East Hills Elementary's Proposal
Proposal for Second Year Site
submitted to
Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh
by
East Hills International Studies Academy
2150 East Hills Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15221
247-7830
Contact: Susan Fineman
December 15, 1993
SUMMARY
A team of East Hills International Studies Academy teachers of various
subjects and grade levels proposes to develop and implement three
curriculum projects that use network resources to enrich current classroom
activities in language arts, visual arts, mathematics, and science. One
goal is to enrich the international focus of the school's curriculum. The
second goal is to improve the performance of lower achieving students.
Initially 11 teachers and about 120 students will be involved in the
project. In the planning phase teachers, students, parents, and school
partners will explore network resources, make contacts, and design
specific activities for the projects. The evaluation process will look at
both the project's success with integrating network resources into
classroom activities and the project's impact on selected students.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
East Hills International Studies Academy is an elementary magnet school
which serves approximately 600 students, grades K-5. The school draws its
population from many areas of the city of Pittsburgh. All students in
grades one through five learn the French language. Along with the
language, students study the history and culture of all French speaking
countries.
The first problem that this project would address is the need to enrich
our international studies curriculum. Currently the students are working
on units dealing with twenty French- speaking African countries. Offering
direct contacts with people and resources, in these twenty countries and
elsewhere, would dramatically improve the children's understanding of the
various cultures studied. A second major concern is the achievement gap
between our African- American and other students. The achievement gap
shows up both in standardized test scores and in grade distributions for
our school. Appendix A contains more specific information about this
achievement gap. We have found that our low achieving students respond
very positively to using technologies such as computers, CD-ROMs, and
electronic mail as part of their school work. They have corresponded via
e-mail with engineering students from Carnegie-Mellon University and
scientists from Westinghouse Electric Corporation. They have given up
lunchtime recess to use computers in the science room. They stay
afterschool to use Lego-Logo materials, building Lego devices and
constructing Logo programs to run these devices. For the most part the
low achieving students do not have access to these technologies at home,
unlike many of our high achieving students. For the past six years, as
one of several efforts to remedy the achievement gap, we have actively
sought ways to provide greater student access to hardware and software.
Through donations of old hardware, saving supermarket cash register
receipts for computers, and grants we have gradually acquired enough
equipment to place one computer in almost every third, fourth, and fifth
grade classroom. This equipment is generally far behind current standards
and our rate of acquisition is far too slow to meet our students' needs.
There is currently only one computer station in the building with a modem
and phone line for electronic mail. This is woefully inadequate for the
numbers of teachers and students who would like to participate in an
activity which shows great promise for improving the academic performance
of our poorer students.
We will evaluate success by monitoring teacher and student computer
use, including the number of international contacts made. Through this
project we hope to improve the quantity and quality of classroom
experiences which integrate computer technology, including network
resources, to further "internationalize" our curriculum and to motivate
better academic performance from students.
Anecdotal records will be kept for a number of individual students
identified by grade- level teams as at-risk (low grades and stanines, in
danger of failing) and other students who are underachieving (C/D grades,
less than average stanines). We feel that activities which involve more
problem solving and more technology, such as the curriculum projects
presented in this proposal, will help these students do better in school.
CURRICULUM PROJECT
Three teams of teachers have designed projects. Each project involves
students working collaboratively in activities that cross the traditional
subject matter boundaries. These projects all provide opportunities for
students to gather and exchange information which is not widely available.
To do this the children will use on-line libraries, databases, newsgroups,
and image banks as well as electronic mail with students in other schools
and experts in selected fields of study. The projects are in keeping with
the Common Core and Academic goals enumerated in the new Chapter 5
Curriculum Guidelines by the State Board of Education of Pennsylvania.
I. Spectrum Arts: Integrating the Visual and Language Arts.
Through the use of the Internet, students will be exposed to the rich
visual resources of art history and will be encouraged to interpret the
subject matter, evaluate the compositions, and research the artists.
Interacting with the images, students can solve a series of problems
relating to their own individual curiosities. It is also our intent to
have production capabilities to create our own visual image bank with
accompanying information. Currently our second graders study the life,
works, and historical context of well-known artists and civilizations
around the world, with special emphasis on the Middle Ages, the
Rennaisance, French Impressionism, and the art of many cultural groups of
Africa. This project is interdisciplinary and involves several teachers.
Use of the Internet will enrich and extend the project, enabling children
to do the following:
* have access to information banks already established,
* make contacts with living artists and students of art,
* scan images to create files for classroom use,
* organize their findings in a multi-media data base which would
become a network resource for making cross-cultural and
cross-epoch connections. Beyond visual literacy, the project will
foster classification and interpretation skills.
The fourth grade Visual Arts curriculum unit Art M.O.V.E.S.
