English with Jill Sugg
Seventh graders and regular level eighth and ninth graders read the adolescent novel Plague Year and seemed to truly enjoy it. Advanced eighth and ninth graders read Ordinary People by Judith Guest and saw the film that won best picture in 1980. English 10,11,12 read Truman Capote's true crime novel In Cold Blood. Lastly, Advanced Placement Literature students read Edward Albee's play "Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and started Robert Penn Warren's political masterpiece All the King's Men.
Math with Annie Tally
Math students continue to make progress toward their spring semester goals. The 7th graders spent one lovely spring afternoon calculating the heights of the basketball goal, a tree, and the castle, using their own heights and those of their shadows. This concept will be fundamental for their later study of trigonometry. They also found the slopes of stairs and the handicap ramp. Finding slope is a skill that they will use repeatedly in calculus.
Upper School Sciences with Lori Hilliard
Chemistry
Chemistry students have completed their study of solutions. Each student successfully completed their alternative assessment on this topic by mixing solutions of various molarities.
Biology
The Biology class has completed its study of protozoans. Students collected water samples from area streams and cultured well known critters such as euglena, amoeba, and paramecium. They used their well honed microscope skills to chase the protozoans around a hanging drop slide.
Anatomy
The Anatomy class completed their study of neurobiology this module. The class took an alternate route of study on this unit using an NIH curriculum that focuses on the biology of the brain through the study of addiction. The culminating activity was dissecting a sheep brain.
Environmental Science
The Environmental Science class completed their unit on land forms and types of maps. Students can now read topographical maps as well as recognize the many different features of maps.
Physical Science with Dan Hill
This module the students finished their introduction to subatomic particles and the structure of the atom, and have moved on to looking at the history and structure of the Periodic Table of the elements.
Social Studies with Matt Wilhelm
As we move into the final months of the year, the modern era has started to come into focus in our history classes. World History encountered the rise of Nazism and Fascism in Europe and the resulting Second World War. US History has immersed itself in the heroic struggles of the Civil Rights Movement. Psychology, meanwhile, has been delving into mental illness and its treatment. Current Events has taken a critical look at economic development in the Third World, consumerism in the United States, and environmental sustainability. Civics, meanwhile, has begun looking at public policy issues on a more in-depth basis, with a specific focus on health care policy as well as policies designed to limit the rising costs of college education.
Spanish with Celia Battle
Spanish I - Students completed their study of vocabulary related to leisure activities and celebrations and learned the use of irregular verbs to describe these.
Spanish II - Students completed their study of the imperfect tense as well as reciprocal activities. They have learned the use of simple past tenses when both preterite and imperfect are used simultaneously in sentences.
Spanish III - We have studied the subjunctive tense of both regular and irregular verbs. Students have read and completed their study of "Una carta a Dios," a Mexican short story. They presented to the class their creative projects based on this well-known story.
Physical Education with Paige Passavant
The Upper School class has been enjoying our unit "Student-Led Teaching". This unit puts your child in the role of teacher, equipment manager and referee. When it is their "turn" they plan their lesson, gather and set up the equipment, organize teams and explain rules, handle classroom behavior and fairly referee games. The process aids me in their final evaluation of skills/techniques learned throughout the school year. It is amazing to watch the seriousness with which they take their teaching responsibilities. We will continue this unit next module then conclude our year with post-testing. This is my favorite unit as each student "shines" in their own way.
Jazz with Glenn Mehrbach
Despite the Spring Break and other interruptions in the regular schedule, we were able to get a lot done. We added 2 new songs to our repertoire: Thelonius Monk's "Well You Needn't" and the jazz standard "Green Dolphin Street" by Bronislau Kaper. They were the most challenging songs we've attempted. The Monk tune for its rhythmic and harmonic complexity, especially in the bridge section, and "Green Dolphin Street" because of its constant shift from a Latin to a Swing beat.
We continued our work on group improvisation, continued to refine our older numbers, and started to think about which songs we would like to use for the upcoming Arts Showcase.
Art (7th & 8th grades) with Heather Cramer
We are continuing with a basic introduction to drawing techniques. We learned about contour drawing - drawing each others' faces without looking down at our papers and not lifting the pencil. This allows us to truly see what we are drawing and to loosen up our drawing hands. We took our final drawing and painted an abstract face with watercolors. Wonderful creations! The next week, we learned about placement and proportion on the page. Using bottles as a still life, we closed one eye to "flatten" the image, and visually measured where objects connect and are placed in the image.
Drama with Susie Kless
We are moving right along in our preparation for Evening of the Arts. Please be aware that all students in the class are expected to attend this performance - we have other cast members depending on them.
Guidance Update from Thelma Glynn
Seniors awaited their final decisions from colleges while juniors worked on their autobiographies and prepared for the ACT exam. Students of all grade levels worked on summer program applications.
