Category: Newsroom Articles

Educational Resources to Celebrate Veteran’s Day

A Congressional Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U.S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made Nov. 11 of each year a legal holiday—”a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day.'” Congress amended this act on June 1, 1954, replacing “Armistice” with “Veterans,” and it has since been known as Veterans Day.

Resources for consideration:

Public Pre-K and Partnership Open Office Hours Scheduled

The Maine Department of Education (DOE) Early Learning Team is pleased to offer Open Office Hours focusing on technical assistance for public pre-k.  These office hours will feature Marcy Whitcomb, Public Pre-K Consultant and Sue Gallant, Public Pre-K Expansion Consultant.

Sessions are meant to be a time for educators, pre-k coordinators and administrators to come together to ask questions, celebrate successes and/or work through problems of practice in public pre-k that educators, administrators, and partnership programs may be experiencing. Office hours are offered as part of the Maine DOE’s Pre-K Technical Assistance program and are meant for your use and discussion; you can join for the full hour, or just a part; for each session or only when you have a question.

Sessions after the first session will not be predetermined but will be an open conversation driven by the topics brought from the field.  Our first session will focus on celebrations and problems of practice from the first months in the classroom.

Sessions will be held every first and third Thursday of the month, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., on the following schedule:

November 17th
December 1st 15th
January 5th 19th
February 2nd 16th
March 2nd 16th
April 6th 20th
May 4th 18th
June 1st 15th

Please use and save the following Zoom link and password to access each meeting (the meeting link will be the same for each office hour session):

Join Zoom Meeting
https://mainestate.zoom.us/j/82733636260?pwd=VUd5eklsaHRIaEEzeldhazJDSWw2dz09

Meeting ID: 827 3363 6260
Passcode: MePreK22!
One tap mobile
+13017158592,,82733636260# US (Washington DC)
+13092053325,,82733636260# US

To submit a topic or question prior to a session and for more information please email Marcy Whitcomb, Public Pre-K Consultant, at: Marcy.r.whitcomb@maine.gov

 

Educational Resources for Native American Heritage Month and Beyond

November is recognized nationally as “National American Indian Heritage Month,” or otherwise known as Native American Heritage Month which celebrates and recognizes the accomplishments of the peoples who were the original inhabitants, explorers, and settlers of the United States.

The Maine Department of Education website has a listing of curated material which represent a continuing collaborative effort between the four nations of the Wabanaki in Maine, Native and non-Native educators, the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission, the Maine Department of Education, and the University of Maine System.

This website is designed to support K-12 Maine educators in integrating Maine Native Studies into existing curricula.  While it is most common to find this content taught in a social studies curriculum, it can be easily integrated into content areas and courses across all grade levels.  Resources included here are not comprehensive or definitive but rather represent high-quality materials that are widely available.  They have been reviewed by cultural experts designated by Wabanaki Tribal leaders and by practicing Maine educators.

Maine Native Studies Website

Report on Bilingual Education in Maine Now Available

Bilingual education, including language immersion programs, offer exciting and impactful interdisciplinary learning opportunities for students. Research shows that developing proficiency in two or more languages has cognitive, educational, economic, and sociocultural benefits.

In response to interest in developing bilingual programs from a variety of schools across the state, the Maine Department of Education launched the Multilingual Education Task Force (METF) in May of 2022. Over 100 educators and community members came together to learn about bilingual education and to provide the Department with recommendations to inform its plan for promoting bilingual programs and supporting interested schools. The Department would like to express its sincere appreciation to METF participants for their contributions to this important work.

The Multilingual Education Task Force Report compiles participants’ recommendations and offers a road map of action steps for the Department. Educators and community members who would like to pursue the development of a bilingual program in their school are encouraged to contact April Perkins, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) & Bilingual Programs Specialist, at april.perkins@maine.gov.

Get to Know the Maine DOE Team: Meet Cheryl Lang

Maine DOE team member Cheryl Lang is being highlighted this week as part of the Get to Know the Maine DOE Team Campaign. Learn a little more about Cheryl in the question and answer below.

What is your role or roles with the Maine DOE?

I am the ESEA Federal Programs Director.

What do you like best about your job?

Working as a collaborative team to support educators in the field of public education in their efforts to provide an equitable learning environment for all students.

How or why did you decide on this career?

When my own children were in the early grades of school, I worked in an organization that supported Junior Achievement. I volunteered in schools as both a parent and a business woman, and the more I volunteered, the more I fell in love with it. I then left the business world and went back to school to get another degree…this one in elementary education. From there, I was privileged enough to have the financial backing of the school districts I worked for to support continuing education for myself as a life-long learner and earned my doctorate in educational leadership.

What do you like to do outside of work?

Hanging out with family (grandchildren in particular) and friends, kayaking, bicycling, taking my dog for long walks, antiquing, and traveling.

Staff Certification Report Due Soon

The Staff Certification Report is due Tuesday, November 15th in NEO.

  • Instructions for certifying this report are here.
    • Webinar: Staff Certification Instructions
  • Instructions for accessing, adding, and updating staff in the NEO Staff Module can be found here.
  • For additional NEO Staff information please visit Staff Data Entry Guides on the MEDMS Helpdesk Website.

This data is critical for determining EPS funding.

If you questions please contact the MEDMS Helpdesk at 207.624.6896 or email MEDMS.Helpdesk@maine.gov

For training in NEO Staff please contact Alexandra Cookson – Data Quality Trainer at 207.446.3897 or email Alexandra.Cookson@maine.gov

 

Innovation and Interdisciplinary Learning Has Students Doing Math in Orono’s Webster Park

Would you go to the park to do a little innovative learning connecting math, science, and art using the sun? Students from nearby schools did just that on October 21, 2022!

