Friday, December 12, 2014

Songs of Change Poster

Thought I would share Julian's work on the Songs of Change Project. In addition to this, Davin, Owen, and Thomas are part of the Songs of Change Ensemble.


Thursday, December 11, 2014

Conferences, Pizza Part, and the Holidays

Just wanted to share a few highlights at the end of December:

  1. We have a new student in our advisory, Julie! 
  2. It was so wonderful to meet parents and/or spend more time with parents last Thursday. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule. I was proud of the way your kiddos presented their work and answered questions. They did a SUPER job!
  3. Even though we did not win the penny wars, our advisory raised the most money! 15th place, Angie: -5310 points, $248.00 raised. Total raised was $890. Go Baxter. We celebrated with out own pizza part, and offered Michelle a piece, then she held court with great stories :-). See photos below.






Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Community Service Update

Good Evening,
Here's where your kiddos are going tomorrow for community service.

Alexandre Beaulieu9TaylorBaxter
Caitlin Greene9TaylorReiche Elementary
David Brewer9TaylorWriting Room
Davin Tafuri9TaylorBridgton Library
George Childs9TaylorWriting Room
Jacob Willette9TaylorPeaks Island Elementary
Julian Bernard9TaylorWriting Room
Thomas Kaiser9TaylorLocal Placement
Owen Kaplan9TaylorPeaks Island Elementary




Sofia Mozo-Borland9TaylorWriting Room
Zale Rasco9TaylorPeaks Island Elementary
Zoe Silvia9TaylorLibrary

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Community Service Day

Community Service is happening on Wednesday, December 3rd. To make things easier, we are asking that students bring a lunch. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Angie

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Wednesday, December 4th = Community Service

Good Morning!
We are currently scheduling students for community service on Wednesday, December 4th from 9-2:30. Although we have secured quite a few placements, we are encouraging students to set up their own placements. If your child finds their own placement, please fill out the following form:

Community Service Form

Thanks for your support.
Best,
Angie

Monday, November 17, 2014

Student Led Conferences & Inter-Session

Good Morning! 
It seems a little crazy that we are nearing the end of the first trimester. As the trimester comes to a close, I wanted to remind you of a few things:

  1. If you have not signed into Infinite Campus, please do so. Grades for assignments have been posted. The grades for trimester 1 standards will be final on Tuesday, November 24th. The last day of the Trimester. If you have concerns about grades, please let me or the teacher know. 
  2. Please sign up for Student led Conferences (Thursday, December 4) using the following sheet: Student Led Conference
  3. The first inter-session, Community Inside and Out: “It’s not Baxter til we know each other", is scheduled for the week of Monday, December 1 - Friday, December 5th. The schedule is as follows:

Monday, December 1 -- Teacher Workshop
Tuesday, December 2 -- Series of focused activities including community lunch and open mic @ the Irish heritage Center.
Wednesday, December 3 -- Community Service.
Thursday, December 4 -- Student Led Conferences
Friday, December 5 -- Flex Friday Projects

The next post will be about standards based assessment (next week).
Best!
Angie

Friday, November 14, 2014

Flex Friday Projects

Update on Flex Friday Projects!

Check out what our advisory is up to on Fridays!
The following are proposals that have been approved. More to come soon!

Creating Music @ Baxter Academy -- Owen
Even though music is in most adolescents lives, the process of making music from the start to the beginning is not. Most adolescents own an iTunes account and some may have 1000s of songs or more, while others play multiple instruments, but most have not designed and built an inexpensive instrument that can be gifted to an ensemble to be used by future students.  The experience of creating music from building the instrument to playing in an ensemble provides a unique experience that can be shared with the community. The guitar designed and built through this project will be gifted to Baxter’s music community.

Board Game -- Davin & Julian
This Flex Friday Project will be the creation of a board game. It requires the players to get through many obstacles, whether it be human caused or natural. This project will also raise awareness of the challenges animal species face because of human impact on the environment, and natural causes. If this game makes money, it will all go to Baxter Academy, so this project will help others succeed.

Baxter Academy 5K walk/run -- Caitlin
There are five girls from Baxter Academy with a passion to let other know about the productivity of their school. They wanted to do something that would not only benefit their school but others in the community and with that they decided to help homeless teens and donate to New Beginnings. They thought about this project very hard and they came up with the idea to hold a 5k. They wanted to make sure that it was fun for all ages, so they came up with the idea of a glow run. Their race will be held at either Baxter Boulevard or Peaks Island. If the race is held at Peaks Island they will include the ferry ticket price in the registration fee. Music and black lights will be at the race. This will be a great experience for the students and staff at Baxter Academy. They are also challenging themselves in many ways. None of them have done something like this before and they are looking forward to the experience. If their 5k is successful, they are planning on holding another one, and making it an annual event for Baxter.

