Students at Overlook Elementary celebrated pre-Thanksgiving today in a unique way: students in grades 5 and 6 were tasked with a “Turkey Bowl Reading Challenge” to enter the TURKEY BOWL Games!

Students participated in the “Reading Challenge” from September through November, earning points through the Accelerated Reader program by reading books. Each book read was worth a number of points based on book level and difficulty.  After reading the book, students took a quiz on the book and earned points for answering the questions correctly.  The students who earned at least 15 points took part in the Turkey Bowl Football Games held today, the day before Thanksgiving.

The Turkey Bowl game and rules are similar to Ultimate Frisbee, but with a football.  The teachers were coaching their teams and football team players from Abington Senior High School joined in the event to coach and referee the games – while also encouraging their younger peers to continue to read and be leaders at their school.

US News and World Report named Abington Senior High School one of “Americans Best High Schools,” winning another Silver Medal Award.

US News & World Report utilized data from 28,561 high schools nationwide and 676 high schools in Pennsylvania. Abington Senior High School ranked Number 1624 out of high schools nationwide, which is in the top 5.58% of high schools in the country, and ranked Number 48 of the high schools in Pennsylvania.

At the School Board meeting this week, Director of Curriculum Dr. Ann Bacon and Abington Senior High School Principal Mr. Angelo Berrios reviewed the methodology that resulted in the award.

RTI International, an independent, nonprofit institute that provides research, development, and technical services to government and commercial organizations worldwide, used a four step process to analyze the high schools under consideration:

Step 1 – School achievement data on state-administered reading and mathematics tests was analyzed and schools could meet the established criteria in one of two ways:

1. Score in top 10% of the state’s performance index distribution

2. When free/reduced lunch data, a measure of poverty, is used as a predictor of performance, score at or above one-third of a standard deviation above the predicted Performance Index.

Step 2 – Determine whether the school’s disadvantaged students (black, Hispanic, and low-income) were outperforming disadvantaged students in the state.

Step 3 – Schools with a graduation rate of at least 68% were permitted to proceed to Step 4.

Step 4 – College-Readiness Performance Indicator of at least 20.17 based on participation and on number of students earning a score of at least 3 on one Advanced Placement test or a score of 4 on one International Baccalaureate test.  Abington Senior High School’s College-Readiness score was 33.

Abington Senior High School’s US News & World Report profile can be viewed at:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/pennsylvania/districts/abington-sd/abington-high-school-16766?district_id=102097

The presentation on the selection process methodology can be viewed at:
http://www.boarddocs.com/pa/abington/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=A99NN9582B1F

On Friday morning the A.C.T.I.V.E. Academy students served hot beverages at the School District Administration Building – a special treat for the staff there!   They served many delicious beverage options such as hot coffee, tea, and hot chocolate and Dr. Fecher was an enthusiastic customer!

Abington’s A.C.T.I.V.E. (Accessing Community, Travel, Independent Living, and Vocational Education) Academy is a transitional program designed for young adults, ages 18-21, with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). The A.C.T.I.V.E. Academy utilizes the classroom and community as it teaches students vocational, travel training, and independent living skills. Students also partake in a volunteer work-study program in which they learn employability skills while interning at various sites within the community including Abington-Jefferson Hospital, CVS, the Abington YMCA, and State Representative Madeleine Dean’s office. At present, 18 Abington students benefit from participation in this program.

Abington Junior High School video production students won FIRST PLACE In the Attorney General’s “Peer 2 Peer Prevention” PSA (Public Service Announcement) Contest! According to Principal Dr. Mark Pellico, Abington Junior High School video production students, led by teacher Ms. Beth Nord, participated in the Pennsylvania Office of The Attorney General’s Public Service Announcement contest. Three teams of students created PSAs and submitted them to the contest. In mid November we were pleased to be informed that the Junior High School team of Isabella DiPasquale, Emily Gill, Margaret Hanley, and Alicia Whisman was one of the TOP FIVE ENTRIES IN THE STATE! Their PSA was posted on YouTube and for one week the public was invited to vote for the best video. Everyone is thrilled that the Abington team’s PSA won the highest number of votes! The Attorney General’s office will present the award to the four students in an assembly and provide a pizza party for the entire ninth grade. This week the School Board honored the students and teacher and their award-winning PSA was shown. The PSA can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnZ-b_Mv5ho and also below.

To conclude successful programs and activities in computer coding that took place this fall, Abington students at Overlook and other Abington elementary schools participated this week in the “International Hour of Code” sessions to enable them to join in the activities.

At Overlook, shown in the photos here, fifth-grade students from Mr. Matthews’ class mentored kindergarten students from Ms. Simmon’s class.  Yes, elementary school kindergarten students are learning computer coding!  Using very visual screen commands, students created their work and saw it converted into code.

