River Day
May 12, 2007 - 165 sixth graders from Cavallini Middle School in Upper Saddle River walked down to the banks of the Saddle River and learned how to identify a healthy waterway and what to do to keep it that way. According to Bill Yeomans, chair of the Borough's Environmental Committee, the full-day program was an offshoot of the Borough's initiative to monitor the section of river that flows through its borders.
Yeomans explained that last summer a group of adult volunteers were trained through the NJ DEP's Americorps program to become watershed ambassadors. The national program is designed both to increase public awareness and to foster public involvement in reducing water pollution.
Volunteers walk assigned half-mile sections of the river quarterly to monitor and visually assess the river. Factors such as erosion, bank stability, stream width and flow, algae and the evidence of vegetation and wildlife, indicators of good water quality, are noted quarterly and entered into an interactive database maintained by the DEP. The group also does periodic chemical analyses of the water as well.
Yeomans said, "We wanted to take it one step further and instill appreciation of the environment in the children so they will become responsible water stewards in the future. The river flows through our town and the town is named for it, but many of us don't pay much attention to it. We all need to realize that anything we throw in here flows downstream and anything that goes in above comes here. We are all connected and must work together to save this vital resource for future generations."
Funded by a grant from the Upper Saddle River Educational Foundation (USREF) and Student Council, River Day was centered on the sixth grade's science curriculum on environmental studies but was inter-disciplinary. Kicked off earlier in the week with a visit from the Hackensack River Keeper, the children also learned about the history of the Saddle River and the important role it played in the growth of the town. The children were provided with cameras to document what they saw and later wrote of their impressions in Language Arts class.
Todd McMichael, president of the USREF, explained, "This program is a perfect example of what the USREF provides the students. Our goal is to enhance and enrich the existing curriculum. We work with the teachers and administration to ensure that everything we do is educationally valuable. Children learn so much from hands-on activities and here they have learned much more than science or history, they've learned responsible citizenship."
Councilwoman Deborah Viola, liaison to the Environmental Committee and a professor of Public Health at the New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY, spoke to the students in the morning before they walked to the river. "Our predecessors relied on the river for food and water. The river made the area ideal for farming. The force of the water powered mills for grain and lumber. And although we don't rely on the river for these things nowadays, we still must be very concerned about the purity of the water for we need plentiful, clean water in our wells to drink, cook with and bathe in. It is very important that we do not take this for granted."
Environmental Committee volunteers and staff from the Meadowlands Environmental Center greeted the students as they arrived at the river's bank. The students broke up into groups and visited different stations on a rotating schedule.
Volunteers Joanne Lombardo and Pat Pula led the students on a nature hike along the Borough's River Walk area. The children, armed with guides prepared by their teachers, found and identified a variety of plants native to the area as well as a great-horned owl. They also learned how fertilizer runs off adjacent lawns into the river and the importance of maintaining the town's aquifer.
Councilman Dennis Schubert explained the visual assessment process to the kids. They then moved to a station manned by Roy Ostrom where they actually drew water samples from the river and tested it for dissolved oxygen, calcium and silica. Ostrom, a member of the Environmental Committee, a chemical engineer and author of How To Stop Global Warming, told them, "We live in a sea of chemistry; we should all understand it."
Kristen Crawford, from the Meadowlands Environmental Center, showed the children how to use nets to collect microscopic life. They found tiny shrimp, snails and other crustaceans, mayflies, dragonflies and a variety of life forms that Crawford told them are the beginning of the food chain cycle.
"Without these microorganisms, life in the river cannot exist. The more present, the healthier the river. So an abundance of microorganisms is an important tool that we use to assess a healthy waterway."
The students examined the different species they had collected under microscopes provided by the Meadowlands Environmental Center.
Bucky Rehain, a lifelong Upper Saddle River resident and fishing enthusiast, taught the students the art of fishing. "I want to get these kids 'hooked' on fishing and to realize that if the water is not clean, the fish will not survive. We need a healthy eco-system to be able to enjoy the river and all it has to offer."
Dr. Gene Solomon, building principal, commented, "What was particularly exciting about this project was that many different constituencies were involved, some that may not have ordinarily worked together in the past. The Borough's Environmental Committee, the NJ DEP, the teachers, the Upper Saddle River Educational Foundation and the Student Council all played a significant part in today's success. I believe the impact on our students was powerful. It certainly made the concept, 'think globally, act locally' very real to the students."
