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Fall Festival at Paxinosa Elementary School

On Friday October 31st, the Students at Paxinosa Elementary School were given the chance to participate in Paxinosa's annual Fall Festival. Students were allowed to wear costumes to school in preparation for the school wide parade at Cottingham Stadium. Members of the Easton High School Band led them out to the track as parents from all over the community watched from the stands. The Palmer Fire Department was on hand to give out treats to the kids as they marched past the authentic fire truck displays of flashing lights and fire fighters in their gear. To their surprise and delight, students wearing a fire fighter costume got two treats! Students electing not to participate in the costumed parade were given an event of their own. To be sure, all involved will remember the Fall Festival as a high point of the year!

EASD Teachers Present at Conferences

for ESL Teachers

Several EASD teachers gave presentations last weekend at the Pennsylvania TESOL (ESL teachers) Conference at Penn State-Abington. Connie Yaqub, ESL teacher at Palmer Elementary, spoke on the leadership characteristics of principals in schools with exemplary ESL programs. Michele Danyi, Title I reading teacher, and Shelly Jacobs, substitute teacher, gave a presentation on websites for ESL teachers. Heidi Fritts, learning support teacher at EAHS, presented on teaching English learners through media in an inquiry based setting.

Connie Yaqub also presented a poster on the important role that principals play in the education of English learners at the International TESOL Convention in New York held earlier this year.

March School News

On Friday, October 24, international students from Lafayette College held a Family Fun Night for the students of March School. The college students shared information about their home regions and activities to go along with them; like salsa dancing, Mardi Gras masks and African drumming. Our students learned how to write their names in many different languages.

Art and Technology- Michael Patrick O’Neil, an underwater photographer and children’s book author came for a visit. In the weeks prior to him arriving, students created underwater paintings and textured sea turtles in art class. As a culminating activity, the fourth grade students used Comic Life to give their fish a voice. Through their fish’s pleads to the human race, maybe we can make progress in preserving our coral reefs. Second grade became scuba divers in Comic Life, sharing information they had learned from the visit and working collaboratively.

Susan Joseph Art/CTC

Michael P. O’Neill at March School

On Friday, October 31st, March Elementary hosted award-winning author and scuba diver Michael P. O’Neill for a day of interactive fun!  Mr. O’Neill talked to all the grade levels about his exciting job as an author.  He also came around to each one of the classrooms to answer questions about underwater life, scuba diving, and his writing process.  Throughout the day, all grade levels did interactive centers and activities revolving around ocean life.  Kindergarten has been focusing on underwater life in their reading series and did art and writing activities about crabs, sea turtles, and fish. First grade did centers including writing and technology where students pretended they were scuba divers and wrote what they would see under the ocean.  They also made math addition story problems with sea animal stamps and drew a sea turtle habitat.  Second grade worked in Comic Life to put their faces onto scuba diver bodies and wrote about what they would see and say if they were actually scuba diving. Third grade did cross-curricular activities to learn about blubber, measured themselves in relation to an Emperor Penguin, completed penguin word problems, and created fraction penguins. Mrs. Joseph taught the kids to create penguins on the computers using shapes along with layering and shading techniques.  Fourth grade also did a rotation of centers focusing on coral reefs where they created diamante poems, watched a movie clip about coral reefs, did reading comprehension questions/posters, and math problems about the perimeter of coral reefs.   Art and technology was incorporated by using fish created in art class, uploading them, and adding cartoon speech bubbles making the fish talk and ask humans not to pollute.  As you can see, we had a day full of learning! 

Allyson Arp

Nov. 7th, 2008

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NEWS from Team 7-3

Students of the Month

Team 7-3 would like to congratulate Ashley B.  and Louis B.  for being chosen as the Students of the Month for October.