Monthly Class Updates

February/March 2021

 

Instrumental Music 6 (Introductory and Advanced): The 6th-grade instrumental classes will continue their work in developing a foundational understanding of rhythm syllables and applications into sight-reading. We will work individually and in small groups during our face-to-face times to practice counting out loud and reading increasing complex rhythms. We will also use this time to collect more evidence of growth using video recordings of the music and examples from the book that we are working on. The goals for this time are to increase sight reading skills and overall tone production and familiarity with the pitch in rhythm. 

 

Acting 6: The 6th grade acting students will be focusing on learning the basic skills of collaboration and group storytelling. We will be exploring techniques that use our physical and vocal “instruments” to add emotional color and texture to our stories. Theater vocabulary, stage picture, introductory character creation, and constructive critique will all be incorporated over the course of the semester. In February and March, we will introduce general story-telling skills using face-to-face improvisation exercises and then shift to small group storytelling skills as well as appropriate ways to share feedback.

 

Vocal Music 6: The 6th Grade Choir is continuing its journey through music literacy and music theory. We will be focusing on topics such as Meter, Pitch, Accidentals & Key Signatures, Dynamics, Form, and Articulation & The Music Staff. The class will explore these topics through Google Slides presentations, digital worksheets, and have the opportunity to practice these concepts through drills, quizzes, and assessments. Sight Reading Factory app will continue to play a large role in students’ development of their rhythmic and melodic abilities as they learn how to challenge themselves by creating their own assignments and assessing their current skills. Students will also have a Composition Project through Note flight. As we get closer to coming back to campus, students will begin to explore vocal techniques and prepare the voice for ensemble rehearsing.

 

Art 6: February is the beginning of our second semester and my opportunity to work with a new group of 6th graders. After taking some time getting to know each other and learning about what to expect in visual arts, we will start our creative exploration by going all the way back to the beginning—prehistoric cave art. Most of our projects in 6th grade are inspired by a period or region of ancient art. In this case, we look at some of the amazing examples of cave paintings that can be found in southern France. For this project, we learn some of the characteristics of line in art and we will experiment with using oil pastels to create our own version of an animal cave drawing. As we head into March, we typically launch a comic project where we design our own character, then try to render that character in various poses. Following that we build a simple storyline and learn about the narrative sequence, how to storyboard, and how to design an interesting comic layout. All exciting stuff! 

 

PE 6: We will continue to keep working to improve our fitness with workouts during our F2F classes. Classes will continue to alternate between entire class or breakout groups to complete the workout together. More emphasis will be given to cardiovascular fitness at the start of February. The students will also be given time to work on individual fitness goals that they have for themselves on a regular basis. Fitness logs will still be assigned to help guide them through each week including their SP day. 

 

Health and Wellness 6: Welcome to health and wellness! We’ll launch into the semester with a unit designed to foster connection between students and to help them get to know each other . . . and themselves better! Students will reflect on their values through a photo project and will delve into an exploration of happiness, through the creation of a “happiness mandala.” We’ll also begin to introduce practices of mindfulness and self-care, which we will continue to develop throughout the semester. 

 

Science 6: In 6th-grade science, students will continue developing their skills in experimental design while also learning new content around evolution and adaptation. Students will continue to build upon their graphing and data analysis skills with experiments that begin to ask students to put together a scientific question, hypothesis, data collection, analysis, and a discussion of results. As a vehicle to help students practice these skills, we will learn about Charles Darwin and the fundamental tenets of evolution. Ultimately, students will be able to simulate this core concept through a “beaks of finches” lab. 

 

French 6: Students will learn to express how much they like and don’t like different activities. They will consider the questions, “Do people in the francophone world do the same activities we do?” and “What sports are popular in the francophone world?” They will learn about major sites in Paris, the French origins of the Olympic Games, and the Tour de France. We will study subject pronouns and will head into the exciting world of verb conjugations, starting with -er verbs, which is a key foundational concept this year and beyond. One structural goal will be to understand the difference between an infinitive and a conjugated verb, and when to use them correctly. This month also brings our Fête de la Musique French song playoffs. On their French 6 Main Page, they can find all links to vocabulary flashcards and games with Quizlet. 

