Description:
Our mission is to engage students in learning experiences that result in meeting or exceeding grade level standards. One of the ways we do this is by providing students with various opportunities throughout the day to demonstrate their thinking through metacognitive reflections. In kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms, students can be heard discussing their thinking whether they are learning about reading, writing, math, science, history and social science. No matter which grade level or what content our students are learning about, they are reflective thinkers!
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Hermitage Elementary
Description: Our school engaged in a year-long Service Project model for students and families. One of the goals in our Plan for Continuous Improvement (PCI) was to have 100% of our students participate in a community service project. We sponsored a different project each month and some of the projects were completed at school while others took place in the community. Many of the projects were connected to curriculum objectives and involved family participation. We gathered information about student participation in the events and used it for instructional purposes by representing the information in table and graph form.
Creeds Elementary
Description: Goal setting, a 21st century skill, is a necessity for continued student growth and is aligned to the Compass to 2015 student learning outcome of developing “independent and responsible” learners. Each of our grade levels created templates to help students identify, pursue, and reflect on their goals. Students are encouraged to set reading, mathematics, and behavioral goals and with the help of their teachers, students continuously monitor and adjust their goals.
John B. Dey Elementary
Description: Our Readbox program supports literacy, fluency, and persuasive writing goals. Students used the Telagami iPad app to create a video book talk inviting readers to check out the highlighted book. This innovative and collaborative project combines the efforts of students, teacher, Library Media Specialist, and Computer Resource Specialist. We created QR codes to share these videos which are located on the Readbox in the library. The book talks have been featured on our morning news show.
White Oaks Elementary
Description:
Our school has been focusing on building and recognizing leadership skills for all students. We have several school-wide efforts including “Leader of the Week” recognition and “Bragging Dragons” recognition in addition to the division’s Student of the Month recognition. A hallmark of our leadership program is our unique LAIR (Leadership Academy-Inspiring Responsibility) Club in which we identified influential fourth- and fifth-graders in the building, teach them leadership skills, and then have them demonstrate leadership by educating others and performing service projects throughout the school year.
Tallwood Elementary
Description:
One of our fifth-grade classrooms houses authentic learning experiences through problem based learning and technology, while building confident, resourceful 21st century learners. In her classroom, Leanna Hedges, uses flipped and blended teaching strategies, as well as various modes of media to enhance learning objectives. For example, students collaborate and share ideas through blogging on Edmodo and Kidsblog. Currently, the students are researching force, motion, and electricity by working for a fictitious company that has requested they build a prototype for a new Exploration Park on the Regions of Virginia.
Strawbridge Elementary
Description:
The Pearl Club introduces children to the web of relationships that exist between self, land & sea, and community. Children grow to understand that the choices we make not only impact us, but both our local and global communities. We examine how we can responsibly make advances in the areas of science and technology, while at the same time evaluating the impacts of various actions of the past. Children implement strategies to reverse the negative impacts, such as oyster restoration to replenish the Lynnhaven River oyster supply which was dramatically depleted due to overharvesting and disease. Students grow and harvest food in our learning garden and learn the importance of responsibly growing and sharing food locally. This year students will be involved in service-learning where they will harvest food to take to the food bank and local shelters.
Red Mill Elementary
Description:
Throughout the school year, our students are provided with a variety of learning and service opportunities to help them become globally aware and socially responsible learners. Whether it is remembering 9/11 by honoring our community heroes, collecting donations for a variety of charities, or demonstrating environmental stewardship, each of the activities are designed to have an impact on our school, local, national, and global community far beyond the year 2015.
Providence Elementary
Description:
Over the last three years all of our students have participated in grade-level specific sustainability projects that are aligned with our curriculum and support our school’s Plan for Continuous Improvement (PCI). Sample projects include having students plant trees on school grounds and act as botanists, studying their seasonal changes; growing erosion prevention grasses and planting them along the pond at Mt. Trashmore. Students look forward to participating in these projects each year as we look forward to building a legacy of globally aware, independent, and responsible learners.
Pembroke Meadows Elementary
Description:
Last year our students and parents were treated to an evening of mystery, problem solving, and technology. Students were made aware of our missing mascot through a series of breaking news stories during the morning announcements. Students were asked to attend the Math Night to solve the Mystery of the Missing Mascot! Each family used a mobile device to scan QR codes containing multi-step word problems. Student and parents solved the multi-step story problems to earn clues toward solving the mystery of our beloved mascot.
New Castle Elementary
Description:
Last year, our 4th grade students combined their content knowledge in the area of social studies with their 21st century skills to create iMovie trailers. The trailers focused on sustainability related issues that were aligned with the curricular unit on Relationships in the Physical World. Students worked together to develop 1 minute trailers that were both interesting and informative.
