Clif Notes 3/11/19
50 Years Of Building The State & Now Global Workforce!
DATES TO REMEMBER
This Week -
Monday - 8am Start for Extra Help
Tuesday - PSATs 9 & 10 Only
Wednesday - Academic PLCs; SkillsUSA Awards Ceremony
Thursday - Academic PLCs
Friday - Faculty Liaison Meeting; Winter Sports Banquet
Upcoming:
3/22 Steering Committee Meeting
3/27 SAT Exam
3/29 50th Anniversary Gala; End of 3rd Marking Period
4/1 4th Marking Period Begins
4/2 Faculty Meeting
4/3 Grades Due by 3pm
4/5 Ignite the Night 5K
BIRTHDAYS
Sarah Olsavsky 3/13
Kevin Madigan 3/13
Katrina Nelson 3/14
Nicole Irani 3/15
Renee Peisino 3/16
Kristina Delorme 3/16
Jeff Hewes 3/17
Last Chance to Get Your Tickets!
Time is running out! Delcastle Technical High School is celebrating our 50 years in vocational education. To commemorate our 50th anniversary, we will be hosting three celebratory events. Our kick-off event is a Gala being held at the Rail in Wilmington on March 29th. This event will celebrate alumni, current and prior staff members, and our co-op employers. If you know any alumni, co-op employers or prior staff, please share this information. The last day to purchase tickets for the 50th Anniversary Gala will be 12:00 pm on Friday, March 15.https://delcastlehighschool.ludus.com/
Our next two events are a 5k on April 5th and our famous car show on May 11th. More information about all three events can be found on our website and linked on our Facebook page and school app.
Congratulations Kim Taylor
We are pleased to announce that Kim Taylor has been recognized by The College Board as an exemplary Professional School Counselor for the 2019 College Board Counselor Recognition Program. As a token of appreciation, Kimberly received a lapel pin and a letter of recognition during National School Counseling Week from College Board. It’s an honor to highlight the important work of innovative, results-oriented counselors who are committed to student success and opportunity. Please join us in celebrating Kim Taylor!
Congratulations to the Delcastle Science Olympiad Team
Delcastle participated in the Delaware State Science Olympiad competition on Saturday, March 2nd, at Delaware State University. Participating with two teams and a total of 27 students, Delcastle took home 10 medals in the following competitions against a field of over 40 teams.
1st Forensics - Anakin Heuerman, Allie Nasatka
2nd Herpetology - Alyssa Hetrick, Nate Stawicki
3rd Protein Modeling - Isaac Waters, Carter Henry
6th Mousetrap - Caelin Foley, Pacey Hooper
7th Forensics - Farazah Jabali, Jake Roberts
9th Bottle Rocket - Hassun Jones, Isaac Watts
9th Astronomy - Luis Flores-Lara, Sabrina Ratliff
Congratulations to the students for their hard work and the staff that supported them in the competition: Gerri Swain, Lisa Nowak, Tim Dorsey, Dan Hailey, John Fitzgerald, Sue Pawlikowski, Tom Gears, and student teachers Lauren Zodl and Katie Chambers. Also, special thanks to Sue Pawlikowski, for building the Thermochemistry box and Sounds of Music Instrument with the competitors. Excellent job team!
Delcastle's Pledge To End The Word
On March 6, Delcastle celebrated our commitment to sustaining an inclusive school culture by taking the Pledge To End The Word. Our school community signed the pledge to encourage the promotion of RESPECT, inclusion, acceptance and unity for all students—regardless of disability—and encourage an end to hurtful speech and bullying.
A huge thank-you to all the students and staff who sported their fabulous Be the Change t-shirts and all who signed the pledge poster. We also greatly appreciate the support from everyone at Instructional Services who came over to affirm that we are a district that Choose to Include.
The Pledge To End The Word is one of several events planned by Delcastle’s Unified Club. The next big event will be Rock Your Socks. Please make it a point this week to recognize the following club members for their dedication to cultivating inclusion among their peers. Lastly, a huge thank-you to Greta Humphrey and Savannah Bigelow for serving as co-advisors. Go Cougars! ~ Princilus
Club Unified Members
Nadia Gould
Symaya Moore
Mayra Martinez-Cazares
Brianna Bazzani
Nia Mathis
Zaria Flowers
Mia Ames
Thanh Nguyen
Savya Blevins
Alex Kenny
Congratulations Track Team
Congratulations to Coach Anderson, coaching staff and the track team for a great winter season. Below are some of the highlights for the season.
Jalissa Emmens won the 800 meters, at the State Championship. Her time of 2:17.64, puts her 8th on the Girls All Time list for the 800 meters. She also earned 1st team All-State honors. She will be attending Morgan State University on a full athletic scholarship, this fall.
Gordon Smith is ranked #1 in the long jump with a jump of 23’3”. He is ranked 5th on the Boys All Time list for the long jump. He qualified for the Championship section of the Boys Long Jump at the New Balance Nationals.
Clarence Smith (a sophomore) won the 400 meters with a time of 51.27 at the State Championship. He earned 1st team All-State honors. He later ran a personal best time of 51.17 at the Pre-National High School Invitational in New York.
