Thank You Suncoast Credit Union for the Pennies Add Up Program!

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The Novel Studies students

The Novel Studies students at Chocachatti Elementary School read ‘Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes’ the first 9 weeks through the beginning of the second 9 weeks. In November, 13 students earned their AR points and in December, 10 students earned their AR points. During the formal assessments, class averages were between 80% and 90% for comprehension—this is a big jump from the beginning of the year, being that approximately 40% of these students were struggling with comprehension in either reading, math, or both. Students collaboratively worked in literature circle groups during MTSS, whole class instruction, and enrichment groups to read the novels assigned.

Empowering Young Artists At Nature Coast Technical High School

Each year, these empowering young artists at Nature Coast Technical High School share their stories and transform other’s worlds through digital media. 10 weeks prior to their trip to New York, they completed pre-production, wrote their script, planned their shoot, and secured locations along with actors. Upon arrival, they had 56 hours to film, shoot, and edit their short film which was judged by industry professionals once it was screened at the AMC Theater in Times Square. There were 8 official selections and 1 brilliant Film Invitational Submitted to the New York Videos for the All-American High School Film Festival.

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The STEAM Festival

The STEAM Festival was very well attended with approximately 200 families. 10 all new STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) experiments were added to this year’s event. The experiments included: Jelly Bean Towers, Cloud in a Cup, Zombie Hands, Coin Drops, Lego Challenge, Math Fact Jenga, Spray Art, Tessellation Art, Star Wars Circuit Cards, and Tiny Dancers. Materials were purchased in anticipation of serving 200 students. Some of the needed materials included: liquid watercolor paint, pink straws, coin cell batteries, Jenga sets, Legos, copper wire, and neodymium magnetic discs. All of the materials were used and they had glowing reviews as to how much fun these families had with their students trying out difference experiments.

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The online culinary course at Weeki Wachee High School

Students who are enrolled in an online culinary course at Weeki Wachee High School as part of their graduation requirement and did not have the means in which to complete the food preparation—until this was funded. Culinary Art for Self-Contained Behavioral Unit students are learning how to read recipes, follow step by step directions to cook different meals as well as learning how to work with others to problem solve. Students were able to complete assignments required because of the grant and now they’re cooking up five course meals for their families at home.

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Other wonderful stories

Music Specials Program: Beginning in January 2020, students will learn about music fundamentals, experience music hands on, to learn how to sing and perform on stage while expanding their knowledge and appreciation of music. Then they will be performing at Deltona to show off all their amazing instrument skills that they’ve learned.

Careers: Making Educated Decisions: The project started the first day of school allowing teachers to have data such as grades, attendance, and disciplines. The data is used to select 30 students whom attended the Saint Leo University field trip. There were 10 students from Endeavor, Discovery High School and Discovery Middle schools who earned the right to go on the first field trip through good behavior and grades and no disciplines within the first 9 weeks.

Manufacturing Day 2019: Career and Technical Education students visited on October 4th, 2019, local manufactures and toured and observed local manufacturing companies to gain firsthand experience regarding employment in the manufacturing industry. Students in their CTE Programs are learning new skills and received an opportunity to see how those skills apply in the workplace. The Manufacturing day field trip helped to demonstrate the connection between education and the skills learned in their CTE Programs, and helped to reinforce how skills translate to employability.

ESOL Parent Leadership Council: The ESOL PLC Spring Conference will be held on April-23-2020 at Floyd Elementary School from 6:00pm to 8:30pm. They have held preliminary planning meetings with staff and parent leaders and plan to have at least two more planning and logistics meetings in January, February, and March to make sure this night is a big success.

Team PD: Team Improvement: Project is in week 2 of 6 weeks. Project was not started on time due to difficulties with the access codes and some calls to customer service but the project is in full swing at this time. Participants have expressed interest and enjoyment in taking the personality assessments. Students have stated, “It’s scary how accurate this is!”

Fit to Run Club 5K: 18 Fit to Run club members will participate in the Color Run for Restoration on Feb 1, 2020 at Nature Coast High School. This will be the first race the club will participate in since the starting of the club last year. The Fit to Run club instructor has been prepping these Deltona students by timing their mile run every week and pushing them to beat their times from the week before. All the students are very excited and are already talking about how they can’t wait to participate in another race soon!

Tools 4 Schools

This project supports students and teachers through providing needed supplies to the classroom and student needs at no cost. This year we were able to incorporate an online store that we are piloting at one school location. We chose this one school in particular because it is the furthest out from our two store locations. We were also able to expand and double the size of our Brooksville store to support need. This program helps to increase teacher’s attitudes and enables them to have the tools and resources needed to increase effectiveness within the classroom. This program has been very well received and we have had a 40% increase in teacher participation year to date. We had an 85% return survey rate with 100% satisfaction rate based on the first set of surveys and based on our sign-in sheets, we’ve noticed that we have an average of 20-35 teachers per store visit each walking out with the 25 item limit since we’ve expanded the Brooksville Location and added more variety to the Springstead Location as well.

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