Dancing and Dining to the music of THE GREEN Beans

The Green Beans Visit Saint Albans City School!

The school cafeteria was a lively place this Wednesday, as St. Albans City School students listened to the original folk music of the Green Beans during their lunch period.  Students welcomed the group by wearing green and moved to the beat with some dancing feet throughout the lunch periods. The Green Beans were the perfect accompaniment to the school’s fruits and vegetable grant and yearlong focus on healthy eating

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Vinny and Joe Ferris played their music and students listened, danced and questioned the musicians about their musical career.  They left impressed with our students and our students were pleased and were equally impressed with their music.  Please check out Sacs News on the St. Albans City School website for a  short clip of their performance.

7/8 Spellers Win Bee and Advance to Regional Competition

On Wednesday, October 20th, the 2010 St. Albans City School 7th/8th Spelling Bee Team participated in the District Spelling Bee Competition, hosted by St. Albans Town Educational Center. It was a very tight match against teams from Fairfield Center School and Town. After Round 2, all three teams were tied with 18 points. After Round 4, all three teams were tied with 28 points! But our SACS spellers gained the lead after Round 5 and maintained that lead, achieving a final score of 58 points (and winning by only six points!) after 8 rounds of spelling.

The 2010 St. Albans City School 7th/8th Spelling Bee Team includes Derek Dodge (7th) and Travis Love (7th) representing the Renaissance Learning Community, Jana Somero (8th) and Arnela Grujic (8th) representing the Dynamic Design Learning Community, and siblings Veronica Farr (7th) and Zachary Farr (8th) representing Team USA Learning Community. Prior to competition, the team practiced daily with their advisers, Mrs. Draper and Ms. Maguire, reading and orally spelling their words and taking part in word studies (such as word parts, prefixes and suffixes, and language origins).

The team celebrated with pizza at Mimmo’s Restaurant following the match (after all, they were spelling through their lunch time!). Special congratulations to Zachary Farr, who was the only student in the competition to spell all of his words correctly, including not-previously-studied bonus round words.

This team will travel to Vergennes Middle/High School for the Regional Competition against five other schools on Saturday, November 6th at 10:00am. The winner of the Regional Competition will compete for the State Title.

The team continues to practice and meet daily to prepare. Good luck, Spellers!

Sixth graders attend Tech Jam 2010

Almost two dozen students from St. Albans City School, attended the 2010 Tech Jam in Burlington Vermont, where 60 exhibitors shared information about high tech careers and college majors. Equipped with 3D glasses, the students watched an interactive NASA exhibit with a strong message about the importance of math and science in preparing for their future. Check out this video of St. Albans City School students at this year's Tech Jam 3.0. (Out students are in the very last segment of the video visiting Nasa)

The students attending worked in teams of 3 on an “investigation” about Creativity and Innovation as part of their CSI Challenge Project. The team interviewed, photographed, and videotaped exhibitor in order to created an online multimedia exhibit to submit to a Virtual Gallery about Creativity and Innovation in Vermont. Aryah, a sixth grader, interviewing Burlington Telecom was amazed on how the company used “fiber” to provide the Internet to her community. Kameron, also in sixth grader thought it was cool that “Vermont has companies like GreenSea System that make robots that to underwater and find stuff”. “It helps us know more about companies and jobs that might be around when we get older”.


Classroom teachers, Brian Clark and Matt Allen, guidance counselor, Deb McCarthy, and Technology specialist, Lucie deLaBruere, felt like they got as much of an education as the students. “Understanding the jobs and companies that exist outside our school, helps us better prepare our students for their future” explained Ms. McCarthy.


This was the first of eight CSI challenges students at St. Albans City School will have a chance to participate as part of a grant award received by Ms. deLaBruere focused on helping student and teachers develop projects that feature Creativity and Innovation at St. Albans City School.

Culminating Events January 2010

Students at St. Albans City School have produced a variety of artifacsts as evidence of their learning supporting most the recent science and social studies themes.

Martin Luther King Day

City School will not be in session on Martin Luther King Day, Monday January 18.

You can learn more about Martin Luther King by following any of these

BEST WEBSITES for LEARNING ABOUT MARTIN LUTHER KING

from Larry Ferlazzo's blog

Ms. deLaBruere, Ms Schapp, Ms. Kogan, and 2 students (Emily and Gina) presented the annual Tech Update to the school board at Thursday's School Board Meeting.

President's Back to School Speech

City School students watched the president's speech with their learning community.
(See details)

See Ms. deLaBruere if your learning community would like to add comments to the President's message to America's School Children.