I am excited to announce we had FOUR winners for this month's Blog contest. Congratulations goes out to Sue Bowers, Headstart teacher at One Cumberland, Lisa Kiss, ES teacher at Fairland, and Andrea Peters, SLP therapist for all winning a Bee Bot. We had several staff members that sent in essays and we had a three way tie. Supervisors decided all three would receive a Bee Bot.

What is STEM/STEAM Day

STEM/STEAM Day falls on November 8. There’s no way around it: children are significantly better off with strong science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics skills. That’s why STEM and STEAM education programs are so important. It’s understandable that these subjects push society forward, and these programs help to find fun and engaging ways to teach them to students, which is all worth commemorating. So, on November 8, we celebrate STEM/STEAM Day!

I can not believe it is already November 4th. Our first contest give-away is approaching. We have two items to give away. I have received several essays and I am still accepting them until November 11th . Please see contest rules on the right hand side of my blog.

Welcome to fall- can't believe we are already in the middle of October. I have received some emails that my latest blog (created today) sent an email to staff that subscribe; however, the link seems to be broken! I am sorry for that and re-sending it again. Good luck!

I can't believe we are already in the middle of October. If you look over to the right under Spotlight, you will see our first instructional technology tools give-a-way contest! I have two items for staff to win this month. You can write an essay for each one, or just the one that applies to your class the best. Please view the videos on uses of these tools in your classroom! Good luck

Welcome back. I hope you had a fantastic summer vacation. Students are arriving back into our classes as I type this and I hope you are as excited as I am to start working with them. Several things occurred over the summer and I am hoping this blog post will keep you updated on these new things, as well as, throughout the school year. Please keep checking back or subscribe to this blog.

This is an email that I received today regarding an online math program. If you are interested, please let me know. I will email them back and include you.

Earth Day is April 22nd. Do you know when Earth Day started? The idea for a national day to focus on the environment came after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara. Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, announced a "national teach-in on the environment". April 22, 1970 was the first Earth Day. This date was chosen because it fell between spring break and final exams for most colleges and schools at that time.

I would like to do a shout out to all our "2018-2019 Contest Blog Winners". These staff members wrote short essays to explain how they can implement the item I was giving away that month. Each month our IU13 Program Supervisors voted on the essays, not knowing who was the writer. I will begin the contests again in September, with the first essay being due in October.

Erin Sullivan was the winner of our final contest give away. She won a Snap Circuit Jr. Kit to use with her Speech and Language students. This kit allows students and staff to make up to 100 different experiments.  Erin is planning to incorporate these experiments during her sessions to work on vocabulary, problem solving, following directions, and many other IEP goals. Thank you Erin for the work you do with our students!