CFF Follow-up

As a follow-up to my last post I wanted to share with you some unique lessons currently underway in the junior senior high school.

First and foremost, I want to congratulate Social Studies teachers Ann Neary and John Chernewski, their students, and CFF Coach Stan Shumski, for having their Civics and Government lesson "Election Headquarters" accepted for presentation at Student Capitol Day. Student Capitol Day is an opportunity to celebrate the success of the Classrooms for the Future program and share with legislators what is happening in schools across the Commonwealth. The event will be held from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM on May 11, 2010 in the East Rotunda of the Capitol in Harrisburg. Students invited to attend will have the opportunity to speak with legislators and demonstrate innovative projects they created using the high tech equipment provided through the state grant.

Below are other unique projects as described by Stan Shumski:

This was one of the videos from our Election Headquarters project. Creating a video like this would be a good Earth Day project.

Check out the video projects done by our 7th grade geography students. The New York and Delaware Projects show some good effort by our 7th graders as they are learning how to use Photostory 3 to make and upload videos to their new class Wikispaces. This student did a great job timing her pics to the beat of the music. This student recorded her voice on each picture.

Check out Mr. Callahan's 11th grade class that has just started a "Wedding Planner" Wikispace Site.

Below is a video created by the Plastics Technology class with the assistance of Mr. Shumski. The students in the video are testing a row boat designed and constructed in their class.



You can learn more about North Schuylkill's CFF initiative, and other unique learning opportunities taking place in our district, by visiting Stan Shumski's CFF blog and Wikispace.

The Impact of the Classrooms for the Future Program Revealed

Penn State's College of Education in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Education recently released a Three Year Evaluation Report analyzing the effectiveness of the Classrooms for the Future program in promoting school reform. According to the report the preliminary results indicate that the program has generated significant progress toward achieving its goals. Significantly, the report says that the evidence analyzed so far in connection to CFF indicates that there have been notable changes for the positive in several areas, including student and teacher activity, student engagement and classroom organization.

According to the report, it appears that Classrooms for the Future created a more personalized and collaborative educational experience for students. Students in CFF spent less time listening to a lecture from the teacher and more time working independently, working in groups and talking with the teacher in one-to-one or in small group conversations. Teachers, in turn, spent less time lecturing in CFF classrooms and more time working with individual students and walking through the room observing and interacting with students. Additionally, observers reported that the physical layout of classrooms in the CFF program evolved away from the traditional "desks in rows, teacher up front" design. CFF classrooms typically were arranged in clusters of three to five desks, a layout that promotes student collaboration and group work.

The Classrooms for the Future initiative was introduced to North Schuylkill during the 2007-2008 school year. Since its inception, over $245,000 in equipment grants were received by the district providing 33 teachers and their students with laptops, Promethean boards, printers and other 21st Century classroom tools. The program has led to a shift in pedagogy among North Schuylkill's teachers, which in turn has led to significant gains in student achievement.