Look on youtube.com for all the live streamed recordings of the music concerts for the High School, Middle School and the Elementary School. The recordings are available to watch on the Oley Valley School District YouTube channel at any time. We have some very talented students in Oley Valley!

Facebook: http://facebook.com/OleyValleyES/
Twitter: @ElemOley

5th grade students recently completed a science unit on the Engineering Design Process. In addition to learning and understanding the steps of the design process they were also challenged to think of a problem they have at home or at school & how they could solve that problem.

One pair of students, Leah Delmonico and Riley Fegley, quickly thought of a big problem in all of their classes – water bottles falling off desks or getting kicked on the ground. In the last few years, with the elimination of water fountains in the school, more and more students have been bringing in their own water bottle to stay hydrated throughout the day. Leah and Riley wanted to come up with something that could securely hold a water bottle without taking up space on top of a desk. This is how “The Bottle Buddy” came to fruition!

The Bottle Buddy attaches to the side or front of a desk using magnets. Students can place their bottle inside The Bottle Buddy & stop worrying about their bottle getting knocked over or kicked. In addition to holding a water bottle there is a small compartment to keep a few pencils, stylus, pens, highlighters, etc.

Ms. Gardecki was so impressed with their idea & design that she approached Leah & Riley about learning the program TinkerCAD so they could 3D print their prototype. The girls eagerly agreed. They then worked with Ms. Gardecki to film an “elevator pitch” and enter The Bottle Buddy into the Pennsylvania Invention Convention. The Bottle Buddy was chosen as a finalists, so Leah & Riley will be traveling to Kalahari Resorts on February 15th to compete against other 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students across the state. Good luck, Leah & Riley!

Please click the link below to see the video!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WnXpUzJig3Tr24xeE8NvpiF37lKfgN-5/view?usp=sharing

The 2nd grade students performed their annual Winter concert on January 19. This year's theme was 'Arctic Animal Antics' and the students sang songs about polar bears, seals, arctic terns, and penguins. The students prepared for the concert beginning in October and gave two outstanding performances for their families and OVES classes.

Facebook: http://facebook.com/OleyValleyMS/
Twitter: @OleyMS

Facebook: http://facebook.com/oleyvalleyHS/
Twitter: @OleyValleyHS

Mr. Coldren and Mr. Fennelly ran an Archery Tournament on December 20th during LYNX with 16 students selected from their Phys Ed. classes. The tournament was single elimination with winners moving on to the next round. The final consisted of Cas Stone vs Noah Damschen. Cas Stone won with a perfect score of 30.

Last month students in Spanish 3 Honors completed a course of study on the fine arts. In this unit they learned a variety of Spanish vocabulary to discuss artists, art supplies, methods, subjects, and artistic styles. They also examined the works of some of the great Spanish- speaking painters and sculptors of the past. One of the more contemporary artists they encountered was Frida Kahlo. Students read a short biographical essay in Spanish and answered questions about her life and struggles. Frida Kahlo was most famous for her self- portraits (autoretratos) within which she surrounded herself with those things that told of her challenges, her heartbreak and her affection. Her ‘autoretratos’ told her story.

Following the example of Frida Kahlo, students drew self portraits and included in their backgrounds some symbolic representations of those things which have a special meaning in their lives. Each student then prepared a 2 to 3 minute presentation, in Spanish, about their ‘autoretrato’ and spoke to their classmates about their drawing, elaborating on their interests and their pursuits. David Turchi, a 3rd year student reflected about the experience “It was interesting to learn about Frida Kahlo's work and the hardships she had to overcome throughout her life. Kahlo was motivated by art and she expressed her emotions and interests through her work. I enjoyed drawing a self-portrait and explaining different parts of my life. During the presentations, we learned more about our classmates' personalities.”