(Multicultural Objects from Various Ethnic Societies) would be greatly
enhanced by students using newsgroups and bulletin boards to pose specific
questions about the production, ritualistic use and symbolism of the
three- dimensional art objects contained in the unit kit. Of the 14
objects in the collection given to each elementary school in the district,
6 are originals. It would be interesting to photograph the kit as well as
similar art objects from student, parent, and teacher collections that
demonstrate cross-cultural connections. As a pilot project, the art
teacher could photograph the objects and scan the photographs. The fourth
grade students could research and general data for inclusion in hypermedia
format.
There are many opportunities for expansion. We will develop
connections between the M.O.V.E.S. unit and the fourth grade
geography/history curriculum. Children could share information with other
schools, and possibly publish an Arts and Culture Newsletter. This
project could even bring in other art forms, particularly music, its
history and development, as well as musical instruments of various
cultures and time periods.
The network resources we hope to use initially are electronic mail, Ask
ERIC, newsgroups, and bulletin boards. Then we will begin tapping
library, museum, and university resources such as The Smithsonian Art
Gallery, African American Art in the NMAA, Art and Images, African GIF
Images. We will also use the art collection to be catalogued,
photographed, and scanned by the 100 Friends for Art.
The outcomes we expect to achieve are as follows:
* Students and teachers will have easy access to visual
representations of works of art and cultural artifacts.
* Students will use network resources to gain further knowledge
about selected topics in art history and art production.
* Students will report the knowledge they have acquired through
creative and factual writing.
* Students will share their knowledge with others within
their classroom, school, school district, and the network community.
II. From Within to Without: A Math/Science Data Exchange
Measuring, collecting and analyzing data, and graphing are interrelated
skills which figure prominently in both the mathematics and science
curricula for third, fourth, and fifth graders. Teaching students about
the environment is mandated by the district and state for each grade
level. In this project East Hills ISA students would collect, analyze,
and disseminate data from students around the world to learn more about
themselves and their natural environment.
Students currently measure their heights and weights in metric units
each year in science class. The data for each student is recorded on the
child's science folder which is kept at school from grades two through
five. Through this very popular activity, the students gain experience
with using metric units and observe their own and classmates' growth.
Fourth and fifth graders calculate class and grade level averages and
compare these with data from other years. Fifth graders enter their June
heights into a spreadsheet and then sort the data to determine the order
for students marching in the procession at their promotion ceremony. In
addition to height and weight, third graders do a unit which involves
measuring head, waist, and ankle circumferences; foot, arm, and leg
lengths; hand and arm spans; and pulse rates. Using electronic mail we
would go beyond the current activities to collect, compare, and
disseminate data for students in other schools around the world to answer
questions such as the following: Are third, fourth, and fifth graders
about the same size everywhere? Do children grow at about the same rate
from ages eight to ten? To help students understand what causes seasons
and to give practice in basic arithmetic and graphing, each week our
fourth and fifth graders record and graph local sunrise and sunset times
and calculate the length of day. We observe and discuss the changes in
day length through the school year. At equinox and solstice times we
relate the data to Earth's position in its orbit around the sun. This
year, for the second time, we will examine data for winter solstice
(December 21), including sunrise and sunset times, day length, latitude
and longitude, sent via e-mail from many places around the globe in
response to a request from an Earth Science teacher in Connecticut.
Students can analyze this data and discover to their amazement that day
length varies with latitude. We would like to help students find out more
about how local conditions vary. Third grade students currently measure
and graph temperature and precipitation. We would have the children
collect, analyze, and disseminate data about these environmental
conditions from students around the globe. This useful information would
be available on-line to other schools through the Common Knowledge Gopher.
Once a template is created for collecting and disseminating data, this
project can easily expand to other types of data and other subject areas.
The exchange of data could include sharing findings from science
activities, such as the fingerprint categories and airplane variables
activities from the current fourth and fifth grade science curriculum.
The Used Numbers activities recommended for elementary school mathematics
classes in the district involve data collecting which could be replicated
by other classes. Connections to the geography/history curriculum could
also be developed.
Electronic mail is the primary network resource to be used in this
project. We would also use mailing lists and newsgroups to identify
contacts.
The following are outcomes we expect to achieve:
* Students will use electronic mail to collect specific data
about children their own age and environmental conditions in other
localities.
* Students will organize and analyze the data collected,
using graphs when appropriate.
* Students will use electronic mail to share the data and findings
with other schools and the network community.
III. Heartwood Connections
The Heartwood Program we have pilot-tested for the district has become
an important part of the Language Arts curriculum at East Hills ISA.
Heartwood activities are based on beautifully illustrated stories set in
various parts of the world and expressing values held in esteem by all
peoples. The seven values used as themes for Heartwood are love, courage,
honesty, loyalty, respect, justice, and hope. We would like to use
electronic mail to make the stories more "alive" and to develop our
students' questioning abilities. Children would be encouraged to listen
for missing information in the stories being read. Then the students
would develop questions to send via electronic mail to contacts in the
countries shown in the stories.
For example, The Nightingale from China could be a springboard for a
social studies activity for finding out about the powers of an emperor.
