Intersession program helps students stay engaged

During the last week of Winter Break, 65 students participated in a program to remain on-task during vacation

January 9 through January 13 students who had Mr. Peter Boyd, Gregory Celestino, Patrick Evans, Ray Gonzales or Charles Manfre were invited to MacArthur’s 2017 Winter Intersession Program.

The Winter Intersession was a cross-curricular, academic review and extension program.  During the program students read two biographies and prepared for the District Writing Test, as well as engaging in physical activities, conducting and analyzing science experiments, and they built a weebly, which is an website where students had the opportunity to publish their work to the web.

Classes were held from 7:45 AM to 1:45 PM.  Throughout the day students had a certain schedule to follow and worked different activities with different teachers.

According to STEAM teacher Mr. Peter Boyd, the intersession was beneficial to students and even asked “How isn’t it beneficial?”  He was looking forward to improving students motivational, fellowship, and socializing skills.

Boyd helped the students gain words for their Reading Counts total by reading two novels about two men who brought more knowledge to the philosophy of science.  Who is Albert Einstein? by Jess M. Brallier and Who is Galileo? by Patricia Brennan Demuth were the biographies that the students read during the intersession.

Boyd’s goal was to gain trust and interact more with the students who joined the program.

Language Arts Teacher Mr. Gregory Celestino worked with students and prepared them for the upcoming District Writing Assessment. The students who joined the program had an advantage to gain extra writing skills and got plenty of time to practice for the test.

Physical education teacher Mr. Patrick Evans also volunteered and participated in the intersession. Evans conducted at home experiments that students could try out on their own. Additionally Evans talked to the students about living a drug free life.

Eighth grade social studies teacher Mr. Ray Gonzales introduced a new website to the students called weebly. Weebly is a website where students published their work online. Gonzales recommends Weebly to other teacher on campus because, “it allows students to be creative and show what they know.”  

Sixth grade physical education teacher Mr. Manfre helped students engage in physical activities by working on indoor activities.