There were so many bonuses to this project, but the highlight was watching the faces of the students during the presentations. There were smiles, head nods, and a few chuckles at the appropriate places. All of this is evidence to the fact that when a classmate speaks in Spanish, true understanding is taking place among the students listening. Nathan Firek remarked, “I was nervous in the beginning of the assignment, but it ended up being fun because the visuals helped me remember what I was going to say. Also, it was cool that I could understand my classmates. So it felt good.”

Ms. Kayla Stauffer is joining the Oley Valley High School’s team and is Oley’s new agriculture teacher! Ms. Stauffer grew up in the agriculturally enriched county of Lancaster, Pennsylvania; she is a 2019 graduate of Penn State University with a Bachelor's degree in Agricultural and Extension Education. In her free time, Ms. Stauffer enjoys spending time coaching the Oley Valley Middle School cheerleading team, and assisting with school and FFA events in any way that she can. Ms. Stauffer was an active member of the FFA program both in high school as well as throughout her college career. Her SAE (Supervised Agricultural Experience) was raising and selling market lambs for her local fair. She also enjoyed participating in various public speaking career development events as well as the veterinary science career development event.

In addition to her participation in high school, she was also an active member of the Teach Ag! Society at Penn State. She also served as a Teach Ag! Avenger and enjoyed going to various events and educating the youth on agriculture and agricultural issues. Ms. Stauffer has grown to love agriculture through these various experiences. When Ms. Stauffer is not at an FFA related event, she is spending time with her family, including her beloved fur baby, Taylor, who is a black labrador retriever and ex-service dog. She also enjoys serving her community by volunteering with the local fire department and expanding her knowledge in the field of veterinary medicine by working at a local Veterinary Clinic. Ms. Stauffer is excited to see what the future holds for her at Oley Valley!

- Leah Walters

On December 22 the Oley Valley FFA Chapter held its annual FFA Alumni Christmas Luncheon in the Fair Centre at the Oley Fairgrounds. This luncheon’s goal is to give students insight on agricultural careers in and out of college. This year, our alumni speakers were Oliver Prout, Kelsey Schlegel, Kyle Weidner, Nate Boyer, Danielle Trimbur, and Josh Kratzer. The chapter kicked off the luncheon with a welcome from Jay Houp, OV FFA’s President. Josh Kratzer, Kyle Weidner, Nate Boyer and Kelsey Schlegel are college graduates and are working in the agricultural field. Oliver Prout is currently a senior at Penn State University and Danielle Trimbur is a junior at the University of Mt. Olive in North Carolina. Careers and majors varied from Forestry, Poultry Production, Agricultural Education, BioRenewable Systems, Conservation, and Plant Biotechnology. Everyone in attendance enjoyed the opportunity to interact with FFA Alumni and gain useful collegiate and career insight, along with enjoying a delicious meal catered by Wegman’s Deli.

Pictured L-R: Josh Kratzer, Danielle Trimbur, Kyle Weidner, Nate Boyer, Kelsey Schlegal, and Oliver Prout

The Career Academy class has been working with Helping Harvest this school year! Students will go and volunteer several hours either making boxes, ripping up boxes, or packing food (donated by various organizations) into the boxes. This organizations asks for volunteers to help pack food which are then distributed throughout Berks County to areas that are in need. On January 19th, the class helped pack 500 boxes!

As a culminating project in Creative Writing I, students wrote, designed, illustrated, and published the first episode of a webcomic. Using ipads, Logitech crayons, and the app Procreate, funded by the OVCEF, students learned about color theory, dimensions, digital illustration, and non-prose-based communication sourced from real Webtoon creators. See their finished projects below!

