The YEF Blog is a great place to read all about previous grants and how they are working inside Yarmouth schools. You can also find current updates on our social media pages.

Written by Allison Flowerdew

If you enter the 7th grade wing at HMS, you will see that the students have turned into kelp farmers!  You won’t find them wearing waterproof bib overalls or wellies to keep their feet dry, but they are experts in kelp production, nonetheless. A couple of Mr. Cuthbert’s students explained the process of growing kelp in the tanks. Pay close attention, because this is very technical. They first cut out the light spots from the kelp, kept the dark spots, put it in water, then put those pieces in a tube with string and PRESTO, they’ve got kelp in a tank! Ok, I think they gave me the short version. My guess is it was a tad more involved, but that’s what I got! Either way, kelp is growing in the 7th grade wing and the students know exactly what they are doing, thanks to this hands-on learning experience inside the classroom.

This weekend, Mr. Cuthbert, Mr. Henninger, and a few Seniors will remove the kelp from the tanks and put them out on the longlines in Casco Bay. In April, they will harvest the kelp, which they expect to be about 3 meters long. What will they do with all that kelp, you ask? They are hoping to entice some local restaurants to have a “kelp cook-off” to see who can create the yummiest kelp dish. Be on the lookout, kelp could be on the menu at your favorite Yarmouth restaurant in the spring!

Written by Allison Flowerdew

The 7th graders aren’t the only farmers at HMS.  Oh no, the 6th graders are farming, too! I stopped in to visit Mr. Callahan and Ms. Laberge’s classrooms to see what was happening with their Hooked on Aquaponics grant.

When Mr. Callahan asked the students to explain how the tank works, a student proudly announced, “The fish poop in the water and it fertilizes the plants and the plants clean the water.” The student knew his stuff! They are currently growing basil and they decided to taste their latest crop while I was there. Thumbs up for the basil! After they harvest the basil, they are going to try growing a spider plant and mustard greens. Eventually, they would like to give their food to the cafeteria, so they can incorporate it into the menu. They are having a tough time keeping the fish alive, but more fish are coming and Mr. Callahan says he’s going to start singing to them to make them happy ;)!  The kids LOVE the fish!

I crossed the hall to Ms. Laberge’s classroom to see how they were doing. They are growing basil and oregano! They have two fish in their tank. If you look closely, you can see the fish in the pictures below.  I’m thinking Ms. Laberge has a lovely singing voice.

Thank you Mr. Callahan and Ms. Laberge for allowing me into your classroom and thank you for providing this wonderful learning opportunity to the students!

Written by Allison Flowerdew

Tim Christensen is back at YHS helping Holly Houston and Marita O’Neill bring their Spring 2018 grant to life! The name of their grant is “Birds to Bivalves,” which has morphed into a project Holly is calling “Paying Attention.” It’s an appropriate name for what the students are doing, because they have been asked to become more aware of the wildlife in their local surroundings.

Each student was asked to choose an animal that they have seen locally, then do some research on that animal before etching it into plexiglass. During this process, the students questioned and discussed what that animal meant to them, how it changed their surroundings, what it would be like if that animal was no longer there, etc.

Once the etching started, Holly’s art students etched the animal onto plexiglass, along with three things the animal needs to survive. Marita’s poetry students etched an animal onto plexiglass as well, along with a poem. Both classes were working together in Holly’s room, so they could learn from Tim’s expertise. He’ll be working with the art and poetry classes for 10 days. Through the etching process, Tim is helping the students learn about contrast, patterning, line direction and composition. They will be printing their work soon! This type of printing is called “intaglio” printing.

Holly’s other art classes will be working with Tim to sculpt animals out of clay.

The artwork will be displayed at the Yarmouth Historical Society in February. They are hoping to host the students one evening, so the students can read their poems and talk about their artwork.

Written by Allison Flowerdew

Thomas explained that the oysters will be placed in the black cages and the empty gray tanks keep the cages afloat. The cages will be tied to a rope that is anchored at the bottom of the ocean and the cages will line up in a row, from one buoy to another buoy. Initially, the black cages will be under water, so the oysters can feed on the algae. After about 9 or 10 days, the cage gets all gunked up (I’m pretty sure that’s the technical term 😉 with algae, barnacles and mussels. Once this happens, the cages are flipped over, so the gray tanks are under water and the black cages are exposed to the air and sun. It only take a few days for the sun and air to dry everything up, naturally cleaning the cages. The cages are then flipped back over into the water so the oysters can start feeding again. Presto!! No cleaning required!

