Camp Hazen Highlights

We Make Mouse Calls culminated with a day filled with fun activities at Camp Hazen in Chester, Connecticut on May 14, 2009. Students participated in team building adventure activities at various stations. Activities were designed to bring a group of individuals together as a team to work on skills such as communication, trust, cooperation, respect, teamwork and problem solving. Observing the students participating in the activities demonstrated the true effect of the program. Despite a dreary weather day, a good time was had by all. Check out the movie which highlights the days activities. To view full screen click HERE.

Montville High School Tech Day

ASL (American Sign Language) students from Montville High School had their tech day on April 30th at LEARN. Some students created audio podcasts and others created their podcasts with video. It was challenge to squeeze it all in during the 4 hours, but the results are truly amazing.

Anjy, Brandon, and Johnny (Our Experiences with Sign Language)
Nick (Take Me Out to the Ball Game)
Katie and Sean (Being an ASL Mentor)
Brandon (Signing to Dogs)
Nikkia, Shelby and Travis-on camera (Stand Up For Cancer)
Amanda, Melinda, Steph (I Believe)

Tech Days with PPMS, TMMS

Another Tech Day took place, this time with Preston Plains Middle School (Preston) and Teachers' Memorial Middle School (Norwich). Here are more podcasts created by the students, all who worked in pairs. More great work!

Gabe and Kyle (Yankees)
Zach and Austin (Sports)
Brandon and Joseph (Favorite Things)
Natasha and Evan (Favorite Places)
Rui & Anissa (Our Pets)
Breanna and Shaina (Our Friendship)
Warren and Jeffrey (Our Favorite Video Games)

Tech Days with CLMS and RMMS, DLAA

During Tech Days students worked in the computer lab at LEARN to create podcasts. Dual Language Arts Academy students wrote letters to their class pen pal, Alexis, and then created podcasts of their letters. Students from Clark Lane and Regional Multicultural Magnet School chose their own topic, wrote and recorded their scripts, and then modified and enhanced their recordings using Audacity. Check out the final products. They are GREAT!

Dual Language Arts Academy (April 1)
Alex
Anthony
Casey
Christopher
Denise
Derreck
Edgar
Haydee
Katelin
Katherine
Keishaly
Roselys
Sierra
Starr
Taiana
Tobias
Tyanne
Zay

Clark Lane Middle School and Regional Multicultural Magnet School (April 2)
Brent and Griffin (Playing for the Black Socks)
Emily and Erika (Cable and Emma)
Jeff (What I Want to Be)
Kevin (Milk)
Sasha, Priscilla, Carin (Our Favorite Animals)
Uriye (The Movie Grease)
Courtney and Adrienne (A Horse Named Jeffrey)
Emily (Slavery)
Joey and Aaron (All Types of Pie)
Poorva and Kayla (Race to Witch Mountain)
Sean (A Practical Guide to Dragons)

May 14th trip to Camp Hazen

May 14th will be a trip to Camp Hazen where all students will gather for a culminating activity for more team building activities. Permission slips have been given to the teachers to be sent home. All students who will be attending the field trip must have a permission which means if you don't turn in your permission slip then you cannot go. Get your permission slips in to your Mouse Calls teacher as soon as possible. For more information about Camp Hazen, CLICK HERE. If you lost your permission slip you can download one HERE. For the field trip flyer, click HERE.

Tech Days

April Tech days are here and students from each participating school will visit LEARN to participate in technology training. Students will use iPods and adapters to create voice recordings. The recordings will be imported into Audacity where they will learn about adding special effects.

Audacity is a free application that you can download from www.audacity.sourceforge.net. The application edits audio files. A LAME decoder allows Audacity to export the audio file as an MP3 file. There are many sites to download the LAME decoder; this link is one location that works. You must put the LAME DLL file in a folder beneath the [Audacity] program folder; there is a [Plug-ins] folder within the [Audacity] folder which is the best place for this DLL LAME decoder.

February Visit to LEARN

LEARN and We Make Mouse Calls was fortunate to have a nurse educator from the Joslin Diabetes Center, affiliated with Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, visit to provide a well-received presentation about Diabetes. Students learned about the disease and how people, young and old, live and cope with the disease on a daily basis. The presentation was engaging and prompted numerous questions and comments that were an obvious indication that the presentation was informative and meaningful. Students also learned about good nutritional choices that people with and without diabetes should practice.

Student teams also worked with iPods and in the computer lab to record their script from January. In the computer lab the students learned about Audacity, an audio editing application that they will learn more about in April.

Remaining field trip dates

The remaining field trip dates for We Make Mouse Calls are listed below. Note that there is no scheduled field trip in March. Students are transported by bus from their school to LEARN in Old Lyme (44 Hatchetts Hill Road). The day's agenda begins at 10AM and ends at 1:00 PM. Parents, guardians and other family members are welcome to attend the events. Students, teachers and guests should bring their lunch. Contact the grant coordinator if you have any questions or just want to comment on the program...Dawn R. Boch, 434-4800, x109, DBoch@learn.k12.ct.us.

February 25
April 2
May 14

January Mouse Calls Visit to LEARN

Students met on January 8 for the 4th session of the Mouse Calls grant program. On this day students learned how to blog in the computer lab. There are 3 blogs, one per student group-Cobalt, Denim and Navy. The URLs for the blogs are:

http://www.wmmc-cobalt.blogspot.com/
http://www.wmmc-denim.blogspot.com/
http://www.wmmc-navy.blogspot.com/

Students commented on the blog in response to issues posted by the Grant Coordinator. All comments were monitored for appropriateness. Students are welcome to continue to comment on the blog, remembering the rules-no last names (you can use initials), no vulgarity, no dissing.

Students also began writing scripts for a podcast in response to one of the following scenarios:
Choose a topic; write a script using the worksheet and record using an iPod and recording attachment.

1. Every afternoon when you walk home from school, a bully pushes you around, knocks your books to the ground, or calls you names. What might you do to stop the abuse and, at the same time, help the bully to change his behavior? What kind of courage would this take?
2. You’ve signed up for summer camp with a friend, and you plan to room together. At the last minute, your friend changes her mind and decides to bunk with someone else. Will you still go to camp? What will you say to your friend?
3. Describe a typical day at your school. You might tell about the classes, what lunch is like, extracurricular activities, do you have lockers, how do you get to and from school, etc.
4. Write about a recent holiday that you have celebrated. Tell about the holiday, what did you do, what traditions are part of the holiday, did you eat any special foods, anything else you would like to add about your holiday.

Parent and Guardian Feedback

Parents and Guardians, I hope that your child has keep you up to date on his or her participation in the We Make Mouse Calls grant program. Newsletters are nominally sent home monthly but you can always keep up to date by what is happening by visiting this blog or by visiting the We Make Mouse Calls website. You can also check out the student blogs via a link from this blog. Feel free to post your comments here to give me some feedback. Also, if you would like to contact me directly, you can reach me at DBoch@learn.k12.ct.us.