 

Chinese 6: In Chinese 6 class, students will learn to identify terms for family members and their relationships and know-how to exchange information about families with others. Students will inquire about and provide location and address in Chinese and express where you or others live. For grammar, we are going to learn about using possessive word 有, 的 and conjunction word 和. Also, we will know how to use the adverb of location: 在. Students will make a book about themselves online with the book creator app, which students will use what they learned to introduce name, age, nationality, family members, school, and place they live. For the culture piece, students will learn about the story of the Chinese Lunar New Year and celebrate it by doing a bingo choice board which includes a bunch of fun new year activities like paper cutting, writing calligraphy on couplets, red pocket paper folding, the origin of New Year EDpuzzle, New Year song, etc.

 

Spanish 6: This February we start Unidad 3: Transportación. While focusing on various forms of ground transportation we will also begin practicing many regular verbs in the present tense. The basic verb conjugation is sometimes bewildering to students given that they have probably never been exposed to this concept before, even in English. The good news is they have learned to do this in English already, albeit intuitively. Regular small doses of independent practice will facilitate learning extremely well. For our culture component, we will learn how most families in the Spanish speaking world are single-car families while many only use public transportation. Also, we might look at some of the roots and importance of Semana Santa, or Holy Week, in the Spanish speaking world. 

 

Technology 6: This year the 6th-grade students will take a semester of technology. We will explore computer science through an inquiry and project-based lens with the goal of understanding computational thinking practices and perspectives such as: experimenting and iterating, testing and debugging, and viewing technology as a medium of creation. Some of the technologies that may be used in this course are the CoSpaces environment, 3D printing, Unity, VR and AR technologies, and the Scratch programming environment. 

 

Pre-Algebra Prep 6: With fractions now under their belts, we are poised to finish up all decimal operations including with order of operations and real-life problems. Then it’s on to exploring the various properties that come into play in math class. They will also learn about like terms and have an introduction to variables and the wonderful distributive property. We’ll incorporate review problems in class in order to keep their acquired skills fresh and will continue with math fact practice using google forms. 

 

Pre-Algebra 6: We have absorbed the mathematical properties of addition and multiplication, and the awesome distributive property. We delved into factoring, also, as an added bonus. With the properties in hand, we are now simplifying algebraic expressions. Next, we are incorporating negative integers and exploring the rules to simplify numerical expressions with positive and negative integers using all operations. 

 

Humanities 6: We are excited to begin a new unit on India during the first week of February. We’ll begin by delving into Hinduism through research and notetaking, writing, and artwork. Each student will take the lead on sharing their learning about one of Hinduism’s many gods and goddesses with their classmates. We’ll move on to explore a number of other influences on India’s culture and history including Islam, the British Empire, Gandhi, and the independence movement. All of this lays the foundation for our next novel, The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani, which follows the trying experience of a family during the partition of India through the eyes of an adolescent girl. Students will continue to practice close reading, annotation, discussion, critical thinking, writing, and other skills along the way. 

February/March 2021

 

Instrumental Music 7: The 7th-grade instrumental classes will continue their work in developing a foundational understanding of rhythm syllables and applications into sight-reading. We will be working individually and in small groups during our face-to-face times to practice counting out loud and reading increasing complex rhythms. We will also use this time to collect more evidence of growth using video recordings of the music and examples from the book that we are working on. The goals for this time are to increase sight reading skills and overall tone production and familiarity with the pitch in rhythm. 

 

Acting 7: The seventh grade acting students just finished their second set of monologues. We are now going to begin to focus on long-form improvisational exercises that support our character creation work as we start to explore short multi-character scenes. We will also be exploring different ways to present our work using technology.

 

Vocal Music 7: The 7th Grade Choir is continuing their journey through music literacy and music theory. We will focus on topics such as Meter, Pitch, Accidentals & Key Signatures, Dynamics, Form, and Articulation & The Music Staff. The class will explore these topics through Google Slides presentations, digital worksheets, and have the opportunity to practice these concepts through drills, quizzes, and assessments. Sight Reading Factory app will continue to play a large role in students’ development of their rhythmic and melodic abilities as they learn how to challenge themselves by creating their own assignments and assessing their current skills. Students will also have a Composition Project through Noteflight software. As we get closer to coming back to campus, students will begin to explore vocal techniques and prepare the voice for ensemble rehearsing.