A unique partnership between the University of Maine and the Town of Orono made it possible for students, and members of the public, to go to the park and explore multiplication and division using the sun. The interactive sculpture, the SunRule, was unveiled in a public ceremony in October.

The project was a part of UMaine’s MIRTA accelerator program that is designed to advance research to commercialization with a focus on innovation and real-world connections. This type of work brings to light the connections within and across the content areas (math, science, and art) and community partnerships that opens doors to student curiosity, engagement, wonder and joy for learning.

The concept for the sculpture began as an email between UMaine Associate Professor of Mathematics Education and Instructional Technology, Justin Dimmel, and Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, Eric Pandiscio, in 2019 just before the pandemic started! The concept went from SunRule 1.0 (a sawhorse with dowels) to cardboard boxes and then was shared with UMaine Associate Professor of Art, Greg Ondo, and Sculpture Studio Technician, Sam Hoey. With the artistic influence of artwork using sunlight and further planning, a prototype sculpture was created and then a final sculpture of granite and bronze was produced and installed in Webster Park on North Main Avenue in Orono.

Using the sunlight to measure the shadow of an object is something that has been done in math classes for a very long time. The SunRule concept uses the sunlight, not the shadow, to show the continuous nature of multiplication by using a scaling model, showing that for every discrete number (1, 2, 3, etc.) and all those in between, there is a product.

SunRule 1.0
Box Model SunRule
SunRule Sculpture

You can read more about the SunRule at UMaine News.

Using Book Creator & Educational Technology Tools to Engage Students in Reading

The Gorham Middle School (GMS) library website is a rich resource for students to discover and access reading materials from their home or classroom using their MLTI iPads. Librarian Suzanne Liacos-Dix has created an extensive collection of Book Talk videos, a Google Classroom stream, and a selection of Google Forms to engage students in sharing their literary passions with others. This year, in collaboration with 7th grade teacher, Sherry Coyne and the GMS technology integrator, Terri Dawson, the library website has a new feature to help engage students in Silent Sustained Reading (SSR).

The GMS library website features a link to join a Google Classroom where Mrs. Dix streams library announcements like new book arrivals, book fair information, and author visit events. She has also created a Google Form where students can request a featured “Favorites Shelf” to display their top picks as well as a form to request new books to be added to the library. The forms are student-friendly and provide students an opportunity to have a voice in the library collection. The Google Classroom stream allows students across grade levels to have conversations that they might not otherwise from expressing excitement about a new book release or sharing thoughts on upcoming events with others. The stream is also an opportunity for Mrs. Dix to help students learn how to communicate effectively with others and become good digital citizens. Mrs. Dix says there is a long waiting list for the Favorites Shelf that just started this September. It has been extraordinarily popular with the students!

Like many middle schools, Gorham Middle School has a Silent Sustained Reading period during the day to allow students to dive into a book of their choice for a set amount of time. Sometimes getting students to actively engage in SSR can be a challenge. Sherry Coyne, a 7th grade teacher on the Little River team reached out to Mrs. Dix about an idea she had heard about that might help support students who have a difficult time with the SSR period. Mrs. Dix talked to the technology integrator and a new, creative solution was born: Meet a Book Mondays. Using Book Creator, an app for web browsers and tablets that “enables students to create and read multimodal digital books,” ¹ along with audio recording and image editing tools on the MLTI teacher MacBooks, Mrs. Dix and Mrs. Dawson created a comic book style book that is full of book previews, character descriptions, book release announcements, audio recordings of chapters and more. The book has a vibrant and fun design to grab student interest.  The Meet a Book Mondays book is projected for the class all together during SSR. Students fill out a feedback form on their iPads and draw whatever comes to mind as they listen. The following day, students have the option to read the books that they learned about. Students can come back to Meet a Book Mondays any time as it is readily accessible via their iPads. Mrs. Coyne has seen a positive result since introducing the project to her students, they are more engaged and she feels like the SSR time is becoming more valuable to students. They are already exploring a new Google Maps project based on the response from students on a particular book that they learned about through Meet a Book Mondays. They plan to virtually follow and map out a character’s journey around the world. After hearing about the success on the Little River team, other teachers are beginning to use the Meet a Book Mondays book with their classes for SSR as well!

Mrs. Dix’s library website and the Meet a Book Mondays Book Creator Project are great examples of blending educational technology tools into every day learning to provide accessibility and actively engage students in a creative way. Using their MLTI devices to create and access content, both teachers and students are connecting and discovering new resources to support reading. You can see the Gorham Middle School Library website and the ongoing Meet a Book Mondays project here: https://sites.google.com/view/gorhammiddle/home

¹University of Massachusetts Amherst. (n.d.). Learner-Centered Tools, Book Creator. Online Tools for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved October 18, 2022 from https://blogs.umass.edu/onlinetools/learner-centered-tools/book-creator/.

The Telling Room Statewide Writing Contest Open for Student Submissions

The Telling Room, a literary arts education organization in Maine has opened submissions for a Statewide writing contest. Youth youth ages 6 – 18 can submit writing samples in all forms of creative and personal writing – the theme is open.

The grand prize winner will receive a $250 Award and will be published in The Telling Room’s Annual Anthology.

Submissions close on November 30, 2022.

For more information and to make a submission visit The Telling Room website.

Download a flyer to help promote.