| The following district directors have submitted news items for NCSTA members: Not sure which district you are in? Check out the district map at the bottom of this page.
In Lenoir County, Coach Kimberly Gaskins proudly announces that Frink Middle School Science Olympiad team competed and took third place in its regional Science Olympiad competition at Lenoir Community College. The students have really worked hard to achieve this. The team will be competing at the state level on April 16th. Dorcas Green at Kinston High School is taking a group of students to the NC Student Academy of Science Competition April 29-30. (Good luck to them!) In Brunswick County, Mary Anne Gore a biology teacher at West Brunswick High School will be starting a new biotechnology class at her school in the fall. Brunswick HS is the first school in the state to be acknowledged by the Department of Public Instruction with an official SIMS number for the teaching of this course through the science department. This course will be funded through two grants that Ms. Gore has received, a $900 Brunswick Electric Bright Ideas Grant and a $5000 North Carolina Biotechnology Center Mini-Grant. Also, a partnership has been established with UNC-Chapel Hill called the Brunswick-DESTINY Partnership which has helped to generate funds to supply this course. The goal of the partnership is to train science-savvy students and to ultimately attract biotechnology businesses to our area. (Keep us posted on the progression of the new course.) Cynthnia Graves at South Brunswick reports that biology and chemistry students will be participating in the Destiny program and doing labs in the Destiny mobile facility on April 26. Laura Fleming reports that six students from Jones Senior HS in Jones County were busy competing in the Chemathon competition at East Carolina University on March 24th. Based upon the individual exam, 2 students (Jayson Rivera, and Damaris Squires) have been invited back to ECU on April 16th to take the National Chemistry Olympiad Exam. This exam and a lab practical will be used to determine who qualifies for the state National Chemistry Olympiad team. (Good luck!!!!) In Pamlico County, Christine Wayne and Alison Bennett recently took 40 Science Club students to the Kennedy Space Center, Epcot and Sea World. This was an excellent way for students in all areas of science to experience real world applications of what they had been learning in class. The students had a fantastic experience. In Wayne County, the students of Marion Carter( Mt. Olive Middle School), John Vause (Norwayne Middle School), John Shirley (Greenwood Middle), and Ralph Smith(Eastern Wayne HS) are participating in a Technology Student Association(TSA) competition in Greensboro. This is a yearly competition that involves students from across the state. The next step will be the nationals in Chicago during the summer. TSA’s mission is to help prepare students for life by promoting technology, leadership, and problem solving. There are 33 events that represent a collaborative effort between science and vocational disciplines. Anyone who would like to get TSA started in your LEA the website is www.tsaweb.org. In Greene County, Sue Walmsley’s AP Environmental class has been visiting wastewater treatment plants throughout the area. One unique plant in Greene County is using Duckweed to treat the wastewater and students are comparing and analyzing the impact that this is making in Greene County. Later in the spring the Lower Neuse River Keeper will take the students canoeing in order to study water quality in Contentnea Creek. In Jacksonville located in Onslow County Shawn Reintjes, director of the Science House Satellite Office, Progress Energy is funding a workshop entitled “Teacher Pioneers Summer Workshops” June 20-24 and June 27- July 1, 2005. These are technology workshops guaranteed to “bring excitement and enthusiasm in your science classroom. Contact Shawn (shawn_reintjes@ncsu.edu) and see what else is being offered. Peggy Sloan, Education Curator at the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher, in New Hanover County is inviting teachers to apply for the National Marine Sanctuaries Field Studies in Hawaii, August 4-9, 2005. NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program in partnership with the National Geographic Society promotes the understanding of America’s ocean treasures through first hand experiences. These hands-on ocean field studies are based on educational standards, including subject areas such as marine science, water systems, habitat monitoring and exploration. This year teacher/student pairs will be exploring Hawaii's marine environment with the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary while staying on Coconut Island off Oahu, Hawaii. The field study will include snorkeling and fish identification on the coral reefs, studies of the local watershed, environmental monitoring and much more. National Geographic photographers will work with the students on photo documentation of their field experiences and the development of a youth media project. Teachers and students can then share their experiences to local communities and larger audiences using this visual media. For more information, please visit http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education or to directly access the online application, please visit http://www.ngsednet.org/workshop_details.cfm?w_id=27. News
From District 3 EPA and Shaw University Apprenticeship Program Middle School and High School Envirothon Teams: Congratulations on your success at the Area 4 Envirothon on March 18th! Your hard work in studying all 5 topics in the huge Envirothon manual and attending study sessions sure paid off! You should be very proud of yourselves! Please know the Wake District Board and staff are very, very proud of you! Thanks to the following teachers: Ms. Brongo, Mrs. Langer, Mrs. Massengill, Mr. Ogren, Mr. Rush and Mr. Smith for going the extra mile to give you a wonderful opportunity to sharpen your environmental science knowledge & skills while challenging yourselves to a higher level of environmental literacy. The following teams: (3 Enloe HS, 1 Raleigh Charter HS, and 2 Magellan Charter MS) that have earned the privilege to advance to the North Carolina Envirothon on April 22-23.NASA/SEMAA Project. On March 1, 2005 the NASA/SEMAA Robotics Team Challenge was held at the Raleigh Convention Center. Teams from Winston-Salem, Warren County, Livingstone College and Wake County, competed in this competition. Regional Science Olympiad: On the 5th of February the Garner Regional Science Olympiad was held. Over 50 different teams from 3 different counties competed in 24 different events. The regional winners competed in the State Event a NCSU April 15-16, 2005. Costa Rica Ecological Study: Ms. Justyn Spencer, of Northern Vance High School led 17 High School students on an ecological study tour of the island of Costa Rica. Students planted native trees as part of their studies last summer.
