Saturday, December 01, 2007
Study Trip to Roman Mosaic Site
The high school students from Ms. Pienta's and Ms. Novak's AVID classes combined with their teachers and tutors on a study trip to the ancient Roman villa at Piazza Armerina.
Once at the site, students were divided into five groups and assigned to a specific room within the site to study and learn about the floor mosaic. Next, each group chose a "docent," or "expert" to explain their room to the other groups. Students then rotated from room to room, listening to the explanations and asking questions. All the docents did a GREAT job!
The Roman villa is thought to have been the hunting lodge of an emperor of the Roman Empire in the 3rd or 4th century A.D. The villa floors cover 3500 square meters (42 colorful floors in 63 rooms) and are made up of an estimated 30 million little tiles. We had the opportunity on this trip to see the villa undergoing an Xtreme makeover! A grant from either UNESCO or perhaps Italy is paying for the cleaning, restoring, and preservation of this fabulously rich archaeological site. We could still move around and see most of the floors, but we also saw lots of workers, hoses, bags of grout, tiles, glue, air hoses, electrical cords, plastic, etc. It was archaeology at work!
Another high school AVID study trip is planned for late May or early June to attend an evening performance of an original ancient Greek play in the Greek theater at Siracusa.
Labels: AVID, inquiry, mosaics, Roman villa
Friday, January 11, 2008
My Life is Like a Mosaic . . .
Ms. Novak and Ms. Pienta's high school AVID students are writing a metaphor essay based on their recent field trip to Piazza Armerina's Roman villa of mosaic floors (a UNESCO site). They are comparing their lives as military children to a mosaic in the manner of the famous "Accepted to Princeton" essay. http://www.quintcareers.com/collegegate4.html So far, their beginnings are fabulous, and many will be useful as a future college applicatin essays for them.
Here are some of the beginning sentences:
"Standing on the causeway observing the ancient Roman mosaics, I could see the millions of pieces that created them, and, in them, I could see the pieces that make up my life as a military child."
"As I stood looking down at the mosaics at Piazza Armerina, I realized that my life was not very different than the mosaics before my eyes."
"As I look down on the all the colorful little tesserae and see the spectacular pictures they create, I think of my own life and how it is, in a way, like a mosaic."
Stay tuned for more writing . . . .
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Middle School AVID Study Trip
On Tuesday, March 25, 2008, the middle school AVID classes and our teachers, Ms. Sibayan and Ms. Pienta, and tutor Ms. Vary, accompanied by rented senior Patrick Felia, went on a study trip to Catania. First, we went to Elephant Square, where we toured St. Agatha Cathedral. Next we took a walk though the fish market and explored the streets of Catania, where we saw a garden that was in a monastery. Then we saw the Ursino Castle. Next we saw a second church that was still decorated for Easter and contained the candelore from the St. Agatha festival. Next we had lunch at the worlds most beautiful McDonalds (or the most beautiful one most of us had ever seen). Then we explored the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater. We walked down Via Etnea to Piazza Universita and stopped for pictures and a snack. Then we went shopping in Elephant Square. Next we walked all around the Palazzo Biscari to see the Baroque architecture. That concluded our great day in Catania.
By Sara J., AVID 7th grader
