May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor!

Seniors, Meghan Corless and Andrew Montalti from Ms. Sirof's class are the victors!

Update: Thank you so much for attending Mepham’s first Poetry Games. The sixteen students who participated as tributes and the modest and dedicated audience made yesterday’s ELITE event an enjoyable one. We had an opportunity to showcase the talents of students who may not always be recognized, and for that, we should be incredibly proud. Additionally, we were able to raise over 600 books for the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization!

Without further ado, below are the results of the first Pirates Poetry Games:

3rd Place = District F. Cooney – Melissa Ponton & Matthew Brown (Freshmen)

2nd Place = District Atkins – Laiba Qurashi (Junior)

AND … DRUM ROLL …….

1st Place = District Sirof – Meghan Corless & Andrew Montalti (Seniors)

Please congratulate all the tributes – we had some incredibly powerful original poems read yesterday!

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In honor of National Poetry Month, Mepham High School and the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District will be hosting its first annual Poetry Games. Inspired by the novel, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Poetry Games is an event meant to encourage students to appreciate their love of the spoken word and to prove their district’s poetic prowess to the Capitol.

The Poetry Games will take place in two stages:

Stage one:  School-wide Poetry Games. This competition will determine the male and female tributes who will represent Mepham High School in Bellmore-Merrick’s district-wide Poetry Games. The Pirates Poetry Games will be held after school on Thursday, April 24, 2014 from approximately 2:30-3:30 pm in the auditorium.

 Opening Ceremony:

•  Parading of tributes
• A brief interview will take place to introduce the tributes partaking in the event – includes discussion of literary attire/influences
• Judges will score the opening ceremony on a 0 – 5 point scale based on originality, content, and presentation

1^st Round of the Games: Expression of Knowledge Competition

• Students will take their mark on stage behind desks, tables, or podiums
• Students will respond via a tech tool to five (5) questions that test their prowess with poetry (ex. application, style, definition, poets, etc.)

2^nd Round of the Games: Prepared Poetry Battle

• Students will read an original poem to the audience
• In preparation for this round, students will randomly select an envelope which contains 15 words and a “weapon” of choice, or a poetic technique, to apply in their poem
•   Judges will score the poems on a 0 – 5 point scale based on originality, content, and presentation

3^rd Round of the Games: Book Wars

•  The district which collects the largest number of books to donate to First Book or World Book Night will be awarded points
•  Sponsors:  the audience will act as “sponsors” who will vote via Twitter to give their favorite tributes points toward the final score
• Closing Ceremony: the victors of The Pirates Poetry Games will be announced and awards will be granted (donated by the National English Honor Society)  

 

Readbox

Our latest bulletin board was inspired by others from Pinterest.com.

Lunch & Learn

The Mepham Tech Mentors (Mr. Leacock, Ms. Stack and Ms. Tschan) recently started offering classes to our faculty on all things tech-related, such as SMART Boards, SMART Notebook, Google Drive, etc. The basic concept of the Lunch & Learn is to offer training to teachers during their lunch periods. We are all so pressed for time, with after school activities, extra-help, clubs, sports, ELITE and many other events. This is a way to bring professional development to the masses in a short period of time (40 minutes), crash-course style, during the school day. The plan is to offer one class a month, usually in Room 303, the Learning Center, or the library.

Image Source: Brittannica ImageQuest

But what about our students? Don't they want to be trained on technology too? You tell us. Take this poll and tell us what type of training you would like during the school day.

Have you seen one of these yet?

Introduction to Brightbox from Brightbox on Vimeo.

Don't you think we need this for the library? I mean, the power strip in the library that we have now is cool, but this is so much cooler. Brightbox offers security. You can walk away and leave your phone charging. Stop by on your way to class, drop it off, and pick it up after class ends.  

Ghostery

A conversation recently took place in the library about who or what is tracking our moves on the Internet. It is worth taking a look at Ghostery. It is a FREE download that allows users to see which companies are tracking you, block over 1,900 trackers, and learn how they track. The video below offers a more in-depth look at how it works.  

"Un"confidential: Author Kara Taylor Visits Mepham

Author Kara Taylor (center) with five lucky students who won our raffle,
an autographed copy of her debut novel, Prep School Confidential .

Kara Taylor – the self-proclaimed, not-even-kind-of-almost-famous-author visited Mepham High School on Tuesday, March 11th at 2:15 p.m. in the school library to a crowd of over 80 students and faculty. She read the second chapter of her debut novel,  Prep School Confidential. Next was an enthusiastic Q&A period with our students, most of whom will be inducted into our chapter of the National English Honor Society in April. We then raffled off five autographed paperback copies of Prep School Confidential. We have one additional copy in the school library that can be checked out today! Kara also brought along bookmarks and fun skull and cross bone tattoos for all attendees. She even stayed for this photo op. Kara's next book in the trilogy, Wicked Little Secrets is available now from St. Martin’s Griffin!

Thanks so much for a great afternoon, Kara!

Bloom's Literature

This is an online tutorial for Bloom's Literature (formally Bloom's Literary Reference Online) for Mepham High School students and teachers. This screencast was made using the FREE online program Screencast-O-Matic.