 

Art 7: In 7th-grade art we just finished a fun and somewhat unusual mash-up of a project that combined a technical perspective drawing with the meditative qualities of Zentangle art. This was new territory, for sure and the results were impressive. As we enter February and the new semester, we will learn about how to design an exciting and dynamic composition by looking at master examples and by practicing thumbnail sketches. This will carry us to a collage project that will challenge us to use our new awareness of composition to create our own dynamic and balanced work of art. On the horizon is a sculptural project that will likely employ cardboard and novel ways to assemble it if we are still working from home. Stay tuned. 

 

History 7: It’s February, and that means it’s Black History Month! We will spend the month of February exploring the untold stories of countless Black Americans whose stories are usually not recognized or celebrated. Black history is American history, and we will hold that in our minds as we dive into this work. Students will engage in many activities to reinforce the skills we’ve been practicing all year: reading, annotating, writing, participating in a discussion, and research. As we transition back into the classroom, there will be opportunities for more connection and collaboration between students (safely, of course) and lots of patience as we navigate the return to school and all the anticipated bumps along the way.

 

PE 7: We will continue to work on the endurance and strength unit in class. Most F2F classes will be doing whole group workouts or splitting up in small groups after our initial dynamic warm-up. As in the past, students will be doing a workout of their choice. I will also introduce stretching routines and yoga as flexibility is part of the ongoing unit. The second round of fitness testing is also on the docket for the next couple of weeks. Lastly, I will introduce some challenges that they may ask a sibling or parent to participate in. Be ready!

 

Health and Wellness 7: Welcome to health and wellness! We’ll launch into the semester by striking the “warrior pose.” Students will reflect on what grounds them and what they are anticipating as they step forward into their 7th-grade year. We’ll also delve into an exploration of “Flow State,” a concept faculty member Tyler Green will help illustrate by sharing his exciting and challenging experiences as a long-distance runner. In addition, we’ll begin to introduce practices of yoga, mindfulness, and self-care, which we will continue to develop throughout the semester. 

 

Science 7: Our budding scientists and engineers are about to embark on a journey to a new sphere of Earth science, the atmosphere. Students will discover the fundamental components and major functions of the atmosphere. They will explore how the atmosphere interacts with the other spheres of the Earth system, solidifying the idea that on Earth, everything is connected. These discoveries and new learnings will be the springboard to a major engineering design unit in which the students will couple science and engineering to solve a real-world problem.

 

French 7: What is the nature of relationships in different cultures? What values are most important to French families?  Students have been learning to describe family members, themselves, and who they resemble. We will practice using possessive adjectives (my, your, his/her, etc.). Our curriculum for the next two months also includes vocabulary for expressing dates, ages, personalities, and professions. They will learn useful expressions with the verb avoir and will add regular -ir verbs to their repertoire as well. We will look at holidays in francophone countries, saint’s days, and a couple of ways birthdays are celebrated differently in francophone countries. In March, we will study vocabulary related to professions, different francophone countries of Africa, and we tackle the irregular verb, venir. On their French 7 Main Page, they can find all links to vocabulary flashcards and games with Quizlet. 

 

Chinese 7: In February and March we will continue learning Lesson 15 Friends and students will have a unit test for the three lessons this or next month and after that, we will be moving on to unit 6: Preferences and Abilities. Students will be learning about: Name somebody commonly played sports; Exercise preferences; Express quantities; Distinguish pronouns for animals and objects. For grammar pieces, students will be able to exchange information on pets using appropriate measure words and associate various sports with appropriate verbs. For cultural immersion, students will learn about the story of Chinese Lunar New Year and celebrate it by doing a bingo choice board which includes a bunch of fun new year activities like paper cutting, writing calligraphy on couplets, red pocket paper folding, the origin of New Year EDpuzzle, New Year song, etc.