“The ‘Hour of Code’ is a nationwide initiative by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org to introduce millions of students to at least one hour of computer science and computer programming.

The “Hour of Code” takes place every year during Computer Science Education Week. The 2016 Computer Science Education Week is December 5-11. Computer Science Education Week is held annually in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906).

Experts say that there is a critical shortage of coders and have promoted having even very young students obtain access and experiences in coding at early ages. 

In Abington elementary schools, students at many levels are learning the initial steps in coding – their teachers and older mentors have made the experience interesting and in many cases, fun, as students accomplish coding tasks successfully.

When the football coaches from Abington and North Penn were talking several years ago, they realized that their mothers were both breast cancer survivors.  Since the teams were playing each other – during Breast Cancer Awareness Month – they decided to develop activities and events to promote breast cancer awareness at the game in Abington at the Schwarzman Stadium with the theme “Score Big Against Breast Cancer.”  This year’s theme was “PINK Out for the Cure!” at the home football game played during Breast Cancer Awareness month.

This year’s event was a big success.  In addition to raising awareness about breast cancer, the teams and service club raised $5,000 for breast cancer research.

This week, the Key Club donated the proceeds of the event to the four partner organizations:  a total of $ 5,000 … $1,250 each to Abington Jefferson Hospital’s Rosenfeld Cancer Center, to the Breathing Room, to the Terry Hanifin Memorial Scholarship Fund, and to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

In the photo, Michelle Ritterman, Abington Senior High School Key Club co-advisor and mathematics teacher and Abington Senior High School students donate checks to Betty Cummings, Abington Jefferson Health Nurse-Breast Cancer Navigator; Gary Cummings, volunteer representing Susan G. Komen for the Cure; and Martin Hanifin, The Terry Hanifin Memorial Scholarship Fund.

To conclude successful programs and activities in computer coding that took place this fall, Abington students at Willow Hill and other Abington elementary schools participated this week in the “International Hour of Code” sessions to enable them to join in the activities.

At Willow Hill, shown in the photos here, fifth-grade students from Mr. Tague’s class mentored first-grade students from Ms. Shorday’s class.  Yes, elementary school first grade students are learning computer coding!  Using very visual screen commands, students created their work and saw it converted into code.

“The ‘Hour of Code’ is a nationwide initiative by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org to introduce millions of students to at least one hour of computer science and computer programming.

The “Hour of Code” takes place every year during Computer Science Education Week. The 2016 Computer Science Education Week is December 5-11. Computer Science Education Week is held annually in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906).

Experts say that there is a critical shortage of coders and have promoted having even very young students obtain access and experiences in coding at early ages. 

In Abington elementary schools, students at many levels are learning the initial steps in coding – their teachers and older mentors have made the experience interesting and in many cases, fun, as students accomplish coding tasks successfully.

Representatives from the NOPE Taskforce gave a poignant and pertinent presentation at the Parent Council meeting this week.  NOPE was formed to combat the illegal and dangerous use of prescription narcotics and other abused substances.  Around the room at the Rydal East Elementary School library NOPE posted large blowup photographs and ages of young people who died from drug overdoses.

The presentation was a program of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office.  Speakers included Ronelle Yanuzzi, Bridget Marley, Deputy Sheriff Joe Holman, and parent Trisha Stouch – the mother of Pamela Stouch, who succumbed to drug overdose.

Ms. Marley presented facts about drug overdoses, including that 136 people died due to overdoses in Montgomery County so far in 2016.  She stated that there were 23.4% more deaths related to drug overdose in 2015 than in 2014.  She explained Act 139 of the Pennsylvania legislature, also known as “David’s Law,” that permits friends or family members with a loved one at risk of experiencing an opioid-related overdose to obtain a prescription from their doctor for naloxone (brand name – Narcan) and administer it.  The law also provides, in many situations, for Good Samaritan and other protections from criminal prosecution for those responding to and reporting an opioid overdose.  Ms. Marley said “Be a hero” — report a suspected overdose – call 911.

Ms. Stouch presented excerpts from her daughter’s journal as she struggled with drug addiction.  She posited that this “disease” cannot be combated without education.

Ms. Yanuzzi implored parents to control the availability of prescription drugs in their home, keeping them from being available to young people.  She encouraged parents to use a drug ‘lockbox” for their prescription drugs, illustrating one, and also encouraged parents to discard unused drugs at any police department in Montgomery County, where there are drug drop boxes.

The speakers distributed a booklet that contained photographs of commonly abused pharmaceuticals as well as important information.  Deputy Holman provided a slide presentation covering underage drinking, national data on overdoses, how to keep children from abusing prescription medications, signs of drug use and overdose, what to do if a parent suspects their child is using drugs, and “survival tips” for parents.