Linkhorn Park Elementary
Description:
Our school has been working hard to direct our Compass right at 2015. Our children have blasted out of the past and into the future of learning with authentic STEM tasks that incorporate our parents and our community. Examples have included designing an ecosystem tower and creating light tools with the help of volunteers from the military. We have risen to the challenge of the Compass to 2015 and cannot wait to see what the new Compass holds for us!
Holland Elementary
Description:
Our students have explored scientific thinking both in and out of the classroom through a variety of hands-on learning opportunities including an after school Lego Robotics Program for our 4th and 5th grade students, a tour of STIHL Inc. where students experienced robotics in the real-world, and participation in local wetland preservation. Our students’ experiences with robotics have inspired us to start a STEM Robotics Club where students will build robots, write portfolios and compete with other schools. All of these learning opportunities are in addition to the hands on experimentation that occurs in our classrooms on a regular basis as students engage in the experimental design process to gather a more in-depth understanding of science and scientific inquiry.
Kingston Elementary
Description: We use our music program as a wonderful tool for enhancing the teaching of the standards of learning. Students learn lessons in music class that reinforce the subject matter taught in other classes. Students are joyful, engaged and focused on the performance, and in the course of preparing for it, learn the subject matter needed for other classes.
Kempsville Elementary
Description: We made history come alive in our third grade class by having students research, write, collaborate, and produce a newscast based on a curriculum unit focused on Ancient Greece, Rome, and Mali. We used green screen technology to produce the newscast to show students reporting from various historical locations. The project allowed students the opportunity to learn the content and develop their communication and collaboration skills.
Welcome to the Compass Showcase
Our Compass Showcase is a sampling of programs, activities and practices from across the division that demonstrates how Compass to 2015 has impacted teaching and learning in Virginia Beach. The Compass Showcase provides examples of our students learning to be effective communicators and collaborators, globally aware, independent and responsible, critical thinkers, innovators and problems solvers. It also provides examples of schools engaging in innovative instructional practices and responding to student needs.
Advanced Technology Center
Description:
Our Engineering Technology program has been educating students interested in careers in engineering, robotics, manufacturing, or industrial management since 2002. We recently acquired the Baxter Robot, created by Rethink Robotics. Baxter allows our students to become familiar with the new universal open source Robot Operating System (ROS), now being used world-wide in the programming of robots. ATC staff and students will present at the showcase to demonstrate Baxter’s capabilities.
Technical and Career Education Center
Description:
One of our focuses has been to ensure our students are learning to think independently and acquire the skillsets necessary to become responsible learners, workers and citizens. Students go through meaningful, authentic and rigorous learning experiences that are provided in all twenty-two credential programs. These include student opportunities for participation in internships, student leadership organizations and community service activities that are specific to our students’ interests.
Renaissance Academy
Description:
Responding to student needs is at the core of what we do by providing students with alternative education programs. Beyond this, the influence of Compass to 2015 in our school is evident in a variety of ways including increased levels of collaboration among students, the integration of instructional technology, and the job embedded professional learning on the part of our teachers. This video provides a glimpse into the impact that Compass to 2015 has had on students and staff in our school.
Landstown High
Description:
Our Governor’s STEM and Technology Academy students have been competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international contest that pits the robotic creations of students against each other in a specific performance challenge. In its first year of competing, our student team was one of the teams who made it to the worldwide finals.
Cox High
Description:
In partnership with I Need a Lighthouse and The National Alliance on Mental Illness-Virginia Beach (NAMI-VB), our psychology teachers established the first of the Lighthouse Psychology Clubs in Virginia Beach. Through the use of guest speakers, field trips and attendance at conferences, the club fights the stigma of mental illness and raises awareness of the community resources available to assist those in need. This partnership has also led to increased opportunities for students, including the display of student projects on mental illness and the creation of a scholarship for students interested in pursuing careers related to mental health.
Salem Middle
Description:
For the past two years, our AVID students have presented a higher education fair, “Show Your Love for Higher Education,” as a schoolwide event to promote college readiness. Students write to colleges and universities to find out how to promote their institution at the fair. Students act as college admissions officers and highlight what it takes to be college ready and what college has to offer.
Plaza Middle
Description:
This past spring, a team of students and teachers from our school received the 2014 Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Environmental Sustainability Innovation Award. The team was selected from more than 2,300 submissions across the country, for their oyster restoration efforts in the Lynnhaven River. Starting in the fall of 2013, the team started growing 2,100 oysters to contribute to the restoration of the local oyster population in the river. To locate a place to transplant their oysters, they had to design, build and test remotely operated submersibles (underwater robotic vehicles). This is just one of the ways our students engage in meaningful, authentic, and rigorous work that motivates self-direction and inquiry.