EDUCATION:- Graduate of Ironton High School<!—->.

Saturday, November 04, 2000

EDUCATION:- Graduate of Ironton High School

– Received bachelor’s degree in elementary

education (grades 1-8) through Ohio

University in 1989

– Received learning disabilities certification

through Marshall University in 1993

EXPERIENCE

– Worked as a learning disabilities tutor for

3 years (before becoming teacher at IJHS)

– This school year is my eighth year as a

teacher at Ironton Junior High School

* Have taught reading, language arts, math

* Currently teaching reading, math and the

learning disabilities classes

PERSONAL:

– Have 3 sons – Aaron, Adam and Andrew; and one granddaughter, Elizabeth

– Enjoys spending time with family, working outside and watching old movies.

 

The past two school years, my students and I were fortunate to have The Ironton Tribune form a partnership with my 7th grade reading classes. The students had the opportunity to complete a wonderful and rewarding project.

Working in groups, the students used the newspaper to complete various activities in an effort to enhance reading skills such as the following:

– Distinguishing between fact and opinion

– Determining unfamiliar word meanings by using context clues

– Understanding that a good article or story contains the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, why)

– Determining a writer or author’s purpose

– Sequencing

Employees from The Ironton Tribune visited our classroom and worked with the students in the areas of reporting, ad sales and photography. The students were then given the opportunity to job shadow at The Ironton Tribune for an entire school day. I feel this was a valuable experience for the students, one that they will always remember and benefit from.

As a final part of the project, the students conducted interviews, wrote articles, took pictures and sold ads for their own section of The Ironton Tribune’s annual Profile edition. The stories they wrote were about happenings at all Lawrence County schools, and they were even able to design some of the ads themselves.

My students have taken great pride in their project work and worked very hard to make it a huge success. This school year, I am using the newspaper not only in my reading classes, but in my math classes as well. (Students use prices from ads to perform basic computations, find percents, etc.) I am once again finding the newspaper to be a valuable teaching tool and hope that other teachers have this same opportunity.