SMARTBoards
January 2, 2007 - The Upper Saddle River Educational Foundation (USREF) has funded a number of SMART Boards throughout the Kindergarten through eighth grade district. As Dr. Joyce Snider, superintendent, explains, "Technology continues to provide schools with a wide array of tools to assist in the instructional process. The new Smart Boards are an interactive tool that combines the power of the computer, the display of a blackboard, and the enhancements of graphics in a way that makes learning more exciting, more efficient, and more substantive."
" The goal of the district is to have a Smart Board in every classroom; obviously this is a very costly effort and without the assistance of the USREF it would take many years to implement. With their strong financial support and the commitment of our principals, technology director and teachers we are optimistic that this can happen much sooner. We are grateful for the Foundation's efforts which continue to provide innovative education for the students in Upper Saddle River."
The Boards are used at every grade level in age-appropriate lessons. Christine Thies, first grade teacher at Reynolds School explained, "I recently used my SMART Board for a math lesson to introduce the penny to my students. The children used magnifying glasses at their desks to identify what was on each side of the penny. On the SMART Board, I listed the characteristics that I was hoping the children would notice and covered them with a colored box. As the children found them, I used my finger to move the box on the screen to reveal what they found. It was a great way to reinforce the lesson and to make sure that they had found everything. Then as a follow-up, I had a screen with pennies in a piggy bank. The children came up to the board to drag the pennies into the correct boxes (heads or tails) based on what side of the penny they saw. "
"The children love coming to the Board and using the pens to write or seeing how their fingers can drag images around the board. It helps keep the children at their desks focused because the images are so large and easy to see. They wait patiently until they get a chance to come up to the Board."
"The SMART Board is a great way to enlarge an image so all the children can see what their classmates are talking about. If one child said he or she saw the word LIBERTY on their penny – I would circle the word with colored pencil on the SMART Board penny. This way all of the children could then go back and locate it on their real penny. It was so successful, I am doing similar lessons on other coins as well."
At Bogert School, Pat Ackerly, a fourth grade teacher, finds the SMART Board an invaluable tool. She said, "For our Upper Saddle River Unit, each student receives a packet of information which they need to read through in order to answer questions. I display each section of the packet on the Smart Board. This helps students improve their study skills habits and their reading comprehension by learning how to take notes and identify key information when reading nonfiction text. I ask t hem to read through the questions that they will need to answer at the end of each section of the packet. Then as a class we begin reading the section. By using the Smart Board tools, students can visually see how to highlight information using the highlighting tool and they can see how to write notes in the margins by using the pen tool. Students are then asked to come to the board and select the tools to show what is key information and should be highlighted or to select the pen tool to write notes in the margins."
At Cavallini Middle School, teachers and students continue to find additional uses for the Smart Boards.
According to Andrew Kramar, eighth grade teacher, "We often use the Smart Board to review homework problems. By using the Smart Board technology in this way, I am able to go back to problems that were gone over at the beginning of the class. Normally these problems have already been erased and would have to be re-written. In both science and math, the Smart Board is used to present PowerPoint notes with the ability to write additional comments on the slide as I feel appropriate. Most recently, my science class filled out a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as they completed a lab. As each group filled in their data on the Smart Board, the class data was automatically updated for the entire class to see."
Students have begun to use the interactive white boards in their presentations. Recently students in Ms. Goodman's English classes used the boards to present their side during a debate on oil drilling in Alaska.
Kramar added, "Homework worksheets are scanned and projected onto the Smart Board. Students then come up and write the answers on the Smart Board for the class to see. This really helps students who are primarily visual learners. The Smart Board is also used to show movies. With high end speakers and the look and feel of a flat screen TV, the student’s attention is always where it should be, on the material being presented."
The USREF was founded in 2003 to fund exceptional and extraordinary educational and cultural programs for the students in grades Kindergarten through eighth in Upper Saddle River. According to Todd McMichael, USREF's president, a SMART Board can be purchased for $5,000. Donations from corporate sources and individuals are currently being sought.
The USREF also made donations towards the student-designed and maintained Cavallini Memorial Garden. The Garden was dedicated in memory of Tommy Sinton ‘74 and Billy Martin ‘80, both who were killed on September 11. Students were able to secure a steel beam from the original World Trade Center, which was incorporated into the garden. Students plant flowers and vegetables as part of a gardening elective.