PROJECT 1

PROJECT 2

PROJECT 3

CLICK ON PICTURES IN ORDER TO EXPAND AND VIEW THE SERIES)

PROJECT 4 (CLICK ON PICTURE TO EXPAND)

This year, several spring athletes have been training through the winter season and competing as indoor track athletes. Josh Wagner, Jakob Bolig, Jacob Keller, Ryan Gourley, Hannah Houp, and Cathryn Fegley are the regular attendees. At the first meet of the season, at Alvernia, athletes competed in the 400m race. Jakob finished top 5 overall, and Hannah and Ryan were among top five 9th graders in the race. Every athlete earned a new indoor personal record. At the Golden Bear Invitational later on, Jakob Bolig (1st 400) and Josh Wagner (3rd 800) took home medals. Most recently, Josh Wagner competed unattached in the U.S. Army Officials Hall of Fame Invitational and scooped up 2 silvers (2nd) in the 1000M and 600M. They will continue to compete until March, when the spring season begins.

We are proud of our athletes!

There is learning science and there is doing science, and then there is presenting your scientific findings for peer review in the scientific community. In early January 2023, Mrs. Janine Bonham and her group of four high school student researchers traveled to Seattle, Washington to join their research team from the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) to present their findings from a year long data analysis study. Their presentation was part of the American Astronomical Society’s 241st meeting (AAS241) and represented the culmination of 13 months of learning and studying data in a live scientific exploration led by a NASA astronomer.

The OVHS student team, including seniors Claire Robertson, Wyatt Ulsh and Jeron Zimmerman and junior Eliana Kopicki, and Mrs. Bonham and Ms. Jenni Hoffman, both teachers at Oley Valley High School, traveled to Seattle, Washington for the duration of the AAS meeting January 9-12 where they joined the NITARP project team of teachers and students from Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas to present their findings. The team began with 42 million sources from NASA’s SEIP catalog and, through a selection criteria driven by analysis of infrared signatures, measurement of GAIA distances to determine relative size, visual inspection of images and cross-referencing to known stellar objects in the SIMBAD catalog, the team was able to identify 69 M-Dwarf stars with infrared circumstellar disks that may indicate earth-like planets in the star’s habitable zones. The team employed methodologies used by astronomers to raise scientific questions, hypothesize, organize and analyze data and report their conclusions. The team created a scientific poster which they presented and defended among the hundreds of posters presented during the 4-day meeting. Mrs. Bonham similarly developed a poster defining the process of using NGSS science and engineering practices for teaching with real astronomical research through the NITARP program.

In addition to presenting their work for peer review, the team was welcomed throughout the meeting as they attended general sessions describing the development and results of the James Webb Telescope project, learned about education and public outreach of the United States’ five large telescopes, posed questions in the daily press conferences to reveal new science learning and participated in networking and career development workshops. AAS241 was nearly overwhelming in the scope of sessions available, but with their experience of big data analysis, the team was able to identify interesting sessions and connect with astronomers, exhibitors and program developers from across the country.

Any school trip taking students beyond the scope of southeastern Pennsylvania cannot limit itself to workshops and research. In pursuit of a well-rounded learning experience, opportunities to explore the community and culture must be explored. Students visited Seattle’s Pike Place Public Market, visited Seattle Center to overlook the region from the viewing platforms of the Seattle Space Needle, and marveled at the glass work of Chihuly Garden and Glass.

The Seattle trip and AAS241 was the culmination of a year of study that included students meeting weekly with Mrs. Bonham and connecting regularly with their cross-country student collaborators. The program was bookended initially by a summer trip to CalTech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA where they met Dr. Varoujan Gorjian to learn of his hypothesis about circumstellar disks of M-Dwarf stars potentially enabling life-bearing planets. On that trip the team learned the data analysis strategies they would employ and returned home with their initial study assignments. Working together at Oley and connecting virtually with the larger collaboration team, the project became visible among Mrs. Bonham’s earth & space science students and has generated quite a bit of interest in continuing the study and developing similar opportunities for live science inquiry and data analysis. In addition, the current study team will be sharing their work in planned presentations with the STEM Advisory team, School Board meeting and the Lynx Expo on May 17, 2023 as well as the international ISTE Conference in Philadelphia in June. Partnership with Reading Public Museum and Neag Planetarium in an effort to further widen the outreach scope of the NITARP program is also sought.