Around Thanksgiving, when the ocean temperature reaches about 42 degrees, the gray tanks will be filled with water and the cages will sink to the bottom of the ocean for the winter months. Around April, the cages will be pulled back up again, the water will be drained from the gray tanks, and the oysters will start feeding again.

Contributed by Allison Flowerdew

I was back at the Yarmouth Performing Arts Center in March when the Freshman class experienced a rendition of Julius Caesar by four actors from the Portland Stage Company. This was the result of a grant request by Karin Walsh and Laura Esty for the Julius Caesar Director’s Lab, to help their students understand Shakespeare’s famous play.

Before the play started, the students were informed that they would be representing the Roman people, making them part of the experience. They were also asked to decide throughout the course of the play which character they sided with. They discussed this in greater detail in the afternoon workshop.

The actors started the play with loud drum beats creating instant energy in the room. The actors portrayed Julius Caesar, Brutus, Mark Antony, Cassius, Octavius Caesar and a few other characters. The play unfolded with Brutus and Cassius plotting against Caesar, who had just returned home to Rome. The audience watched as Brutus planned and executed the assassination of Caesar. During the funeral scene, Brutus and Antony stood on wooden crates and spoke to the crowd. The play concluded with a fight scene in which Octavius tried to avenge the death of Julius Caesar. It all culminated in the death of Brutus and Cassius. The play was exciting, dramatic and helped to demystify Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.

After the play, the actors answered questions from the audience. They also asked the students, by a show of hands, whose side they were on. It was pretty evenly split, but from where I was sitting, I think Brutus had the edge!

Following the play, Karin Walsh’s Freshman Honors English class was join by the actors from the play. The actors started off by asking the class whose side they were on and why. Most of the students sided with Brutus stating, “He had the right idea for the empire,” and “He sacrificed for the greater good.”  The actor who played Brutus was beaming!

The students then broke into pairs and picked a subject to debate. They discussed different tactics to win their argument, such as appealing to people’s emotions, using volume, ignoring and using confidence and attitude. The actors explained that Shakespeare’s plays are filled with arguments and they discussed his use of rhetoric, the language of persuasion.

The students were then asked to take on the director’s role. One of the actors gave a speech from the play and the students were encouraged to give the actor a different way to approach his speech. He gave his speech two more times, with his new directions speaking with more confidence the first time and with more anger and guilt the second time.

This grant impacted every freshman at Yarmouth High School. It was exciting for students to see a live performance of a play they’ve read and studied.

Contributed by Allison Flowerdew

I witnessed day one of Marita O’Neill and Jackie Brookes’ grant, Celebrating Diversity: American Voices, in January at YHS. Actor and writer David Mills performed a one man show as Langston Hughes in the Yarmouth Performing Arts Center for the Junior and Senior classes. He started his performance reciting Hughes’s famous poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” then continued reciting more of Hughes’s poems and short stories for about an hour. Throughout his performance, he used many different voices and dialects to portray an array of diverse characters.

After his presentation, he conducted a workshop on Blues Poetry in two Senior AP Literature classes. The classes read a Hughes poem titled “Midwinter Blues.”  After the students read the poem out loud, they dissected each stanza line by line, discussing setting, structure, form, tone, meaning, repetition and rhyme. The students then wrote their own blues poem using the formula they had just learned. In the background, Mills played a Chicago Blues song, while the students wrote their poem. At the end of class, a couple of brave students read their poems out loud. Ms. O’Neill has some terrific poets in her class! I could tell the students really enjoyed the workshop, because they personally thanked Mills and shook his hand on the way out the door.

Mills conducted three more Blues Poetry workshops the following day. This experience coincided with a Senior English poetry unit and a Junior Harlem Renaissance history unit.

Contributed by Allison Flowerdew

Part two of the Celebrating Diversity: American Voices grant took place a few days after the Langston Hughes performance when the YPAC was filled to capacity with Freshman, Sophomores and 8th graders. This time, David Mills transformed himself into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mills recited excerpts from King’s speeches and letters, including “I Have a Dream,” the famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and “If I had Sneezed.” In between the speeches, he performed interludes to bring the audience from one stage of King’s life to another. One of the interludes discussed how King felt when four girls were killed in the Alabama church in 1963, just days after giving his “I Have a Dream” speech. It was a powerful performance.

