ELHS Extravaganza Roars on for Maddie!

For the past five years,  ELHS has hosted an Extravaganza on the day before our December holiday break.   The Extravaganza is essentially a telethon featured on TVs throughout the school and on Public TV.   The purpose is to raise money for a worthy cause.  The planning of the Extravaganza is a time intensive project and is usually managed through a group of students in conjunction with a graded WISE project.

This past year, our community has been rallying to support a very special young lady in town who is fighting a courageous battle to defeat cancer.   A group of students were so impressed with her courage and determination that they wanted to contribute to Maddie's Wish Fund.  Maddie and her family had generously requested that people wishing to help out should send toys and raise funds for other children fighting cancer, rather than give to Maddie directly.  Normally, the Extravaganza is the main event of the day, but in the spirit of community service, this WISE group wanted to incorporate projects that would serve and touch as many people in our community as possible.

The WISE group consisted of General Managers: Kathryn Taylor, Rachel Uricchio and Megan Dugan,  Graphic Designer: Jillian Eller and Photographer: Lauryn Eberle.   One of the requirements of the WISE project is to incorporate something that you are interested in pursuing as a future career.  In taking on these roles,  each WISE participant was able to gain experience in their desired field.

In addition to the events on December 23rd, the girls ran a pasta supper with the help of the Niantic Rotary, and a Dunk Tank during lunch.  Thanks to Mr. Susi, Mr. Provost, Mr. Mahon, Mr. Bagos, Mr. Nazzaro and Mrs. Carney-Brush for being so willing to sit on the dunking board and become a target!

On the day of the Extravaganza,  everybody in the school wore a bright orange T-shirt as a show of solidarity.  How amazing it was to view the sea of orange when the school community was working in the Commons area!  Students were split up into groups of Freshmen/Sophomore and Junior/Seniors.  While the Juniors/Seniors were watching their portion of the Extravaganza talent,  the Freshmen/Sophomore group was busy in the Commons working on community services projects and vice versa.   The community service portion began with a video to highlight cancer awareness and featured Maddie and her sister and friends singing the song Stand by You by Rachel Platten.   The community service projects consisted of creating fleece blankets for the Yale Children's Hospital, writing notes of gratitude and support for active veterans and creating reindeer ornaments and snowflakes to brighten up area nursing homes.   In all, 173 Blankets were delivered to Yale Children's Hospital and $2500 was raised for Maddie's Wish Fund!

The entertainment provided by participants in the Extravaganza was extra special!   Acts ranged from dancing and singing to magic and comedy.   A good time was had by all and lots of good work was completed that day by the entire student body.

The entire project took hundreds of hours to plan and the group was very thankful for the generous donations provided through our Printshop run by Rachel Redding (material for blankets and the orange t-shirts) and the Niantic Rotary (money and volunteers for the Pasta Supper).  In an email to the staff the following day,  Mrs. Carney-Brush thanked the following staff members for their help:

Rachel Redding, Matt Laconti, Shannon Saglio, Jen D’Elia, Rachel Michaud, Kim Thompson, Freda Gianakos, Anthony Maiese, Karin Carlson, Sue Johnston, Grant Place, Joanna Hildebrand, Mat O'Grady, Linda Foote, and Lauren Allyn.

The WISE group was very pleased with the outcome and their wish to highlight the positive character of our school community was accomplished to the highest degree. The project was supervised by Faculty member Jen Carney-Brush and the outcome was a great success.   Well done Katie, Rachel, Megan, Jillian and Lauryn!

Hour of Code

During the week of December 7-11th,  the staff and students of East Lyme High School were invited to participate in the Hour of Code.   The Hour of Code is an International Initiative to motivate students to participate in some kind of coding activity so they are exposed to the basics of Computer Science.  There are many companies that contribute to this initiative, including Google, Microsoft. Code.org (which is comprised of a large number of partners), MIT, UC Berkley, Codeacademy and Khan Academy and Tynker to name a few.   Links to Coding activities are available on our East Lyme High School Library Resource Page under Maker Movement Resources and then Coding Activities and Coding:  http://eastlymehs.libguides.com/makermovement.

Throughout the week, teachers bring in a good variety of classes to the library to participate in Coding activities:

Madame Casey's French classes created French holiday cards using Scratch, a coding  and animation program created for students in K-12 grades by educators and students at MIT.

Mrs. Murphy's  Computer Science classes and Mrs. Mickle's Science classes came in and tried a number of different activities.  In addition, Mrs. Murphy teaches an App Inventor Class where students are coding every day!   Mrs. Mickle brought her science classes to visit  Mrs. Murphy's App Inventor class the following week so they could witness coding in action.


For those who have coded in the past,  we had them try a challenge from Karel the Robot, a program developed by NCLAB.



Mrs. Thompson's  PE classes visited the Code.org sites, where they were able to view a tutorial video and then participate in a variety of activities related to Minecraft, Star Wars and Frozen.  

 

 

 

The library houses two Robots called Dot and Dash, who were introduced to a group of students from Mrs. Nowak English and Mrs. Hansen's Math classes. Some students worked with an iPad app called Wonder to control the robots.

 

 

 And the fun continued after the official Hour of Code Week in December!   On December 21st, Mrs. Brake brought her math class in to do activities on the Code. org site and on December 22nd,  two more math teachers, Mr. Templeton and Mrs. Hanson signed their classes up to face the challenge of coding.

Thanks to all that participated.    The activities are available online all year round, so teachers can introduce the concept of coding to their classes at their own convenience.  Students and teachers alike were having a really great time completing the challenges provided.