2008 Our Communities

Bishop Abraham Elementary School

We are the farthest east of anywhere in North America!!! Here
is what we came up with....
* lots of people (150,000)
* We have houses, hotels, schools, stores, churches, statues, street
lights hospitals, day cares, swimming pools and much more.
* Our forests have bears, bugs (lots of these from June - July) eagles, moose, hares and more
* We have many ponds and we live right on the ocean!














Adams Elementary School


We live in a city with lots of buildings and some parks. We have lots of crows at our school. They like to help clean up after we eat lunch.








Sometimes we see a squirrel but not very often.

At night sometimes we see an opossum in our backyard. They like to get into the trashcan. They like to eat snails but we don’t see them eating snails.

We have ants, worms, beetles and crickets too.(Shared writing by room 3 first graders)







The population of our city is 113,440. We have one of the largest shopping centers in the world, South Coast Plaza and Crystal Court,a large Performing Arts Center and the Orange County Fairgrounds is located here.











First School Day and a nearby Skate Park (picture taken by Jim Gray)







Welcome to Gowanda!

The fours seasons are noticeable here in our community. Let's take a tour.

It's spring! This is a fun time of year. Maple sugar candy and syrup are made locally. Grape growers make sure the vines are trimmed. Truck farmers get their seeds into the ground for beans, cabbage, corn and squash.

In summer, recreation at the village park is fun. We also visit the shores of Lake Erie to swim, fish and look for shells.

Fall brings fishermen to the Cattaraugus Creek to fish for salmon and trout. We also watch, as the monarch butterflies make their way south.

Winter brings much snow. Often our area has more than twenty inches. People ski, toboggan, ice skate, make snow angels and build snowmen.

Gowanda is Native American for ³Land Between the Hills². We are located in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. Many of our Native American students belong to clans that are the animals of our region. The clans are named after the beaver, turtle, wolf, deer, bear, hawk, heron and snipe.

Close by is a community called Dayton. This town is important to the geography world. The watershed there marks a point where one point flows east to the Atlantic Ocean and the other flows west to the Mississippi River.

We are forty miles south of Buffalo and are proud of the Buffalo Bills football team and the Sabres that play hockey. A visit to Niagara Falls is a must if you come to western New York. The Falls are one of the Seven Wonders of the World. If you have ever watched, Paddle to the Sea, you could canoe down the Cattaraugus Creek, out into Lake Erie, through the Welland Canal and out into Lake Ontario. Travels then would take you up the St. Lawrence River and out into the Atlantic Ocean. We like Gowanda and the area surrounding it. We hope that you do too! Thanks for Visiting!

Miss Harris and Grade One Students


For those of us who've never seen where maple syrup comes from.


ESL Absecon Schools

Absecon, pronounced (ab-SEE-con) comes from the Algonquin Indian word Absegami, meaning Across Little Water. Absecon is a "city" in the Atlantic City metro area. Our city is actually a close knit "small town" community. It is 5.5 square miles, has about 7,700 residents, is in the Eastern Standard time zone, and lies across the intercoastal waterway (Across Little Water) from Atlantic City.

Our community has a Wildlife Management Area where many different birds may be seem migrating along the coast. Our landscape is flat. We are a bay front community with acres and acres of salt marshes. Fishing, crabbing, and clamming are done both commercially and recreationally. The Atlantic Ocean is only 4 miles away. Although we do not have a hospital, airport, or university in our town, they are only a few miles drive. We have many hotels, motels, and businesses along the pike. We also have a train station that takes you west to Philadelphia, PA and east to Atlantic City. Many residents work in the Atlantic City casino industry while others have professional and building trade jobs.

Our school, the H. Ashton Marsh School, has 472 students from kindergarten to fourth grade. We are 2 small ESL (English as a Second Language) classes. Our first grade class has 6 boys and 2 girls and our second grade class has 1 boy and 4 girls. We have 38 students that attend to ELL classes. About half of our students ride to school on buses and the other half ride in cars, on bikes, or walk.
We would love for you to come see our small town and meet Jay Jay our Jersey shore groundhog.