 

Spanish 7: We have been hard at work on learning all about gerundios (-ing verbs in English). During this unit we’ve looked at some famous artwork from the hispanohablante world; students used hay (“there is/are”) and a gerund (-ing verb) to explain to the class what people were doing in the painting. We reinforced the seasonal activity vocabulary through a partner activity in which one had to tell the other what to draw without showing the completed picture. It was a lot of fun and forced students to look at how to communicate effectively in Spanish without an English crutch. We begin our “irregular ‘yo’ form” unit this month. This marks the beginning of the end of learning all the various conjugations (including irregulars!) of the present tense! We will focus on all the verbs that have irregular “I” form endings through books, games, and lots of fun activities!

 

Pre-Algebra 7: Once we are comfortable simplifying algebraic expressions, we will review inverse operations and begin solving one-step algebraic equations using positive and negative rational numbers. A review of all operations with fractions and decimals is advisable. As we are comfortable solving one-step equations, we will dive into solving multi-step equations. Following the completion of this chapter, 7th graders will begin algebra one. They will have access to the new text, which they will continue through 8th grade. 

 

Algebra 7: In February, we will finish our unit on functions, domain, and range. We then move into the most challenging shift of the year: nonlinear algebra! We will learn about square roots, exponent properties, and exponential functions. We will end the unit by looking at real-world applications of exponential growth and decay. In March, we will explore polynomials!

 

English 7: Seventh grade English classes continue reading and discussing The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. For this unit, students produce a series of “mini-projects”—visual art, creative writing, found poetry, and more—in their copies of the textbook to create an “artifact” of their learning. By the end of the unit, they also compose a formal writing piece reflecting on their work. Another focus of the unit is learning a list of literary terms used to describe and analyze literature, culminating in a vocabulary quiz on those terms.

 

Technology 7: In Tech Rotation, 7th-grade Tech students will plan, research, and develop a technology project they selected. These topics include 3D modeling, coding, website building, game making, photo and video editing, and more! Students will be asked to place an emphasis on understanding how to break down a large project into smaller more manageable pieces and to revise their methods as they reflect on their progress. March will bring the culmination of these projects in which students will share what they have learned and created and will reflect on their growth in their selected technology tools.

 

Religion 7: Welcome to Religion 7! This class offers students the opportunity to explore how and why sacred stories play such an important role in many faith traditions. We’ll start the quarter off in February by learning about creation myths from various faith traditions and examine the similarities and differences among them. Our dive into creation stories will culminate with students creating their own unique myth describing how the world came to be. At the end of February and into March, we’ll focus on important characters and plot lines that appear in early stories within the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths and examine the parallels between these ancient stories and those found in pop culture. We will also begin exploring key figures within religious stories that are commonly forgotten because of their gender, class, or ethnicity. In particular, students will read and hear stories about Miriam and Judith, two important women in Jewish and Christian traditions, and explore what their stories may teach us about our own lives.

  

February/March 2021

 

Eighth Grade Inquiry: The 8th graders have been diving deep into self-reflection as they work to explore what they care about, what inspires them, and what interests they may want to explore this year for Inquiry 8. Last month students completed an inspiration mapping exercise where they uncovered and articulated their interests and spent time in small groups to help inspire ideas and questions to explore. The next step for our 8th graders during December and January will be prioritizing and refining their topic of interest through specific research activities. For some students this means becoming familiar with the history and important details of their topic of interest to build from; for other students who have a strong sense of their topic, it’s an opportunity to dig into details and finer points in order to refine their topic. By January students will be formulating their guiding question, engaging in more detailed research, and beginning the process of interviewing an expert in their topic.

 

Instrumental Music 8: The 8th-grade instrumental students will continue to develop their individual musical skills through practicing a broad range of music from their books and maintaining their practice Vlog portfolio. The focus throughout the next two months will be to increase the range of notes on their instruments, to play clearly with a good tone, and improve in rhythmic accuracy when reading music notation. Our class time together will be used to check-in, maintain our ensemble community, and explore new ideas in music as we listen to recordings of other performances from outside the OES community.

