PTA Meeting 11/18/2008

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PTA Meeting of Nov. 18, 2008

Minutes by Susan Lee

Dana Casale brought the meeting to order at 8:15am. The Basket Raffle was the first order of business. There will be 19-40 baskets made up through donations from each classroom and individuals. The baskets will be on display in Tiernan Hall Dec. 8-12. Ticket forms will go home with the students. Drawings for the baskets are on Friday Dec. 12. Irene Hils is the chair of the Christmas Bazaar, which is a fund-raiser.

Starting Dec. 9 is the Santa Workshop for 2 days. Younger children can buy gifts at the library.

The Christmas concert is Dec. 18, there will also be a fund-raising bake sale. Mary Kiernan is the chair.

Math teachers, Suzie Ament and DeAnna Kwiecinski, were the guest speakers. Both gave some background on their previous teaching experience. DeAnna's ultimate goal for the students is to be independent, self-regulating learners and problem solvers. She uses "scaffold teaching", which is a combination of skills and constructing. Sputnik's landing in 1957 was the impetus for the U.S. to reevaluate the way math was taught.

The robotic competition is "Climate Connections". The students are to build a robot, research a problem in Pittsburgh and find a comparable problem in the world and find a solution for both. The robotics club is for 6th, 7th and 8th graders and meets after school. Dec. 6 is the Robotics Competition.

Suzie Ament is using new techniques. She also tries to teach the children to be independent, self-checking, problem solving to develop life-skills. She wants students to be flexible problem solvers, able to make connections and manipulate the results to help in similar problems.

The meeting ended at 9:30am.