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Dear Upper School Parents and Guardians,
Happy December! It was great seeing parents, grandparents, and special friends on campus yesterday for the Upper School Showcase and School Meeting. It’s a busy and festive time of year, and we look forward to seeing you over the next few weeks for basketball games and Revels on December 16. Below are some announcements and reminders.
Special Event Dress and Performance Dress: Next Friday (December 9) is the Lower School Play. To honor and recognize our Lower School buddies, Upper School students wear Special Event Dress. Friday, December 16, is Revels and Upper School students wear Performance Dress. Please see specifics here.
Teens and Technology Workshop for Parents of 7th and 8th Graders on Thursday, December 8th (8:15 - 9:15). - Please hear Dr. Fodeman speak about navigating healthy development with children and technology. More information can be found on Heron Hub.
Samson Strolls: I visited 5th Grade with Ms. Burns this week. Click here to learn more about the class. So far, I've covered each grade in a different subject- (each linked in my bi-weekly updates in Heron Hub). If there is something you would like to see, please email me!
Please ask your students about:
5th Grade:
Literacy/ Social Studies: Beginning our Hidden Figures unit! Ask me about how we recognize marginalization and do the work to repair and heal.
Math: Finishing up our volume unit. Also, ask me about how Dreambox is going.
Science: Students began sharing their presentations to the class about their water testing research. They have been excellent so far! Ask about the data we collected during our 2nd visit to the salt marsh.
French: Creating sentences with details about time, days, and dates.
Wellness: after students contributed a song that either calms or energizes them to the 5A and 5B Playlists created on Spotify, we relaxed in the Yoga Loft, listening to 45 seconds of each song and noticing how they made us feel; how they affected our thoughts; and anything else we noticed taking place within our mind and bodies.
6th Grade:
Science: Where the best place to install an air conditioning vent is and what that has to do with density!
Math: How to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions, but mostly, how cross-canceling makes life so much easier. Also, ask me how I am doing with the DreamBox platform.
Geo: What images did I select to represent my chosen religions for my presentation next week?
French: Use sentence starters and add on to create sentences about personal preferences.
Spanish: the different forms of verbs ending in -AR and how I can use them to talk about my family and the different things they do.
Music: the songs from the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s their class is considering performing?
Tech & Society: How has the Internet caused problems? How has it helped?
Wellness:
Mindfulness + Self-Compassion; watercolor anchor practice; creating the quilt of compassion and self-compassion
Mindful Tasting using pineapple, baby kale, and a gluten-free pretzel. With gratitude and using our senses of sight, smell, touch, and taste, we ever-so-slowly tasted each food item and shared our observations of the experience. Nutritional benefits (and snacking!) of pineapple, kale, and pears
Mindfulness + Professional Athletes + Chair yoga
Various breath practices: body scan, box breath, cosmic breathing, Qigong “picking apples”
7th Grade:
Science: My arguments for the Great Organelle Debate!
Math (Carver): modeling rate and ratio problems with proportions
Math ( Carbo): How to clear fractions from equations and how I am doing with DreamBox platform.
French: How I am integrating possessive adjectives such as “my”, “your” and “their” into sentences to say more with less! And… this will allow me to pack a bag with all the belongings I would need to visit a francophone city
English: The heart of our stories.
Internet Literacy (Section 7-2): How to use Google like a Professional! Students learned advanced search skills and tips for using web browsers better.
Wellness:
Mindfulness + Self-Compassion; watercolor anchor practice; creating the quilt of compassion and self-compassion
Mindful Tasting using pineapple, baby kale and a gluten free pretzel. With gratitude and using our sense of sight, smell, touch and taste, we ever-so-slowly tasted each food item and shared our observations of the experience. Nutritional benefits (and snacking!) of pineapple, kale, and pears
Mindfulness + Professional Athletes + Chair yoga
Various breath practices: body scan, box breath, cosmic breathing, Qigong “picking apples”
8th Grade:
Math (Section 1): Modeling tolerance with absolute value equations
Math (Section 2): Using function notation to model linear relationships
Music: Learning the last dance and memorizing our lines.
French: Leaving up our language skills by creating multi-clause sentences with conjunctions.
Science: Parts of an atom
English: Anne Frank’s character growth
History: How and why did the United States get involved in the first World War? How did that connect to the Russian Revolution of 1917?
Wellness:
Intro to Mindfulness; distractions, the puppy mind curious and wandering, anchors to bring us back when we go adrift (sound, breath, body sensations)
Nutritional benefits (and snacking!) of clementines, sunflower seeds, and a seed-based granola
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Save the Date: Friday, January 27 - 7th and 8th Grade Winter Dance'
End of Semester Reminder: 8th Graders end the semester on December 14. 5th - 7th graders semester ends on Friday, January 13. You will receive feedback in January based on your child’s first semester.
Enjoy the weekend!
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