The NOPE Taskforce also provided student presentations this week for 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grade students.

A discussion followed the formal presentation at Parent Council.  For more information, contact NOPE at www.NOPEtaskforce.org or toll-free at1-866-612-NOPE.

Highland students met with their literacy buddies last week to celebrate reading and have some fun while strengthening their writing skills. Classes of different grade levels teamed to create captions for photos and illustrations. Students worked in pairs, discussing the importance of photos and the stories they tell. Collaboratively they wrote their own funny, interesting, and factual captions using colorful, descriptive words. Highland’s young writers enjoyed learning a bit about journalism while experimenting with text.

McKinley Elementary School has a long tradition of community service and giving back to the local and broader area communities.  Over the past ten years, McKinley students and staff have collaborated with Mr. Richard Stoudt, a retired Abington School District bus driver who plays the role of “Chuckles the Clown” for his “Bears that Care” initiative.   This program collects new teddy bears for children who will be spending the holidays in local hospitals.   “Chuckles” then tours area hospitals to bring smiles to the faces of patients as he hands out teddy bears. McKinley students, staff, and families generously collected and gave over 100 bears recently for this program and the teddy bears will be distributed to pediatric patients in hospitals in the Philadelphia area over the holidays.   The teddy bear drive was coordinated by the McKinley K-Kids Program sponsored by Mr. Michael Pinkhasov and Ms. Lauryn Kelly.   The McKinley School family was very happy to help their fellow children at this time of year by giving them a special companion for the holidays.

Last night at the School Board meeting Dr. Kelly Doyle, Supervisor of Communications Arts, presented the Abington Silver Pen Awards to outstanding student writers at Abington elementary schools. Each sixth grade teacher nominates a narrative writing selection from a boy and a girl and then a building committee from each school scores the entries. The highest scoring papers are selected as the winners. Ms. Marie Reynolds, Reading Teacher at Overlook Elementary School, helped organize the awards. The students received their engraved “Silver Pen” awards from Board President Mr. Raymond McGarry and were honored by the School Board. Students will meet for a Writers’ Guild session to share their essays in June. This year’s winners are: Sofia DiBello and Will Pickering, McKinley Elementary School; Jared Bowes and Mirical Brooks, Overlook Elementary School; Tyler Majewski and Fatmah Elsayed, Willow Hill Elementary School; Madison Hughes and Ben Markham, Highland Elementary School; Pablo Cairns and Talitha Cheng, Rydal Elementary School; Emma Ambrose and Owen David, Roslyn Elementary School; and Sagan Brinkert, Erika Forsstrom, Aidan Keller, and Finnegan McClellan, Copper Beech Elementary School. Dr. Doyle congratulated the parents and families and the students’ teachers. The program is funded, as it has been since its origin, by a generous grant from the Abington Educational Foundation.

During the day of the Reading Night Roslyn teachers and students enjoyed dressing as their favorite book characters or creatively represented book styles and expressions.  Many families came out for the evening event to celebrate reading. Some fun activities that families enjoyed were listening to stories read aloud by teachers, collaboratively writing stories that they turned into songs, creating bookmarks, participating in reading games, and shopping at the Scholastic Book Fair. The night proved to be a fantastic way to inspire summer reading!

Students from Abington joined 700 of their peers at Upper Dublin High School to audition for the 2017 District 11 Band and Orchestra recently.   Previously, 350 students auditioned for District 11 Chorus at Upper Merion High School.  Congratulations to the following students qualified:

DISTRICT 11 ORCHESTRA:

• Jason Hong –  Violin
• Matthew Rosen – Viola
• Margaret Wermeling – Viola

DISTRICT 11 BAND:

• Eleanor Murphy – Clarinet
• Abigail Serridge – Trumpet

DISTRICT 11 BAND AND ORCHESTRA:

• Nathan Williams – French Horn

DISTRICT 11 CHORUS:

• Ethan Manton, Calvin Wamser, Peirce Robinson, Cole Santora, Dylan Caligiuri, Charles Wentz, Natalie Rau, Jack Sullivan, and Harriet Tyler.

The Abington Girls Basketball team has a tradition of adopting a family in need for the Holiday season. Over the years, the Lady Ghosts have collected food, gifts, and money for those in unfortunate situations at this time of year. This year, the Lady Ghosts continued its tradition of helping an Abington family; the family was hosted at the December 19th Girls Basketball game against Episcopal Academy.

Each year there are many children that  are in need of pajamas, coats, hats, gloves and books. According to the Roslyn Elementary School Student Council, since the coldest time of the year is approaching, this is also the most uncomfortable and dangerous time for children. Roslyn hosted two “Stuff a Bus” campaigns for those in need.

