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SBS Blog |
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You may be interested in the following blog articles relevant to the middle school experience:
Additionally, be on the lookout for a series of blogs by Bill on the importance to teachers of being in touch with one's inner student.
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Health |
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The middle school Health class is a small group, with just eight students, but we have had a fun start to the year so far. We have looked at more physical health to begin with (such as organ systems, bones, and skin). The students have also begun work on their current events reports. Each week they find a health-related article in a newspaper, and summarize and/or present it to the class. We are looking forward to the rest of the term! |
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Life Science |
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In Life Science, the students are using their background knowledge of what living things need to design and carry out an experiment on radish growth. Each student chose their own variables and completed a control. Most of the radishes have germinated at this point, and the students have begun collecting data. The students will conclude this unit by creating their own lab report, based on their findings. |
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Humanities 7 |
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The Humanities 7 class began the term by finishing up the unit on judgment as a mindset. Each student could choose to write her final project in one of three required genres: research paper, compare-and-contrast essay, or persuasive essay. Through the rest of the term, students will have the chance to practice all of these genres plus the literary analysis essay. Several students chose to present their work to the class; all the presentations were thoughtful, stimulating, and engaging.
Currently, the class is celebrating National Poetry Month with the annual poetry unit. Students are responsible for bringing poetry in to read to the class, teaching other students about concepts such as "alliteration" and "synecdoche," and writing and illustrating an original poetry book. Students will present a poetry reading on Family Weekend, and will also be working on several collaborative projects. With a school in Scarborough, Maine, they will be sharing their poetry online as well as commenting on poetry written by the other students. With Mr. Bogel's 10th grade English Honors class, they will be working in groups of two or three to present an analysis of an assigned poem to the combined classes.
Meanwhile, the students have designed their next unit, which they will begin next week. The new theme question will be, "How does history affect our lives today?" The associated group novel, Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez , is a fictionalized version of real events around the time that the dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated in the Dominican Republic. The morning reading book, Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, focuses on the life of an orphan in Warsaw during World War II, ending with the protagonist, now an older adult, looking back on his life and how he ended up where he did.
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Foundations of Language and Culture |
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The FLC class is wrapping up the first of their mini-units on learning languages. The students chose Arabic, Modern Greek, Japanese and Portuguese for this unit. Bill provided initial resources from the Web, and students in each group worked to focus their interests and define more precisely what they wanted to learn. Arabic students have been focusing primarily on greetings and food and drink. Modern Greek has been focused on the alphabet, grammar, and a few basic vocabulary words. The Japanese students have covered a wealth of topics, including learning a number of Hiragana characters. The Portuguese students have also looked at greetings and food and drink, adding in adjectives and the verbs "ser" and "estar." Each group will be presenting what they learned to the class so that everyone can add to their knowledge of how different languages work. |
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MOCA |
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MOCA has elected two new Student Council representatives, and both girls have hit the ground running in their new leadership positions. The students have begun planning for Spearth Day and Founders' Day, two special days off from classes in May. Spearth Day, which takes place May 12, involves the whole school, and MOCA helped brainstorm ideas for service activities in the morning and fun activities for the afternoon. Founders' Day, which takes place May 5, is for middle schoolers only. In the past, this day has typically included sleeping late, having breakfast together, watching a movie, tie-dying t-shirts, having a barbeque, and various outdoor activities such as kickball and Capture the Flag in the afternoon. Additionally, MOCA was asked to consider some questions about the dress code as a number of students on Student Council were concerned about "jeggings" (leggings printed to look like jeans). There is a dress code work group which is writing a proposal to be brought to Student Council and, hopefully, then to Mr. Larson for consideration. The students also talked about the upcoming "Penny Wars," an annual tradition in which each class has a fund-raising jar and competes to accumulate points by adding pennies to their own jar, and to subtract points from other teams by placing nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars in the other teams' jars. Student Council is running Penny Wars for the first time this year, and will be choosing an on-campus need that all monies raised will support. |
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