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Posts Tagged ‘revere’

Sandcastles in the Air

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

If I had known how to get to the shuttle at the Wonderland dog track or if the other shuttle had been at Suffolk Downs when I arrived too early, I might have made it all the way to Revere and taken my own photos of the Revere Beach International Sand Sculpting Festival.

I probably should have waited, but oh, my! How sad Suffolk Downs has become since the horse racing ended! Acres of haunted parking lots. No sign of human life. No one to ask about the shuttle.

John and Suzanne and I went to the racetrack on its 40th birthday (1984). I got a visor that said “40 Years on the Right Track.” John tells me he won a few dollars, but I’ve forgotten. Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.

Fortunately, the Boston Globe took pictures on Friday as the competitors got to work at Revere Beach. Monica Disare interviewed contestants from has far away as Russia.

The Globe also offered the following tips from the Travel Channel on making a good sandcastle, here.

* Find good sand
Look for sand that sticks together. ​This makes it fit for building and carving.
* Form a castle foundation
With a shovel, create a sand pile to serve a base. Pat it down ​and ​soak with plenty of water.
* Create towers​
Use​ a plastic bottomless, 5-gallon bucket​ and place it atop base. Fill it halfway with sand and the other half with water. Slowly lift the bucket letting the water drain out.
* Pack and shape rough forms
Fill another 5-gallon bucket (with a bottom) with sand and water. Scoop the sloppy, wet mixture out and pat it down on your tower bases to form steeper towers. Rough form walls or other features around castle.
* Carve and smooth
With plastic shovel or mortar trowel, ​s​lice sand away from ​your rough forms, adding shape details like stairs, windows, doorways,​ and parapets​.​ Add more detail to castle, working from top down. Smooth out details and moisten your castle with water if it begins to dry out.

Photo: Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff
Deborah Barrett-Cutulle, of Saugus, worked on her sculpture on Friday.

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The Return of Small Group Learning

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Everything old is new again. Here’s a story about a type of teaching that is coming back in vogue.

Peter Balonon-Rosen writes for WBUR radio, “Closing the gap between the achievements of low-income students and their peers is such a formidable challenge that some experts say it cannot be done without eliminating poverty itself. By the time children enter kindergarten, there is already a significant skills gap across socioeconomic lines that manifests in an income achievement gap that has widened dramatically over the past 25 years.

“In Revere [MA], a high-poverty school district, school officials have turned internally to raise outcomes for kids in poverty. Their notion is that school success can begin with a successful teaching model.

“ ‘What is this?’ kindergartner Thea Scata asks. She taps the picture of a rabbit with a wooden pointer and looks to the three other girls seated at her table.

“The group of four kindergartners at Revere’s A.C. Whelan Elementary School is learning about the letter ‘R’ — writing its shape and reviewing words that begin with the letter.

“ ‘Bunny!’ replies Bryanna Mccarthy.

“ ‘No, what’s the first sound? “R”— rabbit,’ Scata says to the group. …

“Whelan is one of 43 public elementary schools in the state that Bay State Reading Institute (BSRI), a Holliston-based education nonprofit organization, partners with to implement this teaching model into Massachusetts schools.”

Said “Kimberlee Clark, a first grade teacher at Whelan, ‘I’m really able to target those that need to be challenged and go above and beyond and I’m able to work with those students that need the extra support to get onto grade level.’ …

“Core to BSRI’s approach is independent student learning. As teachers work closely with small groups of students, the other students are expected to work by themselves on separate tasks.

“ ‘Students then own a piece of the learning,’ said Ed Moscovitch, chairman and co-founder of BSRI. ‘They learn how to learn from an independent perspective.’

“ ‘When they’re working together it’s not so much that students are teaching students, but they’re discovering and coming to the knowledge together,’ said Lenore Diliegro, a fifth grade teacher at Whelan.” More here.

Photo: Peter Balonon-Rosen/WBUR
Thea Scata, left, leads a group of kindergarten peers at A.C. Whelan Elementary School in Revere.

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Call Mom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 8, 2012| 5 Comments »

New research on the importance of calling your mom is doing the rounds.

John, @OFH_John on twitter, saw it at a Washington Post blog, which saw it at Wired, which saw it at the journal Evolution & Human Behavior: “Wired flags a new study that proves many mothers across the country right: For your own sake, you should call home more often. … A phone call to mom provides significant stress relief while instant message conversations won’t.”

Once my post goes up and triggers @LunaStellaBlog1 (you’re aware that I write this blog for Suzanne’s birthstone-jewelry company?), who knows where the message in a bottle will end up? Telephones will ring.

The Evolution & Human Behavior authors say that upbeat hormones can be generated by Mom’s voice (unless she is hassling you, of course), and those good hormones can combat your stress chemicals (read the abstract).

Bet moms get stress relief, too. As Dr. Malissa Wood said at a book reading today, women with more interpersonal connections are less likely to have heart attacks.

The call-your-mom paper is “Instant messages vs. speech: hormones and why we still need to hear each other.” The authors are Leslie J. Seltzer, Ashley R. Prososki, Toni E. Ziegler, and Seth D. Pollak.

Bless their healthy little hearts for getting ET to phone home.

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