Connecticut Experiential Learning Center, CELC Branford, Connecticut - Experiential Education
Experiential Education - Outstanding Middle School Program
Registering now for 2012-13 academic year!
Open House Mondays in May – Contact us to schedule a visit!
A dynamic middle school program, CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC) of Branford provides small classes that combine exceptional academics with hands-on and real-world learning experiences to fit the academic, social, and emotional needs of 5th – 8th grade students. [Read more...]
– Written by Willow, 12-year old CELC student
There were a dozen or so 5-gallon buckets on the floor. Inside each bucket was water and a number of turtles – each one different. Some were small babies, and others were full-grown adults. This odd sight was what welcomed me and my fellow CELC students to Meigs Point Nature Center at Hammonasset State Park. Ranger Russ came and [Read more...]
Maybe we don’t always think of physical work as an important piece of a quality education. Maybe we should … because it is.
I’m a believer in physical activity. It hasn’t always been that way. When I was a kid, physical activity wasn’t by choice. You see, my father was a believer … enough said. As I have aged, through nature and nurture, I have become a card-carrying member of the “Work is Good Society.” I have made this transition because I have seen what being physical does for one’s demeanor and his life. I have witnessed that it always leads to accomplishment, often a necessary one and usually positive in nature. It’s not just digging a hole and filling it in. It serves a real purpose.
Yesterday, the CELCers were here at Trap Rock Ridge Farm and Camp doing physical work. Now, these youngsters are similar to lots of other middle school kids their age. They are “regular kids”. But one thing that makes them exceptional is that they have been given the opportunity for an exceptional education and they rise to the challenge … they buy into it. Their parents buy into it. We all buy into it. It works. [Read more...]
CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC) students have a class entitled “CELC Blogging”. Each week a student is assigned to be the class reporter, to cover a story about some aspect of our time at CELC. Students bring in first draft to be “workshopped” with the group, and then after getting feedback from other students as well as teachers, present a final version that then can be published. Students become peer editors, listening for how the writing allows a reader to see, hear, feel, and experience the world that the writer is trying to portray. Does the piece make sense, does it flow, does it have a good lead, how does the writer bring us out of the piece are just some of the things considered. 
When Nicole Ball, editor of Patch.com of Branford, came to visit the class, she described the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between newspaper reporting and the more modern “blog”. A news story requires the writer to remain objective, giving the reader a chance to form an opinion of one’s own, based on the facts. A blog is more subjective, as in the style of a personal narrative or journal and can assume a first-person point of view. Good bolgs are also relatively short. Nicole told us studies indicate that readers only read up to about 400 words on average, skimming if the piece is much longer. [Read more...]
Nothing ever really defies gravity. We are, after all, on Earth and gravity happens. A gyroscope works because of inter-related forces, as does buoyancy, inertia, or even density, in conjunction with gravity – the force that plays a role along with all of the others. It never goes away. Yet, when Adam Battelstein and Rebecca Moore move, one gets to wonder.
Balance comes into it, as does allowing the imagination to take the simple task of moving across a floor
and making it into something more.
The science of motion – locomotion – the moving from one place to another was the theme of a unique dance performance that promoted audience participation through experiment and wonder.
It is so freeing to watch space be explored in atypical ways. Seeing a balloon that is expected to float, handled so that it appears still, in mid- [Read more...]
CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC) launched a Water Science Series in conjunction with the Whitney Water Center to benefit LifeStraw®. On 9 January, 2012, Peter Cleary, Communications Director with Vestergaard Frandsen, Incorporated – the company that created LifeStraw® – visited the Whitney Water Center to speak with students and families about its work to save lives. 
Brett Leckey, a 10-year old who initiated his own project devoted to LifeStraw®, also spoke about his fundraising efforts to better peoples’ lives throughout the world. Following the presentation, students attended a water science class entitled The Magic of Microscopy.
CELC students’ impressions about the event:
Millions of children gone everyday due to waterborne sickness. The trees that fell one by one to make a fire for boiling water. There was little hope for Kenya until the Vestergaard Frandsen company made a creation that won many awards, including 2000’s best invention.
This lifesaver is called LifeStraw®. It is a straw about the length of a pencil and the width of your thumb. LifeStraw® filters 99.9% of the [Read more...]
The CELC Science Fair is open to students of all ages and will take place
from 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. on 8 March 2012.
Cost for entry is a donation in any amount to LifeStraw®.
Come to an initial informational meeting on Tuesday, 10 January at CELC HQ (28 School Street, Branford CT) from 9 a.m. – 10 a.m. Receive materials and guidelines, plus answers to any of your questions before getting started.
Projects submitted to the CELC science fair must be brought to CELC for set-up at 8 a.m. Thursday, 8 March.
There will be additional opportunities for work-sessions/group tutorials will be available for work on aspects of the projects/posters, etc. from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Mondays: 30 January, 13 and 27 February
Contact Melinda to register and for more information:
mandm@ctexperiential.org
or call 203-433-4658 / 203-215-2317
These days, being outdoors is not considered by many kids as place to go to spend their time. Being plugged in to a wireless device is more the trend. “I like to play indoors better, because that’s where all the electrical outlets are,” said a fourth-grader quoted in the book Last Child in the Woods, in which author Richard Louv coins the term “nature deficit disorder.”
Outdoor education takes many forms at CELC. The “outdoor education class” happens twice per week for two hours at a time. We work with environmental educators such as Ranger Russ at Meigs Point Nature Center, do a lot of hiking, letterboxing, winter skiing, work on an organic farm, kayaking, and lots more. In addition to being a time to learn and be in nature, outdoor education also incorporates physical education. Playing basketball in a gym, bowling, or doing yoga are all possible activities. We play each day, no matter what the weather – call it recess or just being outside – after noon meal, CELCers run around outdoors. They may toss a football, play guitar, or build forts in the woods. [Read more...]
A rich and full learning experience, while par for the course, is not to be taken for granted. At times, I become reflective and take pause to notice what we do from day-to-day, week-to-week at CELC. Yesterday for example, Monday, although typical of the CELC way, was not just any ordinary Monday!
Students arrive and get to the business of a Literature Circle class. Opening their copies of Huck Finn, they read, prepare for the literature circle roles, and quiz each other on the vocabulary for the upcoming test (all 80 words, in context, to be dynamically presented in a written evaluation in a couple of weeks).
One math class pursues understanding decimals and the magnitude of the applications, while another group works on algebraic equations and measures of central tendency. Then, in keeping with our theme of Exploration and Discovery, we engage in a “passion project” presentation on football.
With the idea that any explorer or discoverer began with some seed of inspiration, CELCers take to our study by exploring their passions and then design a way to share with the class in a hands-on way.
CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC) brings internationally-known ethnomusicologist Emilia Biancardi from Salvador, Bahia to New Haven on Monday, 7 November to share with students from CELC, Coop High School, and Yale College her knowledge of the music of Brazil in an interactive way.
Emilia Biancardi is known as one of the foremost authorities on the folkloric music and culture of Brazil. She pioneered the recognition of this music as an art form, performing it on stages all over the world. Her long awaited book The Musical Roots of Bahia was published in 2000. Emilia has been musical director for many folkloric programs in the Pelhourino district of Salvador. Her collection of traditional musical instruments from around the world is on permanent exhibition in Salvador, under the direction of the Museums of Bahia. She is also co-founder, along with Gerilyn Greco, of “Iabas” – an all-women’s Brazilian folkloric band based in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York.
At this workshop, Emilia will discuss the history of the music of Bahia, [Read more...]
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