JANUARY 2018 Report Highlights Berkeley Township School District
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
JANUARY 2018 Report Highlights Berkeley Township School District Berkeley Township Elementary School, Clara B. Worth School, Bayville School, and H&M Potter Berkeley Township Elementary School has adopted their “Hand Rule” for the school rules, which are posted in each hallway for every student and faculty member to see. The culture has truly changed and they are unified in and out of the classroom. Also, in the month of September they started a new initiative during Recess. With their upcoming Unified Club focusing on soccer it was important for them to build the excitement not only for the sport, but for working together as a team. Teams were set up and schedules were set for games to take place during Recess. The structure was important to not only the kids participating, but also the adults supervising the activity. The teams are having a blast and each team keeps checking in on their records and when they play next. The halls are filled with “Respect” shirts from our fifth graders who are now sixth graders and the Berkeley Township “Play Unified” shirts are worn with pride! They are excited their Respect Week. Their first session of clubs was a huge success and they are excited to focus on basketball, hockey, and fitness in February. Unified P.E. and Adapted P.E. have expanded and more opportunities for student involvement are available for both regular and special education students. Clara B. Worth, Bayville and H&M Potter Berkeley Township School District’s three lower elementary schools have begun sharing their unified goals and objectives for the year. Each school did a Respect walk and also is participating in Respect Week. The schools have chosen unified student representatives and staff are in place working on dates and times for Unified clubs. The excitement is being felt throughout the District and the students as young as in pre-K are involved in the unified movement. It is both fun and rewarding to have all schools on board sharing this incredible philosophy and truly practicing what they preach. As a District they look forward to many more programs throughout the year and making this the best year yet for all the students and faculty. H&M Potter and Clara B. Worth Schools have completed Unified Club sessions and the kids are enjoying every minute! Their district is on board and they are using the unified approach in and out of the classroom. Page | 1 JANUARY 2018 Report Highlights Burlington Township Burlington Township High School, Fountain Woods Elementary School Club Unify at the high school has been having planning meetings; their last one was January 9 and topics discussed were planning activity days, spread the word campaign, disability fair and spring social. Unified Bowling Club started January 2. They had 2 practices. Special Olympics Track and Field dates have been selected and facilities requested. Information will be sent to students and parents. They are planning a basketball clinic for one or two Saturday mornings. Sparkle Cheer (inclusive cheer team) practices have started, and the girls attended a competition 1/21/18 and showed their routine. The coach is finalizing another competition to attend. In gym class at the high school they have 3-4 gen. ed students attending their small group gym to help lead activities and be peer mentors. At Fountain Woods there is an inclusive gym and the awareness club started in January. There is a staff meeting scheduled next week to discuss overall plans for the district and the polar plunge. They have the Frostbitten Falcons team with 8 teammates, but soon to be more. Burlington City High School As part of making the school more inclusive at Burlington City High School, the Unified program inspired the teacher to pilot a student run coffee shop for the first time ever in their high school. The success has been tremendous, many of the same special and general education students have been running the coffee shop and have been working together to make it a great place to start your day. The students have learned so many valuable skills, like multi-tasking, appropriate greeting, eye-contact, stocking items, making coffee, customer service, counting money and so on. It has truly been a wonderful addition to our Unified community. Burnet Middle School Burnet has had a great start to the year! Every week their kids practice and participate in Unified Sports. They had one successful fundraiser (bake sale) in which they raised $200 dollars. Their leadership club is planning its respect week for May, as well as working together to create a new video for their Assembly. Every day, the students come to visit in the morning where they socialize and play games. It seems they have full support for our faculty and staff as well. Cedar Creek High School Cedar Creek High School successfully implemented a Unified Sports game in the fall with Mainland High School. Their Play Unified team was recognized to a standing ovation during the school wide pep rally. The Play Unified program has participated in other activities and sports with other high school that do not have a recognized Play Unified program, but it allowed their students to play. Page | 2 JANUARY 2018 Report Highlights Chatham High School This month Chatham/ECLC Play Unified kicked off its first “Learn Unified” event. This event brings the students in the club from ECLC to Chatham high school to spend the day attending classes and having a unified lunch. All members in the club had such a blast! The students from ECLC were welcomed with an announcement by the principal and all the club members wore their club shirts. The student pairs attended English, Art, Theatre, Biology, Spanish, and Cooking classes together. It was a great first event and the club is so happy that it will continue the second Friday of each month until June! This month the club also had its first Play Unified Basketball event. Page | 3 JANUARY 2018 Report Highlights Clayton High School The month of January has been focused on bowling for the Clayton Unified PE class. This month they began creating a bowling team that will be able to compete in matches. To help the students prepare for this, they started their bowling unit in class daily. They set up seven lanes daily in class and have groups of four. These groups consist of students with and without special needs. The students have learned the numbers of the pins, how to set them up, and how to score. They will also be started practice at a local bowling alley to continue practicing their skills. They ordered shirts for all of the students participating in the bowling team. They placed an order for equipment to use in the Unified PE classes and well as practice for the unified Bowling team. Clayton High School started the Clayton Pin Crushers Unified Bowling team. The team was open to all students in the Clayton High School. The team consisted of four athletes, four student from the unified class and eight from the High School. The team’s first practice was at Glassboro Bowl the end of January. On February 14, 2018, Clayton will host the Tri-County Conference Unified Bowling Tournament. There were three school represented from the conference, Williamstown, Kingsway and Clayton. They are looking forward to the Bowling event as well as hosting an additional match in February or March. Ewing High School Ewing High School has been so incredibly busy this year with Unified Sports. They implemented the new Unified PE elective course and increased the number of sports that they are participating in through Special Olympics. In the past, Ewing struggled with gaining membership from both athletes and partners. It was difficult to get partners to commit, because many of them participate in other extracurricular activities. The Unified PE course has been extremely beneficial to their program and has increased their number of participants this year. The course is providing general education students the opportunity to work with students with disabilities, something that many of them have never done before. Many of their partners come to them through the PE course, but they have more students who are participating through word of mouth. This year Ewing is participating in multiple sporting events. They decided to try soccer, unfortunately it was cancelled, basketball and bowling. They are also looking into participating in track this year. For both basketball and bowling, they have been able to produce two teams. This is a HUGE increase from last year where they barely had enough players to play in any event. Their focus this year is to promote a more inclusive and collaborative environment for all students at Ewing High School. They would like to increase the number of partners participating in their Unified PE course, so they collaborated with the Peer Leadership class and held a Unified PE block. The Peer Leaders loved it and many of them are participating in their basketball tournament. This month, they were approved to start planning a Unified Field Day, where they will work with all schools in their district. Page | 4 JANUARY 2018 Report Highlights Frank J. Smith Elementary School This month at Frank J. Smith Elementary School, the PALs got together for a meet and greet that introduced them to their friends with special needs. There are 12 second graders that act as PALs. Each meeting they rotate 4 at a time to connect with 4 special needs students. The PALs had a great time getting to know one another while doing a mix of fun phys ed exercises.