The afternoon continued with a workshop in Mrs. Ruthman’s Sophomore Modern World History class. Mills started off the class by giving the students some historical context around the letter that King wrote from his jail cell in 1963. He talked about the bus boycott, the protests in Birmingham (which was nicknamed “Bombingham”), and why King was imprisoned. When talking about King’s letter from jail, Mills explained how he appealed to the reader on an emotional and intellectual level through his high rhetoric. Mills described the letter as an “epistolary poem,” which is a poem in the form of a letter. After the class read the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” line by line. They discussed setting, repetition, meaning, parallel syntax, alliteration, paratactic syntax, hypophora, antithesis, anaphora, periodic sentences and metaphors.

After the lesson on the literary devices found in King’s letter, the students were asked to write their own “epistolary poem” and include the elements they just learned from King’s letter. They were charged with writing about an experience they had in their own lives where they had been misunderstood, hurt or disrespected by someone with whom they were not able to respond to.

This program was timely, as the Freshmen curriculum includes a section on Americans who are positive agents of change. Sophomores study themes such as social justice and civil rights throughout the year.

Though the grant was written for the high school students, it was a great opportunity for the 8th graders to join in and benefit from the performances as well. I was impressed with the response, as a few of the 8th graders shared their reactions with me.

“I loved it! The acting was amazing and I learned a lot of things about King’s struggles that I wasn’t aware of,” said one 8th grader. “I had no idea how vicious racism could be. I was struck by the phone threat King received where they said they would kill his wife and daughter. My big takeaway was that hatred is pointless.”

Contributed by Allison Flowerdew

I had the pleasure of joining Ms. Finnen’s Kindergarten classroom in January. As soon as I stepped into their classroom, a little boy came right up to me and said, “Thank you for KIBO.” It was so sweet! A few seconds later, a little girl said, “Thank you for KIBO.” My heart was melting! Almost every child thanked me for KIBO. By the time I left, I was a puddle on the floor! Ms. Finnen’s class gets an A+ in manners!

KIBO robot kits are designed for children aged four to seven and will be placed in every Yarmouth kindergarten and first grade classroom, thanks to grant applicants Cathy Wolinsky, Amy Finnen and Terry Lincoln.

The KIBO robot kit looks a little like a car. The first step in construction is to put wheels on the sides to make sure it will move properly. Then the children piece together a series of blocks that have bar codes on each of them. Each block represents a different action that can be combined in different sequences. Next, they scan the blocks with the KIBO car. When they press the “go” button, the KIBO will then perform all the block directions that the kids have outlined for it in a specific order. The blocks say things like “blue light on, turn right, shake, forward, backward or spin.”

These KIBO robots appeal not only to the tech-minded students, but also to the creative students who enjoy the design and decoration possibilities. The teachers like that the programming is done by physically building with their hands, as opposed to using a device with a screen.

While at Rowe I bumped into Jill Webber, the school nurse, who told me how exciting it was to see the kids work with KIBO. She mentioned that kindergarten teacher Karen Bradford said it best when she said it’s all about “the wondering of it all.” After the kids play with KIBO they often say, “I wonder what would happen if…” Gotta love the curiosity!

by Shawna Chigro-Rogers

“Let my people go! O, let my people go!”

A young slave, Minty, pushes through the crowd. Desperate as her next of kin are auctioned off.

Everyone loves a good story and fourth graders at Yarmouth Elementary school became powerful storytellers, sharing the heroic efforts of a young teenage slave, Harriet Tubman. Through a grant by the Yarmouth Education Foundation, SPIRIT SERIES engaged students in an inspirational biography of Harriet Tubman in Freedom Train. Araminta “Minty” was born into slavery. She escaped slavery and became a conductor for the Freedom Train, risking her life with each trip to free slaves.

Betsy Lane, YES Principal, wrote, “A generous Yarmouth Education Foundation grant brought an amazing three-week learning adventure to fourth graders. For an hour each day, students immersed themselves in a world far beyond the classroom studying, co-writing, staging, and performing an inspirational one-act SPIRIT SERIES play: Freedom Train. As one student said, “It’s hard to explain how much we know now.”

SPIRIT SERIES founder, Richard Strauss, poses the question, “can the wisdom and character of great heroes from the past empower our children to meet adversity in their own lives?”

Let’s ask the children –

~”I enjoyed learning about Harriet and the Underground Railroad in a fun way and stepping into someone else’s shoes.”

~”It felt more real than it would have been just reading about it.”

