Making student interest the focus of classroom practice
In his biology course, Chuck Shepard seeks to excite his students, even though he acknowledges that some of them are not immediately interested in the subject. In order to coax the boys into developing a love for science, Mr. Shepard experiments with alternative methods of instruction and assessment that appeal to his students' other interests and encourage them to demonstrate their scientific skills and knowledge of biological concepts.

Investigating cellular structure and function
Every student in Mr. Shepard's biology classes creates a web page to function as an electronic portfolio: housing homework assignments, a study journal, and lab reports – all online, completely paperless. A recent portfolio topic dealt with the relationship between structure and function, a reoccurring theme in biology. Students examined animal cells and analyzed the role of their components.

Mrs. Orsatti's Spanish II Class
Rising junior Patrick Macaluso explains a "cool project" for his Spanish class. Here is Patrick's description of the assignment:

"Mrs. Orsatti's Spanish II class studied reflexive verbs in the spring, and our graded assignment for this subject was a creative project that involved our daily routines at Kiski and at home. We would need visual displays of actions that could be described using reflexive verbs. Some of these things included brushing teeth (cepillarse los dientes), taking a shower (ducharse), going to bed (acostarse, dormirse), and waking up (despertarse, levantarse). The project, as a whole, turned out great, and many people had extremely creative and entertaining projects. Some of the projects were done by using photographs and clip art on PowerPoint, self-made animations, and the reality-simulation game The Sims."

Mrs. Orsatti converted the projects into "flash movies" to share with everyone. Rising junior Frank Cappelli's project with Sims follows:

Link to Project

Other projects that she did with other classes are the following:
Fuimos al banco, done by Tony Coppola and Andrew Bell. She took them to Saltsburg to take pictures, interact with the community, and then create dialogues in the preterite tense about running different errands in the town.
Para mantener la salud, done by Angelo Bortoluzzi. She asked him to create a digital poster showing healthy choices in terms of food, drinks, and exercise.