Features

Students in schools across Kentucky are using buttons to learn about sorting, color, shapes and classification, all while drawing inferences about the objects’ owner. Teachers are using original source documents to produce informed citizens, voters and leaders. All are happening because of archaeology, a word not even found in the Program of Studies, according to A. Gwynn Henderson, archaeologist and education coordinator with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey (KAS), jointly administered by the Kentucky Heritage Council and the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology.

Last year, 47 students at Muhlenberg County High School used hands-on activities to study diabetes to learn about homeostasis and metabolism, and they investigated sickle-cell disease while learning about genetics and DNA.

GIS, GPS tools guide students through surroundings By Susan Riddell susan.riddell@education.ky.gov Ever wondered why a certain plant is prominent in one part of your county but not another? Maybe you’re curious as to how urbanization and growth affect...

It started out as an idea to introduce students to critical thinking beyond what traditional textbooks and lessons offer. Now it’s a part of who they are.

In what has become a familiar scene, Benny Lile was greeted with numerous well wishes from his Facebook friends on his birthday in January. But for Lile, director of Instruction and Technology for the Barren County school district, a message from a former student who works in Centre College’s IT department stood out.

Even 10 years ago, the phrase “less than a computer but more than a calculator” might have generated a collective shoulder shrug from students. But that was then, and this is now. Educator Mike Sexton envisions such devices as learning tools in the years to come.

Many teachers across Kentucky are walking into classrooms as professional teachers for the first time this month. Danny Pagan, who teaches students with special needs at Dry Ridge Elementary School (Grant County), wants them to know that no two days are ever the same. “For me, every new day is like a canvas,” said the former graphic designer now in his fifth year teaching. “I will most definitely bring my paint brush and all my colors, yet the picture I paint may be different than the one I planned.”

By Tamara Buchanan Caldwell County Elementary School tamara.buchanan@caldwell.kyschools.us As a physical education (PE) teacher who uses dance instruction in my classes at Caldwell County Elementary School, Terrie White’s The Elements of Dance is a book other PE...

Mason County Middle School offers learning in the great outdoors By Susan Riddell susan.riddell@education.ky.gov Science students at Mason County Middle School spent part of the 2009-10 school year learning outdoors. No field trip was required, however. Students...

For the second year in a row, students at Miles Elementary School (Erlanger-Elsmere Independent) won’t receive grades. Yet teachers and the principal say students and their parents are better informed about what the children know – and what skills and information they still need to master. Bryant Gillis, in his seventh year as principal, said he never figured out in his 36 years in education what an A really means.