From preparation to performance, SPIRIT SERIES hopes that students will “forge a positive vision for themselves, and begin to become their own heroes.”

~”I loved the feedback that Mr. K gave everyone.”

~”I enjoyed that you got to perform Freedom Train and tell the story of Harriet Tubman’s life through acting. I also liked that you didn’t have to memorize your lines by heart.”

“SPIRIT SERIES was a good experience for our students. They learned so much about our history while diving deep into these roles, while also practicing reading fluency and learning new vocabulary,” shares Cassie Fier, YES 4th grade teacher. “They recognized they learned a lot and they loved the costumes and performing in front of an audience.”

A new Moses had come on the Underground Rail. “Let my people go! O, let my people go!”

A lot of kids use digital media in the classroom and at home. At Harrison Middle School, students have made it part of their extracurricular activities, too.

The goal of the Digital Media Club is to “mostly just develop some skills around video production, but also to show them it can be fun,” said Mike Arsenault, the instructional technology integrator who advises club members. According to Arsenault, more than a dozen students participate, most of them fifth- and sixth-graders.

The club, which was started last year by a student who now attends Yarmouth High School., was able to buy technology and equipment with a grant from the Yarmouth Education Foundation. Around $6,000 from YEF was used to purchase cameras, Final Cut Pro video editing software, cases, tripods, shoulder mounts, microphones and an iMac computer.

Read the complete article from The Forcaster

by Shawna Chigro-Rogers

You can enjoy a good book,  share it with a friend, and recommend it to a book club. How often can you find an opportunity to read that book with everyone in your school at the same time? Would it be possible to get the author to visit your school to talk about the book? Could that discussion be opened up to your town community? Meet that opportunity: One Book, One School.

Merry Stuhr, Harrison Middle School Librarian, submitted this grant to the YEF. What came about was a unique experience that unified the school and the community, and exceeded their expectations.

One Book. Alabama Moon by Watt Key, is a coming-of-age novel for young adults. This book was specifically selected by Stuhr because of its broad reach and varied readership.

“I really liked Alabama Moon, it kept me on the edge of my seat and I wanted to hold the book in my own hand so I could keep turning to the next page,” stated an eighth grade student. “My teacher read with a southern accent which helped to imagine the story. I would really like to be able to do this again.”

As teachers read the book to their students, other staff members were reading it as well. Discussion groups made up of mixed grades were formed. Key visited the school and intimate sessions with the author were conducted with each grade.

“The visit from Watt Key was truly amazing,” said Stephanie Robison, sixth grade teacher.

“It was interesting–he dropped by my room during class in the morning and I don’t think the kids would have been more excited if Taylor Swift had come in!” recalled Robison. “A few gasped, a few cheered, some just stared, and a few whispered ‘That’s him!’ It was super cute.”

Two sixth grade students found it interesting that Watt Key lived outside with nothing like Moon (a character from the book) did.

“He did it for a college project and we think that’s amazing and helped him to write the story,” they shared.

One School. Stuhr and Robison both believe that the unified reading of Alabama Moon gave a strong sense of community to the school.

“Students could talk about the book with anyone because EVERYONE was reading it,” Robison explained. “It was so powerful to have such a great common experience school wide.”

A sixth grade student enjoyed the discussion groups.

“I liked talking about the book with kids in other grades because you got to hear what their thoughts were about the book,” she declared.

Additionally, the HMS Digital Media Club filmed the visit, and are producing a video. Mike Arsenault, Technology Coordinator for HMS, posted a picture on Twitter.

Stuhr added, “This was an amazingly wonderful event and we can’t thank YEF enough. I’ve heard comments from staff members that they’ve never seen an event that unified our building in the way this one did.”

One Community. Yarmouth’s own Merrill Memorial Library and Royal River Books fully encompassed this endeavor. The library hosted Watt Key for an evening with the author. Royal River books offered Alabama Moon books at wholesale.

“I thought the Watt Key visit (and) program was incredible. There was so much enthusiasm and discussion around the book,” stated Amy Beard of Royal River Books. “I am grateful to have been involved. It was such a wonderful experience to see such a wide range of kids excited about the same book and about meeting the author.”

“This has been an absolutely incredible experience that has exceeded our already-high expectations,” Stuhr exclaimed. ”A HUGE thanks to YEF for making this possible!”

YES gym teacher, Meg Pachuta, created this video to Thank YEF for the fall grant she received. And we would like to Thank YOU, Meg, for all you do!