THE PAJAMA & BOOK CAMPAIGN – Many children do not have warm pajamas to sleep in on cold nights or a book to read at bedtime. With freezing temperatures and longer nights, this can be a most difficult time for children.  Pajamas were collected for all ages from infants to 12 years old. And in November, at its annual Book Fair at Barnes & Noble, families were urged to pick up a book for the campaign and pair it with pajamas.

COAT DRIVE – Many children do not have warm coats, hats, and gloves to keep them warm during the winter.  Roslyn teamed up with local organizations to help keep those warm in the winter; they collected new and gently used coats to “Stuff the Bus.”

Roslyn arranged to have a school bus parked outside the school and Student Council loaded the bus with the donations.  The coats, pajamas, and other clothing items and books were donated to two local charities for needy families.

The Science Fair at the Junior High School this week was a HUGE success of scientific investigation and presentation.  Setting a new school Science Fair record, nearly 450 student-created projects were presented to parents, teachers, administrators, community visitors, and other students.  The projects included a wide range of subjects; among the many real-world applications, visitors learned which toothpastes whitened better, which brands of batteries lasted the longest, which genres of music helped learning and memory, what style of parachutes performed more efficiently, which paper towels were more effective, how baking soda affects muffins, what materials and distance block WIFI signals, and much more.  Two science teachers even compared themselves with data presented in the experiment “Does the Golden Ratio Define Beauty Today?”

The event was the Junior High School’s 23rd annual science fair and set new participation records with about 100 more projects than last year’s Science Fair. This year there were nearly 450 well-researched and presented projects created by seventh and eighth grade junior high school students.  Science Department Chair Mr. Timothy Keller characterized the projects as extremely interesting, highly creative in their approach, and implemented and presented extremely well.  He said that over recent years projects have become much better — more sophisticated and more closely aligned with current scientific methods.

The projects included many real world applications and consumer science results.  The use of technology in presenting data, including extremely effective computer-generated charts and graphs, has grown in recent years.  Collaboration, a characteristic sought after by industry and science, was extremely evident as students conferred and worked with each other, worked with faculty, and worked with parents.  There were many parents, teachers, and staff present and more students stayed after school to tour the fair, judge the projects, and confer with each other.  Visitors commented that they learned a great deal from the presentations.

Selected projects will be presented at the Montgomery County Research Competition where the junior high school students typically do very well. 

On Friday morning the A.C.T.I.V.E. Academy students served hot beverages at the School District Administration Building – a special treat for the staff there!   They served many delicious beverage options such as hot coffee, tea, and hot chocolate and Dr. Fecher was an enthusiastic customer!

Abington’s A.C.T.I.V.E. (Accessing Community, Travel, Independent Living, and Vocational Education) Academy is a transitional program designed for young adults, ages 18-21, with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). The A.C.T.I.V.E. Academy utilizes the classroom and community as it teaches students vocational, travel training, and independent living skills. Students also partake in a volunteer work-study program in which they learn employability skills while interning at various sites within the community including Abington-Jefferson Hospital, CVS, the Abington YMCA, and State Representative Madeleine Dean’s office. At present, 18 Abington students benefit from participation in this program.

Click to view the Agenda on the BoardDocs website.

Abington received recognition on the College Board’s 7th Annual AP District Honor Roll based on data from 2014 to 2016. The annual AP District Honor Roll recognized Abington for increasing access to Advanced Placement course work while maintaining or increasing the percentage of students earning scores of 3 or higher on the AP Exams.

In 2014, 322 Abington students completed at least one AP exam;  in 2016, 425 students completed at least one AP exam. In 2016 Abington students completed 1128 AP exams with 84% scoring 3 or higher. 

Abington is one of only 433 school districts in the United States and Canada to be honored by the College Board with this award.  Abington Senior High School principal Mr. Berrios made a presentation on the award at the School Board meeting last night and his presentation PowerPoint can be viewed with the materials from the meeting.

At the School Board meeting this week Dr. Bacon reviewed the “Hour of Code” that takes place in Abington elementary schools.  Dr. Bacon was accompanied by Overlook fifth-grade teacher Mr. Jesse Matthews and Willow Hill fifth-grade teacher Mr. Christopher Tague who reviewed the programs at their schools.

Dr. Bacon explained that the Hour of Code is an introduction to computer coding where students learn the basics of computer science.  She presented photos and descriptions of the activities at our elementary schools during this worldwide project that helps celebrate Computer Science Education Week.  A common theme was that older students worked in October and November to learn about coding and then mentored younger students – as young as kindergarten – on the basics of coding. 

Dr. Bacon mentioned that future plans project computer coding as part of STEM education for students in grades 7 and 8.  Dr. Bacon’s presentation can be viewed with the materials from last night’s meeting on Board Docs here.