Welcome to the Enrichment Web Page!
Dear Students,
Thank you for all of your efforts in Enrichment last year. More information will be
forthcoming later this month about Enrichment for this upcoming school year.
Warm Regards,
Mrs. Costello
Enrichment Program
Our Enrichment Program is off and running with many new and exciting venues! 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!
8th Grade
Navigation
How lucky are we to have our community experts teaching 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 will learn from this unit!
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 will be working closely with some local architects to get a sense of what architecture is all about. Here is an overview of what the students will be learning.
Where you start in the business and where you can go (Designer 1 to Drafter)
Sharing of special projects/Challenges of building design
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!
Here comes our technology piece in 8th grade enrichment. The students will work 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 is an amazing project for the students.
7th Grade
Inventions
We will begin our classes with an invention unit! The students will read about many inventors and inventions that we even use today in our daily lives. Each student has to select one inventor of interest to them and research their lives and how they formulated their ideas for an invention. The students will create a power point on each of their inventors which we will be presenting to the younger grades. We hope to spend a few weeks in the shop room with Mr. Pattison! Each student will be 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 will have a strategic few weeks learning the game of chess! We are lucky to have some local MV chess experts 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 will learn about several facets of the finance world. The students will identify the difference between wants/needs, budget exploration, ways to save money through banking and ways to invest your money other than banking! We will have a visit from an investment specialist who will lead us though some of these topics and explain 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 will be studying and learning about forensics and the law! We will investigate various types of finger prints and how this relates to identifying suspected criminals. We will also study handwriting analysis, footprints and more! Thank you Edgartown Police for working this unit!!
Mock Trial
Seventh graders will work closely with some of the best Edgartown Attorneys and learn about law, defense and prosecution techniques and how the courtroom works! Students will be assigned roles in a trial and prepare for their day in the courtroom! Head on down to the courthouse and watch these future lawyers in action!
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 will build a city or town from scratch using a train set as their main building tool. During the project we will invite several community people to teach the students about various pieces of town government. The students will be educated on zoning, districts, town budgets, duties of our selectman, school budgets, town/city jobs and much much more. We will incorporate math into the project as the students have to scale down the project from the “real world” to their “mini world”. It is an amazing hands on learning experience! We will be having a presentation on the history of the Cape and Islands railroad as well!
5th Grade/MVTV
Wow, who would have known that we have some television personalities right in our school! The students will be 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. The students will work with Michelle Vivian who is simply…..amazing!!!!!
6th Grade Journalism Project
The sixth graders will work with some fantastic island journalists! The students will be polishing up their writing and interview skills and putting together a school newspaper. We will also have a visit from a writer at the MV Gazette to share what its like to work for a local community newspaper.
Science Camp
Science Camp is our scientific adventure with Ms. Kathy Forrester. Kathy is a retired math and science teacher who has sooo many science projects for the students to do! We plan to concentrate on tornadoes and volcanos to better understand the effects of our land eruptions and weather! We are also learning about “light” and how that affects what we see.
These are just a snapshot of what we do in Enrichment!!!
If you have any questions or have any new ideas for the Enrichment Program, please do not hesitate to call!! Sue Costello can be reached at 508-627-3316, ext. 206.