Bill has begun adding his postings to the stream at the "View from the Nest." You can find entries there on the holiday season at SBMS, the value of making mistakes, and women's voices in the sports world.

The Humanities 7 class has begun their theatre unit. They are watching the Franco Zeffirelli version of "Romeo and Juliet" and discussing narrative elements, characterization, and dialogue. They have also been discussing ideas for a theme for the three one-act plays they will be writing for production this spring in the Theatre 7 class.

The class has also begun preparing for a debate to be held jointly with The Children's Storefront in Harlem, NY via Skype. There are four different topics: gay marriage, off-shore drilling, gay people serving in the military, and the legalization of marijuana. Four-person teams have been formed combining two students at each school. Each team has a private wiki site where they are getting to know each other and sharing ideas for what their side could present. The formal debate will be held in late January, and we are hoping to follow up with a trip to Storefront in February to meet the students in person and have them teach us about computers.

Meanwhile, they continue with independent work in reading, writing and vocabulary. It has been a busy and fulfilling year so far, and there is much to look forward to in 2011!

The middle school winter term Health class has gotten off to a good start this trimester. We have been talking so far about stress and its effects on our bodies and minds. We have brainstormed ways to deal with the stress in our lives, and presented these ideas in short "infomercial" type presentations. We have also begun looking at the different systems of our body, and will begin with the skeletal system.

The FLC class has been working on Spanish, using a video made by 7th grader Paloma (who is Mexican) as a model for pronunciation. The first unit, on directions and locations, echoes the French unit. As the students continue to prepare for taking language courses with the upper school next year, they are being asked to memorize vocabulary more quickly and also to practice writing the language correctly.

Several sections of the textbook have been written and revised, and other sections are progressing well. In particular, one of the groups has been researching different phrases in ancient languages such as Sumerian and Egyptian, writing comics to present the languages, and inventing activities that students in other classes could do to learn about different concepts of language.

One of the students asked whether this approach might work well for the entire textbook, suggesting that doing one's own research and writing is where most of the learning happens. This may lead to revising the concept of how the textbook is presented, for example with suggested activities for students in one section linked to different pages presenting this particular class's own research and conclusions. It is exciting to see this level of thinking in the class!

I've now had three class meetings with the middle school chorus and am still trying to learn all their names! But we are having a good time singing the songs they already know, and trying some new ones, too. They are an energetic bunch (especially at the end of the day on Friday!). But as is the key with this age group, when they are engaged in what they are doing, they focus their energy effectively.

The middle school rock band has been working hard to polish their version of the Taylor Swift song "White Horse" for the winter performance. Besides going over the piece repeatedly, they have been adding their own personal touches. They sound wonderful, and it promises to be a great show!

This smaller class is a joy to work with. It was instantly apparent to me why they had made it into the group. They have a voracious musical appetite and even more enthusiasm. It's a powerful force, and they seem eager to channel it towards singing. They are flooding me with ideas of new songs to sing with the force of a river that's about to burst through a dam. My one disappointment is that I only see them once a week, for a half hour. We are working to find an additional time to meet; if we can, they will progress even more rapidly.

Students in ESL Workshop have continued working with Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and The Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi. In the first book, we have been focusing on pulling together ideas from different paragraphs into a unified whole as the narrator, Annmarie, seeks to understand what is happening as strangers show up for a funeral for a relative who never existed and prepare to venture out into the cold for some unknown reason. We do know that along with the strangers, Annmarie's Jewish friend Ellen Rosen and her family will be participating the adventure. In the second book, we are still in the exposition stage and learning about the family of Sookan, a young Korean girl living under the Japanese occupation during World War II, and about their daily life. This provides an opportunity to learn both about history and about Korean culture.

Both students in this class continue to make progress in developing their English, especially their command of verb forms. Their Readers' Response Journal blogs are starting to become longer and more in depth. It is fun to see the level of improvement!

Since the last newsletter, MOCA has elected two new representatives to Student Council who will serve throughout the winter term. In the most recent meeting, these students presented the welcome results of an all-school vote on whether or not 7th graders should be eligible to vote in future StuCo President elections. Now that Upper School students have approved the proposal, the next step is to bring it to the faculty. The MOCA representatives to StuCo led a brainstorming session to solicit ideas to present to the faculty, and will practice their presentation with Bill before making it to the full faculty at the first meeting in January.

Eaglebrook School has accepted a proposal to hold an "activities summit" in which students from our school and theirs will meet to discuss ideas for joint activities through the rest of the year. This will also take place in January, and we will solicit representatives and ideas for them to present at that time.

The School maintains an online calendar of events for use by parents, students, and other members of our community. You may access this calendar at

http://www.sbschool.org/home/calendar.asp

You may also access a copy of the academic calendar through the parent portal, signing in at:

http://www.sbschool.org/home/content.asp?section=parents

If you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you!