MCCS Weekly Updates
December 20, 2018
Winter Break
No school Tomorrow (Friday 12/21/18)
We hope all our families have a WONDERFUL winter break!
We will see everyone back on January 2nd!
Happy New Year!
Important PTO Message regarding lunch ordering
Good afternoon!
We are excited to announce the expansion of the MCCS lunch program. In your child’s folder today you will find the Quarter 3 Lunch Order Form. These forms are due back to the MCCS Office NO LATER THAN JANUARY 9th.
We will now offer Middleburg Deli as an option for your child on Fridays. There are several options to choose from and you may pick your dates!! As noted on the form, checks should be made payable to Middleburg Deli.
Chic-fil-a Wednesday has been a huge success, so we will continue the option again Quarter 3. A change from last quarter, checks only and made payable to Chic-Fil-A.
If you are ordering for multiple children, please fill out one form per child but you may write one check per establishment. It is extremely helpful if you include each child’s name in the memo portion of the check.
Thank you,
Antonia Yerby
antoniasy@gmail.com
Leo Talk January 8th 6-8 pm
You’re Invited!
On Tuesday, January 8th MCCS will host a parent information night on STEM Education, model-eliciting activities (MEA)s and our professional development with Dr. Courtney Baker from George Mason University. Learn about how the important work we are doing connects to state and national STEM initiatives, and brings current research practices to our students. Be ready to engage in hands-on activities and critical thinking!
What’s in a Name?
STEM? STEAM? SMET? How do we make sense of this alphabet soup? In the simplest sense, STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This acronym began as a way to address the perceived shortage of skilled workers pursuing high-tech jobs and has implications beyond K-12 classrooms. Currently, STEM plays an increasingly important role in addressing societal need to improve the global economy. Ultimately, how one defines ‘STEM’ is based on their personal experiences and how they position themselves in their field. For example, mathematicians advocate the importance of mathematics within STEM and engineers speak to the importance of engineering design process and creating models with generalizability. While there are many ways to implement STEM in K-6 settings, of utmost importance is providing all students with authentic opportunities to interact with content that is traditionally taught in isolation, out of context, or post-mastery.
Model-Eliciting Activities
Model-eliciting activities let students engage in the engineering design process to solve real-life, client-driven problems and allow teachers insight into student thinking. Teachers facilitate student collaboration and problem solving as students apply their mathematical understandings, explore possible strategies, assess their thinking, compare solutions, and produce a generalizable model. The engineering design processes within MEAs support the goals of mathematics and STEM learning by integrating concepts found inside and outside of mathematics, encouraging learning through discovery. This specific type of modeling embeds grade-level content within. Each MEA connects to multiple state standards across mathematics, science, reading, writing and social studies depending on the context! Since elementary teachers teach multiple subjects, MEAs are designed perfectly for K-6 classrooms and can be used to provide insight into student thinking at any place in a unit.