Greetings from your District 4 Director. Off in the distance I see the summer approaching. I hope your school year has been a successful and productive one. I am sure that you are all very busy with the end of year preparations for testing (our favorite time of the school year!), but it is not too earlier to start planning for a little summer time science professional development. There are several opportunities available for workshops in your areas and I have listed a few at the end of this quarter’s update. Study Grants Still
Available Speaking of Grants
(A Rerun from the Winter Newsletter)! Research Opportunity
for Secondary Educators in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina Cumberland County
Schools ’Educators Awarded for Excellence by Wachovia Bank The Science House
Summer Opportunities
For more information on these and other opportunities contact: Outreach Coordinator, Dennis Johnson, Phone: 910-488-8415 Awards Reminder! Finally, please share
your accomplishments and news with all of us. We have lots of change coming
our way and it is important that we work together as a science education
profession to share our accomplishments and events to help others. Please
email me as events occur and I will make sure your peers see them here
in the future. Have a Great Summer and I hope to see ya at a workshop
soon.
Randolph County middle schools chose the Prentice Hall text. They will be conducting training in May on the book and again in August on inquiry science and how to do it. The elementary grades will use the McGraw-Hill text along with the new science reading program that aligns with our SCOS from Scholastic. Again, they will be doing training in May and August. Three middle school teachers, James Green from Uwharrie Middle School, Jill Kennington from Randleman Middle School and Lynne Jones from Archdale-Trinity Middle School presented at the Middle School Conference along with Lisa Thomas the representative with Scholastic books. Their presentation topic was “How Do I Fit Everything Into One Day: Integrating Science and Reading.” The presentation was to focus deeply on the importance of integrating science and reading. They used Scholastic non-fiction paperbacks and correlated them with the new NC Science SCOS. Randolph purchased two kits for each grade in middle school and trained on them this year. They are currently looking at elementary school kits. While they want to use them, they are searching for funding. It has proven difficult to provide exemplary instruction to many schools with limited funding.
Chapel Hill/Carrboro City Schools has two teachers that received funding for science research projects through a grant program and a fellowship. Meg Millard, a fifth grade teacher at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School, was one of 50 teachers across the country to win a $10,000 Toyota TAPESTRY Grant. Millard's proposal, Using Amateur Radio to Learn about World Wide Weather, integrates weather, geography, reading, writing, word study (spelling), history, art and math as students engage in activities involving amateur (HAM) radios. Students will focus on observing, measuring and discovering
the patterns in local weather and then branch out through the use of HAM
radios to learn about the weather worldwide. Two other fifth grade teachers will be working on this project, Kristin Bedell and Pam Webb, as well as Mary Andrews, the school's reading specialist. The Orange County Radio Amateurs have volunteered to help get the project set up and raise the tower/antenna when it is ready.
