Central Falls Scavenger Hunt

4. How many schools are in the city? Colleges and Universities?

There are 16 total:

6 private preschools

1 private PreK-8

7 public schools

2 charter schools

No colleges/Universities- closest are in Lincoln/ Providence

http://www.greatschools.org/rhode-island/central-falls/schools/

 

6. Where is the satellite office of one of the oldest Child Welfare agencies in the city?

The organization is called Children’s Friend. Their headquarters are in Providence and their Central Falls address is 621 Dexter St.

http://www.cfsri.org/about.htmlhttp://www.bing.com/search?q=Children's+Friend+Central+Falls+RI&src=IE-TopResult&FORM=IETR02&conversationid

 

 

8. Is there a post office in town?

Yes, the post office is located at 575 Dexter St.

http://www.hoursmap.com/b/post-office---central-falls-hours-central-falls-ri-2863-b10004930

 

 

 

9. Is there a fire station? A police station? How are fire emergencies handled? What crime statistics are available for the community?

Yes, the fire station and police station are housed in the same building.

2012 Crime (Actual Data)*	Incidents
Aggravated Assault	80
Arson	5
Burglary	133
Forcible Rape	14
Larceny and Theft	337
Motor Vehicle Theft	120
Murder and Manslaughter	1
Robbery	47
Crime Rate (Total Incidents)	746
Property Crime	595
Violent Crime	142

http://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/rhode-island/central-falls.html

“It is the mission of our tradition-rich department to provide the highest level of fire prevention, fire suppression, rescue and emergency medical care as well as to educate the members of our community about fire safety codes and regulations. We are committed to providing these services in an efficient, courteous and cost effective manner.”

Fire Chief Robert E. Bradley, Jr

http://centralfallsfire.com/chiefs-message/

 

10. Is there a movie theater in town?

No, there is no local movie theater. One of the closest would be the Lincoln movie theater.

http://www.movietickets.com//house_list.asp?ShowDate=0&SearchZip=02863&SearchRadius=15&SearchRealD=0&SearchIMAX=0&SearchLang=0#.VON87OA5DX4

 

12. Are there public parks?

Yes, there is a playground on Illinois St.

 

22. The first mayor looks down from his perch as students come into school.

The first mayor was Charles P. Moles. I’ve included a link to some information about him.

http://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/RI/ofc/centralfalls.html

 

23. British soldier, Irish revolutionary, a fugitive from justice. He escaped on the Catalpa and landed in Central Falls. Eamon De Valera visited him on Cross St.

The name of this British soldier is Michael Collins.

http://www.generalmichaelcollins.com/http://blog.nj.com/njv_john_farmer/2010/11/eamon_da_valera_michael_collin.html

 

24. There are three professional baseball players from Central Falls. Name them.

The three baseball players were:

Max Surkont     06/16/1922   debut  1949   final 1957

Jim Siwy        09/02/1958  debut  1982  final 1984

Charley Bassett 02/09/1863  debut 1884 final 1892

I’ve noted some statistics here as well as the link to the site where I found the statistics.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/birthplace.php?loc=Rhode%20Island

 

28. She was a champion of the underdog and with the help of her husband helped slaves escaping to Canada. Later she worked for the rights of women.

Elizabeth Buffum Chace was born in the original town of Smithfield. As population grew, the town divided into Lincoln and Central Falls in 1895.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Buffum_Chace

 

Undestanding by Design

The three sections discussing UBD all had similar points and some over-arching themes. The main point from chapter one was the three steps, first identify desired results, then determine acceptable evidence ad lastly plan the learning experience and instruction. The main point of UBD is to work “backwards”. It reminds me of the task analysis skill I learned in my SPED class. Creating a lesson by starting with the final, specific outcome helps SPED, ELL and mainstream students. The ultimate goal should be clear, and general enough that it is a theme or skill which can be carried into many different learning situations.

This was a new concept for me as I’m used to creating objectives which are very specific. For instance, “the student will circle the noun in the sentence”.  Big ideas however are much broader and often less concrete than an objective. Perhaps an essential question for a lesson which used the above-mentioned objective would be “Is it important to understand parts of speech in the English language?” It needs to be something that cannot be answered easily with a “right” answer. I liked this idea and I also like the idea of making students aware of the essential question so through all the specific activities and practice they are performing they are working towards their own understandings and answers.

UBD’s concept of understanding is also new to me. It’s the concept you ultimately want the students to master but cannot be something easily taught and is often a misconception they will clarify or a counter-intuitive concept they will explore. There’s a lot packed in these modules and I love the idea of creating lessons by working backwards. First identify your overall theme (essential question) then how you will assess it and what will you accept as mastery (understanding) then choose the tools that will be most powerful in getting to that understanding. What I really would like to do after reading these articles is practice creating essential questions and understanding statements. I understand the concept but I’m not sure I understand it enough to easily create examples. I’d like more practice with this.

Teaching Students to Learn (Subjects Matter)

In Subjects Matter, I saw many key points reiterated which I’ve seen stressed in other education literature this semester. The main points which stood out to me are choice, authenticity and audience, and explicit instruction coupled with modeling.

The first is choice, in the first example where students went out into the community for their projects, they were given choices as to who their audience would be, how they would reach them and what they were hoping to gain from their efforts. Additionally in the work prior to going out in the field, students were allowed to choose their own tangent to follow for deeper research after everyone read literature on the same topic. Recently, in my SPED class we revisited Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. His theory acknowledges that it’s not about how smart you are but about how you are smart. Keeping this in mind, allowing as much choice as to what students research and how they are allowed to present it opens up the way for the most amount of students to be involved and successful.

This leads to the next point which is authenticity.  In addition to choice, students need to feel that their work is meaningful to feel motivated to give it their best effort. This means we need to provide many learning situations in which students read actual material from our current field and are opening discussions about topics that effect their daily lives both big and small. Even beyond that, in Kelly Gallagher’s book Teaching Adolescent Writers, a student confesses “we are forced to write essays on topics that we care nothing about just to make our teachers look good.” He then goes on to include a conversation he had with one of his students who excelled at football but not in his ELA class to ask why that is. The student explained that in football, you have the big game to look forward to. Gallagher goes on to coin the term “Friday Night Lights.” Students need an audience, as in the McDonald’s example in Subjects Matter, they need a community larger than just their teacher that they are actively participating in. This is true for any school subject, students need to know that the work they are doing right now isn’t just practice, it also matters.

The third main point is explicit teaching. Before we can have our students read authentic material, create varied projects, reach out to the community or discuss our subjects, we must teach them how to do all of this. As the example with the reading paragraphs in chapter two, reading itself is something that must be taught, there are concrete steps that a good reader practices and we need to both model and name these for our students. This reminded me of the metaphor in my MLED class that Dr. Horwitz used of students having “backpacks” of literacy. Our jobs as teachers is not to make students figure out how to read our texts, or how to have an intelligent, safe discussion, our job is to teach them exactly how to do those things. If we explicitly hand our students the tools of how to read and think then we leave them with room and time to do the actual thinking.