and ratings based on a detailed rubric, the new system will provide opportunities to acknowledge each teacher's strengths and identify specific areas for improvement. The overall goal of the new system is to provide meaningful feedback to improve classroom instruction, and thereby increase learning for every student in the Commonwealth.  As the year progresses, we will update our blog readers on the progress of our teacher evaluation pilot program at Central Cambria Middle School.  To watch the news segment from Dr. Dumaresq's visit, follow this link:  http://wearecentralpa.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=408472

Halloween Dance = Great Success

Last evening over 300 of our students gathered for the annual Halloween Dance sponsored by student council.  The evening was successful for a number of reasons.  First, our student council co-advisors put in the time to plan a quality event.  Second, our students were very well-behaved and handled the evening in a mature and controlled manner.  Third, our students were excited and enthusiastic throughout the event.  It was certainly enjoyable to see our kids having a good time to wrap up the last week of the first marking period.

Mr. Dumm Receives McDonald's Grant

Central Cambria Middle School art teacher Brian Dumm was recently rewarded a $500 "Mac Grant" by McDonald's Corporation as a result of a 2012 national campaign seeking educators who implement creative and quality educational lessons.  Mr. Dumm plans to use the grant money to purchase several Wacom digital drawing/painting tablets for the CCMS art program.  Congratulations to Mr. Dumm for his effort to enhance our art program!

It's Friday!

Another week is winding down at Central Cambria Middle School, and it has been a week full of activity.  To summarize:

• On Monday our teachers went through a day of training, the details of which you can read about in Wednesday's blog post. 
• This week was the final week of sales for our student council fundraiser, and students are eager with anticipation to see if they met their quota of selling $35,000 of merchandise.  We hope to have an accurate figure on Monday.
• Our Box Tops for Education contest for the first marking period is heating up.  There are many forms of subterfuge and trickery taking place between our first period classes, with some of them hoarding their box tops to turn them all in at once, and others sandbagging and only turning in portions of their collection at a time in an attempt to fool their competitors.  It is all quite entertaining.  As of two minutes ago, when updated numbers came in, Ms. Vescovi's class remains in the lead, now trailed closely by Mr. Moore, Mr. Dziack, Mrs. Dziack, and Mr. Gilkey's classes.  This is a major shift in the standings from yesterday!  There are rumblings that several teachers are sitting on a hoard of box tops that they will not turn in until the last collection date, so it could be anybody's game!  The winning class will get to go to lunch first every day during the month of November, and will not have to wait in line.  That may not sound like much, but it is a huge motivator for middle school students!
• I have been out and about in our classrooms, conducting walkthroughs since the beginning of September. What I am finding is not a surprise.  We have some really good teachers who are showing some tremendous skills in their classrooms every day.  Additionally, our students are coming to school and getting the job done in the classroom, working hard, participating, answering questions, and showing enthusiasm for learning.  It is no wonder that our PSSA scores are solid after seeing what our teachers and students are doing on a daily basis.  We are always looking to improve, and will continue to do so every day, but it is nice to be starting from a position of strength in many key areas.
• We will have a Halloween Dance on October 25th, from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.  Information about ticket sales will go out to students next week.
• Communities In Schools of the Laurel Highlands, the after school program at Central Cambria Middle School, will be holding a coat drive to benefit local families in need of help this winter. Please send donations of lightly used coats to school with your child and have him/her drop them off in room H104 located in the 6^th grade hallway. All sizes from children to adults will be accepted. The homeroom/TAG group with the most coats donated will receive  free passes to the holiday dance.  The drive will begin on Monday, October 15^th and end on Wednesday October 31^st at the end of the day. Donations will be counted and the winning TAG Group will be announced on Friday, November 2^nd. The winning TAG Group will receive their free passes a few days before the dance. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me using the information listed below.
• Please view our parent resources Scoop.it page at http://www.scoop.it/t/central-cambria-middle-school-parent-resources for links to articles and web sites that I have found that may be useful for you as a parent. 
• We are up to 547 page views on the blog.  Thank you for continuing to view and read our blog!
 