JaVante Biddle finished in 2nd place in the 400 meters with a time of 51.31 at the State Championship. He later ran a personal best time of 50.84 at the Pre-Nationals High School Invitational last week.
The 4x200 relay team of Dae-Shawn Shields, Clarence, JaVante and Gordon won the relay and also earned 1st team ALL-State honors. The are ranked #1 in Delaware for the relay.
The quartet teamed up again for the 4x400 relay and ran an amazing time of 3:26.70. This time ranks them #6 on the All Time list for relay and also qualified for the New Balance Nationals.
Where Are They Now
Ty’Nisha and Amaund continue to excel in their full-time positions. They are approaching their one year mark respectively as state and federal employees.
Ty' Nisha Douglas works at the Carvel Building in downtown Wilmington. She is proud of the fact that she works in the same building as the Governor. Ty'Nisha is part of the facilities team tasked with maintaining the appearance of each floor of the building. Her colleagues report that Ty’Nisha brings a true dedication to each task she is assigned and a great attitude every day!
Amaund is part of the team day-time janitors at the Boggs Federal Building in downtown Wilmington. He is responsible for maintaining the offices of federal judges and clerks. Amaund brings a friendly disposition to work and is known to bring a smile to the faces of employees who work in the building every day. Amaund loves his job and is currently working with a financial coach at Service Source Delaware to learn about ways he can build his credit. He has set a goal to purchase a condo within 3 years! ~ Princilus
Tricks to Help Find Your Files in Google Drive!!!
After last week’s Tech Bytes about converting files to Google format, I heard a lot of feedback from staff that they do not like Google Drive because of how it is organized.
If you are not the best at organizing your Google Drive and have difficulty finding your Google files, here’s some help...
The search inside Google Drive is very powerful and will help you find any file that you need.
Use the advanced search strategies below, and you can find exactly what you need with just a few keystrokes.
👉 8 Fantastic Ways to Find Anything in Google Drive
As always, if you need more assistance please contact me.
~Tara
Delcastle Instructional Focus
Talking in the classroom
Content-Area Conversations
by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and Carol Rothenberg
Managing Noise
Many children find it difficult to concentrate on the learning at hand when the din grows too loud. Much of the problem, we have discovered, is that students haven't had much experience at individually and jointly modulating noise levels, leaving it to the teacher. When working with young children, we sing the following verse from the campfire song "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt," repeating it in a progressively softer voice until we are down to a whisper:
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
His name is my name, too.
Whenever we go out,
The people always shout,
There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
Tra la la la la la la
This activity is a great way to teach about volume and musical dynamics. We pair it with a visual representation of the volume using a noise meter (see Figure 5.4). There's nothing fancy about this aid—it is made using a large piece of corrugated cardboard, and the arrow is attached using a brad. We introduce the vocabulary terms silent, quiet, moderate, elevated, and outdoor voice and simulate those levels using the song. Older elementary students don't need the song, so instead we use a lamp with a dimmer switch—the lower the light, the quieter the class is expected to be. We practice being silent for 56 seconds, or working quietly for 24 seconds, or speaking moderately for 38 seconds, so that students gain tangible experience with understanding the relative levels of sound.
Figure 5.4. Noise Meter
Source:The Effective Teacher's Guide: 50 Ways for Engaging Students in Learning
We then tell our students that we will use these noise levels through our school year: silent when we are taking tests, quiet when working or reading independently, moderate—defined as loud enough to be heard by your partner but quiet enough not to interfere with another pair's conversation—when engaged in partner talk, and elevated only during small-group work. Of course, we never use an outdoor voice inside the classroom!
The noise meter is introduced on the first day of school and is revisited each time we move into independent work, collaborative learning, and guided instruction. Before long, the visual cue is no longer needed, and the verbal direction alone suffices. When the noise level does get too loud, we stop the class and redirect attention to the noise meter. We have seen other colleagues use variations of the noise meter, like a traffic light or a large "noise thermometer" with a red ribbon representing the mercury inside the tube. One of our secondary science colleagues begins the year by teaching students about the science of acoustics and the effects of noise on learning. The common denominator in all of these examples is drawing students' attention to sound levels in the classroom and giving them an active role in monitoring it.
Managing Time
As we discussed in Chapter 3, releasing responsibility to students to talk with each other and construct their own meaning takes more time than simply telling them what we want them to know and asking a few questions of a few students to assess their understanding. It becomes particularly important, therefore, that we manage time effectively. By the time children are 8 years old, they show time-monitoring patterns that are similar to those of adults (Mäntylä, Carelli, & Forman, 2007). The rate at which they check clocks increases as time elapses, with fewer checks early on in a task. However, students aren't always as good at figuring out how much time is left. Setting a bell to ring at the end of an activity gets their attention, but it doesn't allow them to adjust their rate to meet the time requirements. A simple solution is to provide students with a means to monitor the time remaining. Countdown timers can be displayed using an overhead or a projector. In the absence of this kind of device, you can post descending numbers of variable intervals on the board and cross each off as the time elapses. For example, in a 15-minute assignment, post the numbers 13, 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, and 1 to reflect the increased clock checking that students will do. An added benefit of an overhead timer or chalkboard countdown is that it helps the teacher monitor time as well.
Continue reading next week....