 

Acting 8: The 8th-grade acting students have just finished up their Spoon River Anthology monologues. Spoon River Anthology was a play written in the early 1900s about a small, midwestern town named Spoon River, which shares what life was like during this period of time in a small town. We are just finishing up the feedback and critique of that project. Once we have finished sharing feedback, we will use improvisation to explore what we have learned about character creation in the Spoon River project before moving onto our next student-driven monologue project. In this project, we will look at Objectives, Super Objectives, and Given Circumstance as we learn to create believable characters based on textual clues embedded in a script.

 

Vocal Music 8: The 8th-grade choir continues their journey towards music literacy with a robust review of concepts such as: ‘Reading Choral Music,’ ‘Rhythms,’ ‘Pitch & Notes in the Staff,’ ‘Solfege;’ in addition to exploring newer concepts like: ‘Melody vs. Harmony vs. Accompaniment,’ ‘Form & Phrase,’ ‘Tempo,’ and ‘Dynamics.’ The choir continues their consistent practice of sight-reading each week with assignments focusing on rhythmic reading and melodic reading. During the month of December, we will also explore singing carols new and old. In January, students will begin short individual projects. 

 

Art 8: The 8th-grade artists are taking a skill-building break from their student-driven, process-oriented work by honing their watercolor skills. We started by exploring the multitude of watercolor techniques to get us ready for a larger study that used a widescreen movie still as a source image. The students were challenged to create a monochromatic and a full-color version of their image while maintaining the widescreen format ratio. We are currently wading into an exciting world of kinetic sculpture. The students are exploring everything from Rube Goldberg, to automata, to wind sculptures to come up with their own kinetically inspired masterpieces, but we will be just as excited to create a disaster piece in the short window before Christmas break. 

 

History 8: In December and January we’ll keep working on writing as we explore Industry and Expansion. After a quick overview of the Industrial Revolution, we’re now diving into the Scramble for Africa. Students will be looking into what compelled European powers to seek new colonies in Africa and the effects such expansion had on the African people. We’ll also discuss the efforts to exert control over countries in Southeast Asia, including the British Empire’s time in India. Our focus will be on writing. Students will examine primary documents and practice their writing skills with more formal summaries and analysis on the sources. Don’t be surprised if they want to talk about their learning—all the students are being encouraged to explain their thinking as a way to verbalize their learning and avoid plagiarism. 

 

PE 8: Students will continue to focus on our fitness for life unit. Classes will share their own warm-ups for class. We are currently exploring the many yoga poses and how yoga benefits one’s health both mentally and physically. Ms. Hick’s will be showing students some ways to practice “calm yoga” techniques. 

 

Health and Wellness 8: Our explorations of self-& society will focus on gender roles, identification, and expression, which will also allow us to think about how society responds to what feels like rapid changes to long-standing norms. This work will comfortably lead us into communication skills, with an emphasis on mindful communication. Thinking on personal boundaries will weave in and out of this work, as will considering healthy habits and drugs and addiction. The latter part of our time together in this semester course will find us wrestling with notions of human happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction.

 

Science 8: Science class in December and January will be entirely about life. Students will drive their own learning related to the growth of young plants (microgreens). They'll pose questions about nutrient, energy, water, and genetic needs for organisms, and determine in advance what data would relate to their question. From there they'll plan an experiment that can gather that data and assess their own hypotheses for themselves and for an audience. By the Holiday Break you'll be able to reap what they sow and enjoy the fruits of their labor (well, not fruits, but greens). Life abounds! And January will entail the data analysis and a continuation into modern agriculture and bioethics.

 

French 8: This month, we are focusing on building skills for descriptive writing in French. Students have been writing descriptions for the Dream House project. With this student-driven project, they create a design for their dream home, label key elements, and write a script to describe the home and what’s around it, all in French. The final step (after winter break) is an in-class oral presentation to describe the home they designed. Also, this month, we will compare how teens use technology in France and in the U.S. They are also adding the new irregular verbs, devoir, mettre, and pouvoir to their repertoire. Students will take an exam on Unit 7 (reading, writing, listening, speaking) the week before the break. In January, we dive into Unit 8, and students will approach the question, “How do major world cities tell their stories?” We will do culture talks and learn more about Port-au-Prince and Paris. They will learn the important irregular verb, faire, and with it will broaden their vocabulary to talk about the weather, weather reports, and many new activities. 