Denver Museum at CCMS

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science: LIVE at Central Cambria Middle School - Written by CCMS science teacher, Mrs. Joanna Dickert

In March of 2012, Mrs. Joanna Dickert, 8^th grade integrated science teacher, had the opportunity to present a workshop at the 2012 National Science Teachers Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.  While there she attended over a dozen other presentations and one of those was highlighting the Denver Museum of Nature and Sciences’ distance education program featuring live video conferencing between school classrooms and distinguished scientists from all over the United States. Through this innovative 45 minute program, scientists interact live with classrooms, teaching students about a very specific scientific endeavor.  Current scholarships from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science School and Teacher Programs make these once unthinkable opportunities a reality.  Gianna Sullivan, director of distance learning for the museum, works to coordinate these types of programs to all parts of the United States.  Ms. Sullivan states that, “We put enormous energy, resources and current pedagogy into developing our educational programming so we are thrilled to be able to share these high quality products beyond the reaches of our regional audiences.”

With the professional guidance of PC technician Tom Columbus III of InShore Technologies setting up and testing the specific equipment needed for the students and scientists to communicate back and forth, student inquisitiveness and excitement peaked! The students relish the humor, intelligence and sometimes oddity of the program topics.  September’s program took the students to an excavation dig in Nebraska where the crushed bones of Mammoths, down about 3 meters in the ground, look to prove that man inhabited North America up to 30,000 years before what was once believed.  Lead archaeologist Steve Holen, has taken the simple idea that bones fracture differently before and after death and used that knowledge to determine whether mammoth fossils show pre-death fractures.  If they do, this could possibly mean that the mammoths were hunted and killed by their only predator, humans.  By dating the bones, Dr. Holen can then determine how long ago humans were here in North America.  His studies are showing that humans were here far earlier than expected.  October’s program was presented by Mark Widdifield and was titled “Titan: A Virtual Art Station”.  This fantastic session combined science and art in the form of technical drawings of Saturn’s largest moon Titan.  Through the eyes and hands of an artist, they learned that Titan’s mountains are frozen water and its streams are actually liquid methane.  It is that methane that gives Titan its orange color and why we started with orange paper.  Students signed their drawings and labeled chemical formulas to finish their individual masterpieces. 

The upcoming November program will examine a timely subject, Extreme Weather, talking with a female scientist who chases tornadoes and compiles hurricane data.   Again, this will be a live program.  Mrs. Dickert and her students are looking forward to future programs she can bring to her classroom with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science distance learning programs.

Wednesday Update

During in-service training on Monday, October 8th, our middle school teachers spent the morning learning about the new teacher evaluation process that is being implemented statewide for the 2013-14 school year.  This process involves a comprehensive observation procedure comprised of 22 components within 4 general domains tied to effective teaching.  The system is based on a model that was researched and developed by Charlotte Danielson.  To get teachers acclimated to the new observation process, we will be piloting the observation procedure this year with any teacher who would like to volunteer to go through the process.  So far response has been strong.  Observations will count for 50% of a teacher's annual evaluation, while student achievement data will count for the other 50%.  The second half of our day was spent with each teacher developing a data plan for their classes and sharing strategies to make sure all students can be successful this school year.  We ended the day by narrowing down our Middle School vision statements to two finalists, which our staff will be voting on soon. 

Student Council fundraiser orders and money are due by this Friday, October 12.  The goal that has been set is to sell $35,000 worth of orders.  As of this moment, we are about half way to that goal.  Profits from the fundraiser will go toward funding student activities during the school year.  If we meet our quota of $35,000 sold, Mr. Santini will have to wear Pitt gear, and a blue and gold Pitt mohawk wig, for a day at school.  Here's hoping we finish at $34,999!

For any student who leaves a cell phone on their school bus, from this point forward you can expect to receive the phone back the next day from either the bus driver or our coordinator of transportation.  We do not have staff available to search school buses every evening for missing phones, so this will be the new procedure moving forward.  The best way to avoid this issue is to encourage your child to be responsible for securing their cell phone while on the school bus.