The Morehead Planetarium began production three months ago of “Extinction!” with a script written by Will Osborne, screenwriter for Magic Tree House® Space Mission, their previous blockbuster show. In ”Extinction!,” narrator William Shatner takes viewers on a journey that began 65 million years ago, stars twinkling at twilight, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Through exciting dinosaur animations, captivating special effects and leading edge science concepts presented by expert interviews, “Extinction!” reflects the latest thinking in paleontology, astronomy, earth science, biology and chemistry on how life has shaped the history of the Earth. It considers some of the natural forces that have encouraged certain species to flourish and others to perish. After asteroids, comets and death stars hurtle through the night sky and tsunamis rise from the sea, it concludes beneath a peaceful, star filled sky, that humans will shape the history of the earth to ensure its survival
I hope everyone
had a wonderful Easter vacation. I hope everyone is rested and
ready to finish out the semester. School will soon be over for
this year. Where does the time go??? Please take advantage
of your long summer break to renew yourself with some of the many staff
development opportunities that are available. At the high school level the core content specialists have decided to focus on common strategies. With the loss of workdays we are going to a Lead Teacher model. There will be lead teachers for Earth Science, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Monthly these teachers will have a 2 hour professional development on a particular strategy that is appropriate for the next several weeks of instruction. These Lead Teachers will be paid for the 2 hours of training and then paid for 2 more hours when they provide evidence that they have gone back to their schools and trained their peers on that strategy. We're going to use "Understanding by Design" as our guide. We're also going to examine videotapes of some of our best teachers with these groups to develop a common language about quality lesson plans. Then these same discussions will occur with the administrators because we have discovered that they don't really know what a quality science lesson should be. The adoption process was tiring to say the least. We used the AIM process (Assessing Inquiry Materials) developed with an NSF grant by BSCS. The central committee had 2 days of training on how people learn, the ways concepts need to conceptualized, and the best types of assessments. Then the central committee saw all the offerings and narrowed the selections to 2-3. These selections on the short list went to all schools and all science teachers received 1 day of training on using the rubric. After we received the teachers' feedback the central committee made a recommendation to the superintendent. The big issues were
in elementary science. CMS has had a science warehouse where we refurbished
our own kits for the past 7 years. However, only about 10% of the kits
are even opened for a variety of reasons. The supt and assoc supt really
wanted a textbook + equipment kit option so that we have a better chance
for all elementary students to learn science and that's what we selected. Judy Walker, Coordinator
of NC NASA Educator Resource Center would like to remind everyone of
the NASA ERC services and materials that are free to teachers.
The resource center is located in the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC
Charlotte. I have visited this great center and would encourage
all educators to visit and obtain free classroom materials. You
may contact Judy at jwalker@email.uncc.edu. Dina Baxter and
Stephanie Jacobs received the Lincoln County Public Education
Foundation Grant. They titled it CSI: Lincolnton. They
hope to integrate forensics and biotechnology with their units
on human body systems, cell theory, and genetics. Dina and Stephanie
teach at Lincolnton Middle School in Lincolnton, NC. Congratulations!
Welcome colleagues! I am Jane Crosby, your district director. I teach academic and honors level Earth Science at Statesville High School. This past summer I completed my environmental educator certification. I am a Maury peer trainer and a LIT for DataStreme Oceans. You can contact me with information about you or your colleagues at jwcrosby@iss.k12.nc.us. Need renewal credits?
American Meteorological Society offers three online courses with FREE
graduate credit - DataStreme Atmosphere, DataStreme Water in Earth Systems
(WES) and DataStreme Oceans. New courses start at the end of August.
For more information email Jane Crosby at jwcrosby@iss.k12.nc.us
The winter and spring of 2005 has been an exciting time for science education in Western North Carolina. An example of the excitement was expressed by Taylor Peterman, a sixth grade student from Murphy Middle School who said, “My project makes me more excited about going to science class.” Taylor qualified for state science fair in Raleigh. Other regional science fair winners include: Truman Turner and Garren Plemmons from Enka Middle; James Stubblefield and John Hoyt of Brevard Middle; Taylor Peterman of Murphy; Savanna Brown, Skya Diaz and Maggee Anderson of Asheville and Colin Martin of Cullowhee Valley School. The Regional Science Olympiad Competition was held February 19th at UNC-A. There were several schools entering for the first time including Cane Creek Middle, North Windy Ridge and Macon Middle. Again this year, the competition was very tight. There was a tie for first place between A.C. Reynolds Middle and Polk Central Middle School. Polk Central had one more gold medal than Reynolds therefore Polk Central was declared the first place winner. Harris was third, Charles D. Owen was fourth and Chase Middle was fifth. High School ranking was Carolina Day, first; Mitchell County, second; and Polk County, third. Any science teacher interested in continuing education courses this summer can contact Beth Allen at the Math/Science Education Center at WCU. b Also, extension courses are offered through the office of Bronwen Sheffield, Director of Off-Campus Services, Distance Education, 1-800-928-4968 or (828) 227 7397. If you go to http://edoutreach.wcu.edu/conted/summer/summer.html and click on 2005 Summer School courses you will find the Highlands Biological Station courses on page 13 of this catalog. Other courses offered this summer are listed in this catalog. You may email Bronwen at bsheffie@email.wcu.edu .
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