 

Chinese 8: In the month of December & January, students will finish up their perfect birthday invitation Padlet project. They will be able to describe the invitation of gatherings and provide party information. After that, we will be moving on to the next social event which is Lesson 35 Going to the movies. Students will learn to name different movie genres; talk about a movie’s adventures, plots, reviews and discuss and express opinions on different types of movies. For grammar piece, we will be focusing on using 是 to emphasize meaning “indeed” and using 离 with time phrase and also 要不. For cultural immersion, we will discuss Chinese media(cinema and television) and some famous Chinese actors/actresses. Lastly, for the lesson project, students will be working collaboratively to either voiceover different plots of classic Chinese TV shows clips or create a video clip with certain criteria. 

 

Spanish 8: Over the past month and a half we have been working on the pretérito (the preterite), one of the two past tenses used in Spanish. We’ve played games, students have worked on an escape room, and filmed themselves talking about what they have done over the course of a week. They’ve also written silly stories and are working on a faux horrible trip for their final assessment. Once we’ve begun work using the other past tense (el imperfecto) and comparing when we use one over the other, students will revisit their horrible trip assessment and add in the detail that the imperfect tense can provide. 

 

As nearly all Spanish speaking countries have primarily Catholic roots and thus celebrate the Christmas season with gusto, we will take a look at some of the holiday traditions in Spain that differ from traditions practiced here in the United States. For example, Spanish children leave shoes (not stockings) out on the sixth of January (not the 25^th of December) for the Three Wise Men (not Santa Claus) to fill. 

 

Geometry 8: In Geometry, students are busy with parallel and perpendicular lines. This unit provides a forum for refreshing algebra skills involving writing equations of lines and also is the jumping-off point for writing independent proofs instead of just coming up with the reasons. Proofs are so awesome because different people notice different things and so there are often several ways to go about them. In January we will begin exploring triangles. Our initial emphasis will be on types of triangles and their basic triangle properties (such as the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees), what it means for shapes to be congruent and then look at ways to prove triangles congruent. This unit is an excellent reinforcement for the proof work we have been doing.

 

Algebra 8: In December, we will wrap up our unit on systems of equations. We are learning three different methods of solving these types of problems, as well as exploring special cases and real-world applications. We will spend more time discussing how to solve word problems so that hopefully students will see more connections between math and the world around us. In January, we will explore systems of linear inequalities and tackle word problems with increasing complexity.

 

English 8: In English 8, students will complete their first formal writing pieces tied to Outcasts United and move into their second novel of the year, When the Emperor was Divine, by Julie Otsuka. This story offers a dramatic shift in genre and narrative style, which will broaden our sense for the art of storytelling and will further develop the student’s active and close reading skills. Building on Otsuka’s writing style, we will move into a creative writing opportunity tied to a meaningful person or object and step into prewriting work to develop their next formal analytical piece. Additionally, we will be reviewing key comma rules to support effective punctuation and to enable a more fluid and varied writing style. 

 

Technology 8: Welcome to your technology class! This course is an open-ended course that will help you develop a novel technology project by the end of the quarter. Each student will choose a topic of their choice and then set up and test out their own project that relates to something they're currently doing in another course here at OES. Code a platformer or scrolling game on Scratch. Design and print a 3D replica of a Japanese temple on Tinker CAD. Program a Micro: bit to play your favorite tune. Or maybe you'll find something you are more interested in, and each of us will hone our skills along the way. What awesomeness awaits you?

Religion 8: Starting in December and continuing through January, students in Religion 8 will design and lead our weekly chapel, taking on more complex roles and responsibilities as they gain experience and confidence with holding virtual chapels. December and January are rich with various religious holidays from different faith traditions, which offers students the opportunity to explore their meanings and traditions both in class and in chapel. Specifically, students will explore the meanings and traditions of the Christian seasons of Advent and Christmas, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, and other religious festivals that focus on light during this time of the year. In January, students will focus on the message and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., examine how justice and equality are expressed in various faith traditions, and then share our learnings during chapel. Lastly, as students gain experience leading our weekly chapels, we will reflect on how the first half of the quarter has gone and how to continue to improve our chapel services.