Please continue to cut out and collect Box Tops for Education.  The money we receive from this program will be used to purchase materials for our library.  Send your box tops in with your child to turn in during first period every Friday.  So far, Ms. Vescovi's class leadds with 347 box tops collected, but there are some other classes close behind.  We will declare a winning class each marking period, with the contest starting over every 9 weeks.

Our Halloween Dance is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, October 25th from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.  More details will be coming out about this event.

We are up to 519 page views on our blog, and 19 followers on our Twitter account.  When we get to 30 parents or community members following us on Twitter, we are going to randomly select one of our followers for a prize that I will determine at that point.  For every 10 local followers we get beyond 30, we will draw another winner.  So, if you haven't already, follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with events taking place at the Middle School!

As always, if you have any questions about anything in this blog post or in general, feel free to email me at csantini@cencam.org. 

Resources for Parents - Scoop.It Page

As a service to parents, we have created a Scoop.It page tailored to parents of students at Central Cambria Middle School.  Scoop.It is a web application that allows a curator to create a web magazine from links and articles from any source on the web.  As time allows, we will add to the page on a periodic basis any article or information that we feel might be useful knowledge for our parents to have.  This might include learning apps for mobile devices, strategies to improve your child's health or school performance, or other information that could be beneficial.  Understand that the material added to our Scoop.It page is created by outside authors and sources, and that even though we added it to our page it should not be implied that we are endorsing the ideas, products, or theories contained therein.  It does mean that we deemed the content worthy of adding to the page as a resource or information for you as a parent to consider and do with as you please.  Ultimately, the growth and achievement of all of our students is goal #1 at Central Cambria Middle School, and anything we can do to help get them there is seen as a benefit.  Your feedback is always appreciated, and if you have suggestions or comments about the new page, please email me at csantini@cencam.org. 

To start the page off, we have included articles featuring 50 iPad apps for struggling readers, 50 educational apps for Android devices, and 40 science apps.  There is also an article on the benefits of promoting an active lifestyle for your child, and it's link to educational performance. Check out the page here:

http://www.scoop.it/t/central-cambria-middle-school-parent-resources

Thank you for viewing our blog!

Free Rice - 6th grade Enrichment

Free Rice?

Written By Mrs. Niebauer’s 6^th grade Enrichment Class

One day in Mrs. Niebauer’s class we started using a website which allows the user to answer questions from a variety of academic subjects in order to both gain and demonstrate knowledge and donate rice to the hungry.  What is this website?  www.freerice.com According to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section of the website, Freerice was founded in October 2007 by John Breen.  In March 2009, Mr. Breen donated the site to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).  The WFP is the United Nations frontline agency in the fight against global hunger and the world's largest humanitarian organization, working closely with many other organizations in over 75 countries.  Does the World Food Programme profit?  No, it doesn’t.  The WFP is committed to the cause of ending hunger around the world.  Sponsors make payments directly to the WFP and 100% of the money raised goes to feed the hungry.

          The freerice game is both educational and fun, and actually, a bit addicting.  Players can choose from a variety of subjects including English Vocabulary, Spanish, Famous Paintings, Basic Math, SAT Prep, World Landmarks, and Human Anatomy.  As we played the game we noticed that when we get a question right we donate 10 grains of rice that will go to the hungry. We started to develop some questions.  Is this real? What does 10 grains of rice look like?  How much rice is in a serving?  How much rice are we actually donating in 30 minutes of playing?  We decided to answer these questions by conducting our own research.  Mrs. Niebauer brought in a one pound bag of uncooked white rice.  From the packaging we learned that a serving of rice was ¼ cup.  We each counted one serving of the uncooked grains of rice, then averaged our individual results to discover that in one serving there is approximately 2,711 grains of rice.  Then we went online and played for about 30 minutes.  Again, we averaged our individual totals to determine that the average amount of rice donated in 30 minutes was 3,323, which is about 1 1/5 of a serving. So, half an hour of play really can make a difference in the life of a person in need.  It is our hope that you donate your time to feed hungry communities of people around the world.  Thank you and donate away!