For Additional Information Contact:

Jenni Hoffman

Oley Valley School District

Learning Design & Career College Development Specialist

610 987 4100 x2084

jhoffman@ovsdpa.org

HOSA is a Future Health Occupations global organization formally known as Health

Occupations Students of America:

• whose mission is to promote future health professionals in their community through education, collaboration, and experience
• HOSA promotes career opportunities in the health industry to enhance the quality of health to others

This is a new club to Oley Valley High School and is supervised by Mr. Moll.

To learn more about HOSA visit https://hosa.org/

Credit for HOSA newsletter content to Kyra Dragan, Chapter Historian

Seven HOSA members were inducted into the National Honor Society on December 1st, 2022. To be selected in this chapter, one must show skills in Scholarship, Service, Leadership, and

Character. Congratulations Lauren, Erin, Addie, Kyra, Arabella, Mahlon, and Ryanne (not pictured).

Nia's Pizzeria, located minutes away from the high school, held a dine and donate for the club on December 14th, 2022. The restaurant's wait time was almost 45 minutes to an hour for

seating or delivery.

This fundraiser raised over $300 toward the competition in March. Thank you to everyone for the support that night and making it super successful.

The club is looking for individuals in the health care field to come out and help teach our

members about certain professions. We want people in the community to share their

experiences and educate members to help them succeed in their competition events.

• Former Oley student, Kristina Kauffman, met with Mahlon Weidner and Nathan Firek on Decembr 22nd, 2022. She recently became a certified Emergency Medical Technician, EMT, and helped Mahlon and Nathan work with hands on EMT material. This will aid in their performance in the "Emergency Medical Technician" event at the SLC competition.

If you or someone you may know can help us teach students more about the occupations

listed below, please contact us via schoology, email, instagram, or any member.

Mr. Moll: mailto:jmoll@ovsdpa.org

If you enjoy keeping up with OVHS HOSA, please follow our instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ovlynxhosa

Thank you everyone for the support on this new club. We are super happy with how everything is working out and excited to see what comes after the new year.

Reach out to us if you know someone in the health care field to help our members in their

events.

OVCEF – 2022 A YEAR in REVIEW

OVCEF Board of Trustees, thank you, our loyal supporters, for a fantastic year. In 2022, with your help, the Foundation celebrated many outstanding accomplishments. A few highlights are our 25th Anniversary Celebration and two of our most significant awards: over $79,000 in Education Grants and $18,000 in Senior Academic Scholarships. In addition, please enjoy this short video below, which highlights the many projects and programs supported by the Foundation.

Cheers to 2023, our continued partnership, and success.

View our video here: https://youtu.be/rVQBI26LPG4

OVCEF TO AWARD ITS LARGEST SCHOLARSHIP AMOUNT IN 2023 - $26,500

Applications are due February 28, 2023

OVCEF is pleased to announce it will award 10 scholarships in the amount of $26,500 to deserving class of 2023 seniors. The 2023 scholarship awards will be the Foundation’s most significant award to date. The application deadline is February 28, 2023. To learn more about OVCEF’s Scholarships, please visit our website at https://www.oleyvalleycef.com/scholarships

Here’s what Gretchen Kimmel, Class of 2022, $2,500 Scholarship Recipient has to say about her award:

“I am very grateful to the OVCEF for their generous support and humbled to be added to the distinguished list of previous scholarship award recipients. The honor of applying, being interviewed, and being considered for this prestigious distinction was very rewarding. Being awarded a $2,500 scholarship is a valued acknowledgment of my years of hard work and academic achievements throughout high school. Thank you, OVCEF”

EDUCATION GRANT IN ACTION

Wheel Throwing & Pottery Transfer

The OVCEF is pleased to award an Education Grant for the

OVHS AP 3D Art & Design curriculum.

