The West Point Leadership Ethics and Diversity in STEM (LEADS) hosted a workshop at Newman Smith on Friday, January 20th. Middle and high school students from the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area congregated to learn Entrepreneurship Finance, Virtual Bridge Building, and Leadership and Ethics. The goal is for students to “realize the key role ethical leadership and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) competence play in becoming an effective leader.”
On January 20th & 21st, Ranchview will be performing “Annie Jr.” Take a look at the students and the characters they’ll be playing in the video above.
Be sure to check out the show, you won’t want to miss it!
January 20th and 21st, 8:00pm
$8 General Admission, $6 Discounted Tickets (Student, Military, Senior Citizens)
At the Ranchview High School Auditorium
Reservations can be made from the 7th-20th by calling Lisa Gryzmcowski at (972)968-5026
Osmo is an award-winning game system that will change the way your child interacts with the iPad by opening it up to hands-on play. You put your iPad in the Osmo Base with the red reflector over the camera and now it can see what’s in front of it. It’s a great way for students to utilize iPads in an educational manner. Davis Elementary has begun using Osmo and the students seem to enjoy it! For more information, visit www.playosmo.com.
On Saturday, January 14, the City of Carrollton held its annual MLK parade to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. This will be the 20th year, the city has held the parade. The parade is sponsored by Christ Community Connection, Inc. and cosponsored by the City of Carrollton and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District. Our Blalack students proudly participated in the parade for equality, freedom, justice and spiritual growth for all!
Carrollton Elementary students collected canned good for three weeks in December. They collected 6 food bank boxes collectively. These boxes were given to North Texas Food Bank. Way to go Carrollton Elementary!
Please join us in congratulating our two All-State Dancers, Zach August and Marcela Vazquez, on their outstanding work at the TDEA Convention this past week! There were 222 All-State Dancers from across the state of Texas, and Zach was the only male dancer represented. Both took numerous master classes and performed in an amazing performance featuring all of the 222 dancers. They both represented our district with the utmost of excellence and professionalism!
Congratulations to the students who participated this year in Reflections, the National PTA Art Program. The theme for 2016-17 was ‘What is your story?’ Students from Kinder through 12 grade may participate in 6 different categories: Dance Choreography, Film Production, Literature, Music Composition, Photography and Visual Arts.
Students compete in their school and the top 20% advance to the CFB Council PTA judging. In the picture above are the Overall Award of Excellence recipients with an entry that advanced to State level of judging. Good luck to you!
The following link has the gallery of entries in Visual Arts and Photography that advanced to state judging.
https://goo.gl/MJKUVg
Click here to see a full list of students that received an award!
January 20th and 21st, 8:00pm
$8 General Admission, $6 Discounted Tickets (Student, Military, Senior Citizens)
At the Ranchview High School Auditorium
Reservations can be made from the 7th-20th by calling Lisa Gryzmcowski at (972)968-5026
LBJ Express engineers visited Charles M. Blalack Middle School’s science club for MakerSpace Technology Day and spoke to middle school students about their experiences with math, science ano every day for the LBJ Express highway project. Science club students enjoyed playing with the new technology and collaborating with their visitors.
Blalack Middle School is one of the six public middle schools that received new technology from the LBJ Express STEM education grant to kick off the new MakerSpace program. The $40,000 STEM education grant was awarded to Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District in August and after much planning is being used to implement MakerSpace programs for each middle school within the district.
“The goal of the grant is to expose each sixth- , seventh- and eighth-grader to technology at least twice a year and encourage creativity, problem solving, innovation and discovery,” said Dr. Kathryn Schaeffer, Executive Director for Advanced Academic Services and World Languages. Dr. Schaeffer is the grant visionary and author of the program title, Middle School Matters. She and the administration hope to see the MakerSpace program grow.
“We hope that with this grant MakerSpace will eventually become a part of the classroom experience. We want to expand time on campuses where MakerSpace can be open before school, during lunch time and after school so kids who are really driven to work in these areas can do so and teachers can go a bit further with their students through programming and planning in their own time. However, we know that math and science for every child is important so we want to touch every child because we don’t know exactly when the lightbulb will go off for a particular child or when an experiment will blow their mind.”
The LBJ Express STEM education grant has helped foster this type of new learning for the next generation.
“We want children to know that failure is a part of what we do every day. It builds a growth mindset and resilience for future thinkers and problem solvers. By working with real materials, you either fail or succeed or end up somewhere in the middle, but try after try you learn and begin to succeed,” stated Dr. Schaeffer.
Some of the new technology featured in the MakerSpace program includes educational tools like Makey Makey, Little Bits, Google Cardboard, Sphero Robotic Ball, Sprout and 3-D HP printers. The LBJ Express engineers and middle school students spent an entire afternoon in a very creative environment where they were encouraged to interact, experiment, build, create and learn. The LBJ Express team hopes to continue being involved in the classroom with their engineers and professional staff.
Courtney Okolo paid a visit to her former high school, Newman Smith. She brought home the gold medal in the 400 Relay in the Rio 2016 Olympics. Smith high school held an assembly, where she proudly showed her gold medal & celebrated her achievement. She thanked the Newman Smith staff that helped her achieve this amazing award. Take a look at what she had to say in the video above.