Young Adult Writing -- David and Thomas
This project is  going to focus on writing individual novels all based off the same theme of real life teen problems in hopes to put young adult books written by actual young adult into the community. Most YA books these days are written by adults, and they don’t usually touch subjects and problems that are happening to teens today. Throughout the year everyone will work on expanding their writing skills and getting comfortable with others reading and critiquing their work. The goal is to at the end of the year have a finished anthology, and possibly a few novels, and to showcase them in a local businesses.

EJJ Weather Balloon -- Jake

The goal of Project E.J.J. (pronounced “edge”) is to make a weather balloon that is taken up to the stratosphere where it will take measurements and collect data including but not limited to barometric pressure, temperature, and humidity. Then the balloon will float down controlled by raspberry pi, a micro computer until it is in manual control range, where they will direct it towards a known location until it is low enough to land.

Going Good Food Cart -- Sofia
Food carts are a dynamic and easily transportable way of serving food that can outreach to the public and teach students and young adults about culinary arts. The cart provides opportunities for Baxter students to learn more about culinary arts, small business management, and social skills. With this cart, students can create an outside life based on culinary arts. The students of this project have an idea of pursuing a culinary job or life, so with this project we experience food first hand, deciding later on continuing culinary programs and careers. Most of the students in college programs for culinary arts require to have past experiences with food. Doing this program will give Baxter students that experience to be one step ahead of the rest of the class as well as financial skills around small businesses. They intend to reach out to different restaurants to job shadow/intern in order to learn more about restaurants and use their kitchens. Flatbread, Portland Pie Co., and Otto’s, are places we would like to intern so we can use different styles of cooking pizza in our cart. Participants of this food cart will be able to learn not only small business skills, but also how to create a healthy alternative to today’s pizza. They would also see what it is like to work in an alternative as well as real kitchen and try to apply what they have learn to determine whether or not they would still want to pursue a job in the culinary arts. This project is aimed to show a career option that some people would like to maybe see themselves doing in the future.

Indoor Mural Proposal -- Zoe
Labeling the rooms is innovative and ethical because most schools don’t paint their classroom doors, unlike our school which allows students to freely paint the school (with permission).   
Murals above the doors will help new students and guests navigate the school and add character that shows how much creativity the students have. This project will also add unique plaques to the doors that give a short biography of the famous person the room was named after. In addition to having plaques, we are going to add an audio narration of the biography using Soundcloud, which we will be making into a QR code that will be on the plaques. We will first sketch the designs we are going to use, then we are going to paint it on the wall or change to a material that we can paint on then put on the wall.

Stitch and Glue Kayak -- Alexandre
The project’s goal is to create stitch and glue kayaks to enable us access and to do research on the Casco Bay. Currently Baxter has no physical education program, and these kayaks will allow Baxter students to exercise on the water. This will also lead to a kayaking club. The project’s goal for this year is to make two stitch and glue kayaks with another two to three boats being completed every year after. This will lead to a more hands on approach to life sciences in Baxter. The school will be able to study many different types of marine life which could allow new types of projects, and other innovative ideas. Kayaks are the best boat for this research because they produce no sound, they don’t use any gas, and close to no training is necessary to use them. We will be adding modifications to the boats to make them more applicable to the biology classes. The kayaks that the team and future classes will build for this project are going to be 16 ft long so that they will be suitable for ocean traveling. In order to make the first two kayaks,the team will be asking for a donation, or paying for plans from One Ocean Kayaks. 

The process for making these kayaks are relatively simple and easy to follow. The team will start off by using marine grade plywood and cutting into panels. Then the team will drill small holes into them so that the team can stitch them together with wire. After stitching together with wire, the team will use epoxy to connect them together. This will then have to set for eight hours so the epoxy becomes solid and strong. Then the team will snip the wire off. With the wire off, the team will cover all the cracks with the remaining epoxy. After at least another eight hours the team will stretch the fiberglass over the kayak. To finish the outside of the kayaks the team will put varnish over the fiberglass. Finally the team will put foam on the inside to make it more comfortable. Because the students will be making two kayaks per year, they can and will be made to fit different sized people.