Welcome to the Enrichment Web Page!

Parents - Please note that the last Monday Morning Math Club will be May 21, 2012!!!! Thank you for bringing your children to school early to participate in this club!

Enrichment Program

8th Grade

Our Enrichment Program is off and running with many new and exciting venues! The first few weeks were spent surveying the students on their areas of interest and deciding ways to enhance our already existing program! We are so fortunate to live in a community where we have so may experts to bring into our classroom! We hope to create an environment of problem solving, critical thinking, integrate math and high level reading skills and allow for student exploration through unique projects!

Navigation

How lucky are we to have our long time friend and retired principal, Mr. Ed Jerome to teach our 8th graders about navigation! Living on an island and in a boating community, there is so much to know and learn on this topic. Here is a snapshot of what the students learned from Ed!

Navigation vocabulary

Safety on the vessel/gear

Safety and the Coast Guard

Captains responsibilities

Charts and identifying the symbols and lay out

How to read a chart

Navigating from point A to point B

Architecture

The students have been working closely with Mr. Tristan Atwood of Hutker Associates to get a sense of what architecture is all about. Tristan is a graduate of MVRHS as well as University of Colorado Boulder. He majored in Environmental Design and brings a wealth of knowledge to the classroom. He shared a story with the students about how hard work and staying focused in high school created an opportunity for him to work with an incredible mentor. He spent four months in Patagonia designing and building eco friendly cabins! The timing of this story could not have been better with the 8th graders starting to look at high school classes. Here is an overview of what the students have been learning.

Where you start in the business and where you can go (Designer 1 to Drafter)

Sharing of Patagonia Project/Challenges of building abroad

What happens from the first client phone call and steps to design

Sharing of architecture plans, shading, symbols, lines

Sketch of the students first floor of their home

Elevated sketch of the entrance to their home

New home design project

The Creation of I Books!

We have begun our technology piece in 8th grade enrichment. The students are working in groups, selecting a topic and creating interactive books which can be viewed on Apple I-Pads. The I-Books will be created using Apple's brand new program, IBooks Author. As they research their topics, they are taught how to recreate the information in the form of a video clip, text, images, graphs, keynote, widget or interactive graphic. It has been an amazing project for the students.

7th Grade

Inventions

We began our classes with an invention unit! The students read about many inventors and inventions that we even use today in our daily lives. Each student had to select one inventor of interest to them and research their lives and how they formulated their ideas for an invention. The students have created a power point on each of their inventors which we will be presenting to the younger grades. We spent a few weeks in the shop room with Mr. Pattison and each student was given a box of wood and a few other "accessories" to create their own inventions! This unit focuses on the following skills.

Research

Technology skills

Presentation Skills and knowing your audience

Public Speaking

Creativity

Chess

We have moved onto a strategic few weeks learning the game of chess! Ms. Liz Cornell who is a retired Oak Bluffs teacher has graced us with her presence and her expertise in the game of chess! We are lucky to have a role model like Liz coming into our enrichment room. Here is some research information about the game of chess.

Chess in Education Research states that chess has been proven to enhance creativity, concentration, criticial thinking skills, memory skills, academic achievement, problem solving, cultural enrichment, intellectual maturity, self esteem and standarized test scores. There has also been findings that there is a correlation between not just math but reading skills as well. The growth seen has been in prediction, patterning and concentration!

Finance and The Stock Market

We are learning about several facets of the finance world. The students learned the difference between wants/needs, budget exploration, ways to save money through banking and ways to invest your money other than banking! We had a visit from Ameriprise who lead us though some of these topics and explained the stock market process to the students. We will explore the various terms having to do with the stock market and look at which companies we would invest in. Then we will play the stock market game for the next several months and see how how "investments" really do!!

Forensics Science

The students are studying and learning about forensics and the law! We are looking at various types of finger prints and how this relates to identifying suspected criminals. We will also study handwriting analysis, footprints and more!

5th and 6th Grade

"Build A City"

This has been a joint 5th and 6th grade project brainstormed by our friend Mr. Chad Nelson! The students have been building a city or town from scratch using a train set as their main building tool. During the project we have invited in several community people to teach the students about various pieces of town government. The students have been educated on zoning, districts, town budgets, duties of our selectman, school budgets, town/city jobs and much much more. We incorporated math into the project as the students had to scale down the project from the "real world" to their "mini world". It has truly been a hands on learning experience and we are very anxious to showcase it! We will be having a presentation on the history of the Cape and Islands railroad as well! Parents, please stay tuned for an invitation into the enrichment room!

5th Grade/MVTV

Wow, who would have known that we have some television personalities right in our school! The students have been exploring the steps involved in interviewing and TV Production. We are traveling around the building and putting together a piece on the "Happenings In The Edgartown School"! Stay tuned.

6th Grade Journalism Project

The sixth graders are working with Mr. John Kennedy who is a retired college professor and has worked and written articles for Time Magazine, The Associated Press and The Boston Globe. The students will be polishing up their writing and interview skills and putting together a school newspaper.

Math Club

Welcome to our newly formed math club for middle school. We have been following the Math Counts Club Program Curriculum! The students have been meeting once a week on Monday mornings and working diligently on higher level math problems. Math Counts has a competitive piece to its program and we plan to bring the students to the regional competition next year!