The students could then do a Venn diagram comparing the emperor of the
past with the Chairman of today. They could get the today information via
e-mail.
The collection of books used for the Heartwood program continues to
grow, thus providing opportunities for expanding this project. We are
also interested in developing the connections to geography/history and to
the art of illustrating stories.
PLANNING PROCESS
During the planning period teachers will explore network resources,
make contacts, design specific activities for their projects, and become
familiar with new equipment. Students will be identified for
participation in this initial planning and exploration. A call for parent
input and assistance has already been placed in the school newsletter for
December publication. The teachers have also started making contacts with
university and school district people who will be able to help us find and
establish the international contacts we need for the projects. We are
especially interested in finding contacts for French speaking countries of
Africa.
In addition, during the planning period the project teams will select
the classes that will participate in their projects during the fall
semester of 1994. We will develop the logistics of how to manage the
three projects initially and how to expand them to include more students
during the following spring semester.
Our principal, Richard Nicklos, has agreed to use creative scheduling
to give teachers weekly time for project work and larger blocks of time on
the remaining inservice days. Some teachers have duty periods which can
be used for planning. Individual project teams can also meet during some
ESEP time. During the planning period we hope to lend equipment to each
project team member who does not already have a computer and/or modem at
home for exploring network resources and designing activities.
Three teachers, one on each project, have been using the Internet for
some time. Two of the three were members of the original group of
teachers given accounts by Robert Carlitz, CK:P project leader. These
teachers -- Susan Fineman, Marian Fast, and Teresa Bedo -- will help train
others in the building. This, in fact, is already happening. Susan
Fineman has been coordinating the proposal planning/writing effort and
acting as the contact person for CK:P. She will continue in this role.
We will look to the CK:P staff for suggestions of appropriate network
resources and mechanisms both for collecting and disseminating data. We
would also like to explore the possibility of students having their own
electronic mail accounts.
IMPLEMENTATION SCENARIO
We will start each project with selected Monday classes. Teachers see
students in relatively small groups of about 15 students on Mondays, when
our gifted students attend a special program at Woolslair. The Spectrum
Arts project will begin with one group of second graders and one group of
fourth graders. The Math/Science Data Exchange will begin with one group
at each of the grade levels three, four, and five. The Heartwood project
will begin with two groups of third graders and one group of fifth
graders. Each of these first 8 groups will include about 15 students. At
least two project team members will work together planning, implementing,
and evaluating activities for each group.
We hope to expand the projects to include other Monday classes, so that
a second group is working on each of the projects by the beginning of
second semester. Since we have four classes at each grade level, this
would bring all the classes at grade levels three through five into at
least one of our Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh projects.
Each of the eleven project teachers will encourage the participation of
other teachers in the building by sharing information and resources, by
mentoring, and by working collaboratively to expand the projects into
additional subject areas.
PERSONNEL
Richard Nicklos, principal
Michael McElhinny, assistant principal
Teresa Bedo, primary instructional teacher leader and grade 2 language
arts teacher
Victoria Bey, science teacher for grades 1 through 3
Carol Beavers, grade 5 language arts and grades 4-5 geography/ history
teacher
Judith Chamberlin, mathematics teacher for grades 4 and 5
Marian Fast, grade 3 language arts teacher
Susan Fineman, science teacher for grades 4 and 5
Rhonda George, mathematics teacher for grades 3 and 4
Regis Kirby, visual arts teacher for kindergarten through grade 5
Penny Levy, grade 3 language arts teacher
Debbie Miller-O'Neill, school librarian
Kathleen Mullooly, grade 4 French/International Studies and language
arts teacher
TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE
To accomplish the projects we need two computers for the classroom of
each teacher involved and 4 computers in the library, 24 computers in all.
For wiring purposes the computer locations could be considered as three
clusters of rooms. Cluster A, at one end of the building, includes room
numbers 308A, 239A, 239B, the library, and 139A. Cluster B, in the center
of the building, consists of room numbers 229A, 229C, and 135. Cluster C,
at the other end of the building, includes room numbers 113, 111B, and
107A.
Some of the hardware we already have might be networkable. Presently
we have 3 Macintosh computers (a Classic, Classic II, and an LCII), 4 IBM
computers (8088 chips, with 10 Mb drives), 3 Apple IIGS computers, and a
number of older Apple IIe and DOS machines.
In addition to the computers we need printers or a networked printer
and a flatbed scanner.
APPENDIX A. SCHOOL PROFILE
School: East Hills International Studies Academy
Address: 2150 East Hills Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15221
Telephone Number: 247-7830
Fax: None
Principal: Richard Nicklos
Secretary: Paula Dumas
Custodian: Marquest Oliver
Physical Plant: Building completed and opened in 1972, open space design.
Student Population: 593 students
58.5% African-American, 41.5% Other
38.3% eligible for free or reduced price lunch
17.4% receiving public assistance
Staff: 48 including 34 teachers and 2 administrators
Teachers with e-mail addresses: 10