The AP 3D Art & Design Class is designed for advanced art students. These students refine and apply skills they develop throughout the course to produce original, three-dimensional works of art and design. The course framework requires students to investigate materials, processes, and ideas, make works of art and design through experimentation and communicate ideas about art and design. Students are required to submit original pieces of work.

Here’s what Mrs. Ashlan Siekmann, AP Art Teacher, said about this Education Grant’s impact on her students: "Students are loving the new wheels in the pottery room! Not only do we have better quality wheels now, but we also have more wheels, so students get to spend more time practicing their skills. With this time, I have seen students throwing taller and more detailed pieces than before. Students are definitely appreciative of this new addition!"

To learn more about the Education Grants supported by the Foundation, visit our website at www.OleyValleyCEF.com.

OLEY ALUM IN THE NEWS

OLEY VALLEY ALUM Returns to Mentor Current HOSA Students

Kristina Kauffman, an OV Class of 2022 graduate, is currently enrolled at Drexel University in the Health Sciences program. While in the Oley Valley School District, Kristina completed the Biomedical Engineering Career Pathway. When asked what impact her education at Oley had on her, she said, "My experience in the medical track at OVHS has given me an academic advantage in my college classes and helped me to choose a career path as a Physician Assistant."

While on holiday break, Kristina returned to the high school to mentor current HOSA students Mahlon Weidner and Nathan Firek, preparing for the EMT exam.

Thanks, Kristina. We appreciate your input and assistance. Please don't hesitate to come back anytime.

2023 Zackon 5K Run & Walk plus 1-Mile Fun Run

Registration is open for the 12th Annual Zackon 5K Memorial Run & Walk to be held on April 15th, 2023

Come One, Come All!

This event takes place in the picturesque Oley Valley. The day-of-race registration table opens at 8 AM, and the race begins at 9 AM. Fun Run will begin at 9:10 AM. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to seeing you at this outdoor, family-friendly event.

Registration for this event can be found here: https://www.oleyvalleycef.com/zackon-5k-run-and-walk

2023 Distinguished Alumni & Service Nominations Wanted

The Oley Valley Community Education Foundation (OVCEF) is seeking nominations for the annual Oley. In past years, these awards have recognized Oley Valley High School alums for their efforts and achievements and other individuals who have provided outstanding service to the Oley Valley School District.

One or more awards are presented each fall to alumni for outstanding achievement in their professions, humanitarian efforts, volunteerism, or service in their communities, or a single exceptional achievement. One or more awards may also be presented to individuals who have provided unselfish service to the Oley Valley School District.

The deadline for applications is June 30, 2023.

To learn more about Distinguished Alumni & Service or for a nomination application, visit our website at https://www.oleyvalleycef.com/alumni-awards

For families and students who may experience homelessness, information on the McKinney-Vento Act is available on the Oley Valley School District Website or see below.

OVSD Homeless Liaison and Unaccompanied Youth Contact:

Mia K. Pietsch, M.Ed

Director of Student Services

Oley Valley School District

17 Jefferson Street Oley, PA 19547

610. 987.4100 ext. 1187 or ext. 1188

mpietsch@ovsdpa.org

Please Visit the Sites below for information:

David R. Pollock Jr., President

Robert A. Heckman, Vice President

Dawn Zackon, Treasurer

Maria Bogdanova-Peifer, Member

Zachary D. Fatkin, Member

Nancy Jackson, Member

Aaron Keller, Member

Darrell L. Markley, Ed.D., Member

Mary Lou Parry, Member

Benjamin Pratt, Esquire, Board Solicitor

The Oley Valley School District is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Educator who fully and actively supports equal access for all people regardless of Race, Color, Religion, Gender, Age, National Origin, Veteran Status, Disability, Genetic Information or Testing, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity or Expression and prohibits Retaliation against individuals who bring forth any complaint, orally or in writing, to the employer or the government, or against any individuals who assist or practice in the investigation of any complaint, or otherwise oppose discrimination. Compliance issues/questions should be directed to the Office of the Superintendent.