Monthly Class Updates

 Sixth Grade
May/June 2022

 

Instrumental Music 6 (Introductory and Advanced): Sixth-grade instrumental students will continue working on building their music literacy and ensemble skills. Our class focuses these next two months will be on chorals and choral playing, where each section of the ensemble will carry the melody and harmony together. Listening to one another and matching articulation and phrasing are the key takeaways from this time. We will be using these skills to prepare for a performance set towards the end of the year!

 

Acting 6: Sixth-grade theatre students are working on two performance projects during April and May. The first is called Page to Stage. Working in small groups, students choose a favorite children’s book to convert into a play with dialogue rather than narration. After writing a script, they will block and rehearse and finally perform. The performances will be filmed and shared with first graders in the lower school. The second project is a monologue of their choosing that they will prepare, memorize, develop a strong character, and perform solo. 

 

Vocal Music 6:  Sixth Grade choir students will continue to focus on music theory and also on vocal technique. We are exploring essential questions about these fields of music. Lots of how’s and why’s. As always, students strive to become better vocal musicians by building sight-reading skills and singing a wide variety of repertoire including some historical music, some folk songs, and some music in other languages. In April students will study the poetry of their choir music and dissect the text. In May students will observe Jewish/American Heritage by singing music in Hebrew and discuss why this culture’s music is important to choir. 

 

Art 6: Sixth-grade artists are completing work on their handmade sketchbooks. They have designed covers and are learning basic book-making techniques to create a completely unique book for their work in class. Students will begin thinking about lettering and design, then practice drawing animals by seeing shapes (construction) and developing designs for original comic characters.

 

PE 6: Sixth-grade PE students are currently in the middle of some intense badminton games. From drop shots to smashes, the students are using the different shots of the game to move their opponents around on the court. Singles and doubles tournaments add to the fun and competitive part of the game. The week after MS Conferences, the students will have the opportunity to challenge themselves on the climbing wall at SPARC. This unit gives them the opportunity to step out of their comfort zone while also being very supportive classmates. 

 

Health and Wellness 6: In class, we’ll have lessons on mental health and self-care strategies, followed by an end-of-semester project in which students dive deeper into a topic we have explored in class. The remainder of the year will be focused on community building and committing to personal challenges. All these activities will take place outside on the ropes challenge course.

 

Science 6: Sixth-grade scientists are knee-deep into science research! The students have been working on designing and refining their experiments and will now begin the most fun part of this process—conducting their experiments and engineering their designs. Students will work on the data collection process over the next few weeks, and then afterward students will begin to analyze and graph their data and finish writing their lab reports. Finally, students will practice presenting their research to a public audience to prepare to share their work with all of you during Science Research night in June.

 

French 6: In April, we wrap up our Fête de la Musique song playoffs. Ask your student which song their class picked! Our inquiry questions for this month include: How do I ask for what I need in French? How do my language and manners affect the way someone might see me in French culture? Students are learning different ways to talk about school supplies, shopping, and prices. Later this month, they will expand their communication skills by learning to describe school subjects and schedules, and how to tell time. They will tackle two more of the four major verbs: être and aller. We continue to build an understanding of nuanced grammar structures, like gender and number, which is called agreement. In the final stretch during May, students will build their vocabulary skills for places around town and how to ask specific questions. They’ll make cultural comparisons with what it’s like to go to school in France, and what school lunches are like in francophone countries. Also in May, we begin preparing for the oral interview, their final assessment in June. Throughout these months, we will learn new songs in French and play speaking games in class to deepen their understanding and skills.

 

Chinese 6: In Chinese 6 class, we started the food last month and finished the fruit lesson. Students made fruit rap songs as the final project and learned how to express likes and dislikes. This month, students will continue to learn about food: Western food and Chinese food. They will learn to indicate hunger and thirst and ask for food and drinks. Students will also inquire about a few typical Chinese dishes. For grammar pieces, students will be engaged in using 了 to indicate change, 去+verb, use tai to construct exclamatory sentences to indicate extremes, make suggestions with ba, and provide others with choices. For cultural immersion, we will discuss the role of food in Chinese society and also Western chains in China. Students will be working on a food board game as the final project. 

 

Spanish 6: Currently, we are finishing Unit 4: El Hotel and TENER. In April we are working on Unit 5: Shopping! In addition to a lot of clothing-related shopping vocabulary, we are introducing another important irregular verb; IR = to go. Students will learn to use IR to also talk about what they are going to do in the near future. For culture, we will look at some differences in shopping and we will learn a bit about some types of currencies. One of our songs in this unit is “Vivir mi vida,” which helps reinforce the grammar component of IR + a + (verb). This shopping unit will also include a day of role-playing buying and selling items in a “market.”

 

Technology 6: Tech students have just finished their Augmented Reality projects. They were asked to identify a global or local issue to raise awareness on, and to create an interactive Augmented Reality artifact, using the CoSpaces MergeCube add-on. As a class, we then shared our creations with the other Tech rotation and developed our skills in providing effective critique and feedback to peers. We will soon begin work on Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety and apply the skills we have gained in CoSpaces to showcase this new knowledge. Ask your students to show you what they have been learning about and creating!

 

Pre-Algebra Prep 6: With fractions, decimals, properties, rates, ratios, and some algebraic foundations under their belts, these mathematicians are moving on to work with integers (positive and negative numbers). We will explore what integers are, how to compare them, work with all the operations and apply these concepts to fractions, decimals, and more of the distributive property and order of operations. The beauty of math is how it all builds on what came before. As we approach the end of the year, we will play with some statistical concepts while keeping all the skills they have learned fresh through warm-up problems. I encourage all students to use the multiplication and division facts resource banks and google forms in the classroom to really hone those important skills.

 

Pre-Algebra 6: For the next couple of months in PA, the students dive into solving one-step and multiple-step algebraic equations. They will be introduced to Inverse Operations as the method to solve the equations. During this unit, the students will work on translating word problems into algebraic equations, also. As the assessments become more challenging, the students will practice various study methods to prepare for the assessments as well as ways to edit their work before submitting it. I appreciate the efforts they display in showing organized work. This is especially important as the problems become more multi-stepped. The review of operations involving rational numbers is also a part of the coming lessons. 

 

Humanities 6: In Humanities, we will be reading It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime, Stories from a South African Childhood. While we are reading, we will continue our annotation skills focusing specifically on the themes that emerge throughout the book. Through Trevor Noah’s thought-provoking, personal, and at times funny memoir, we will continue to examine the experience of being multi-racial. As we are exploring this memoir, we will take time to explore and unpack the history of South Africa’s apartheid and make connections to broader themes we have investigated this year including diversity and justice. 

Seventh Grade
May/June 2022

 

Instrumental Music 7: Seventh-grade instrumental students will continue working on building their music literacy and ensemble skills. Our class focuses these next two months will be on chorals and choral playing, where each section of the ensemble will carry the melody and harmony together. Listening to one another and matching articulation and phrasing are the key takeaways from this time. We will be using these skills to prepare for a performance set towards the end of the year!

Acting 7: In April and May 7th grade theatre students will complete two significant, culminating projects. The first is a live recreation of a scene from a play, TV show, or movie. This project also has a design challenge element that involves building a costume piece as well as props, lighting, and sound. The second project is an original script that is the culmination of a short playwriting unit. Each student will write their own 10-minute play, and some will be selected for a staged reading. Both final projects incorporate many different skills from this year such as acting, directing, character development, and writing dialogue for the stage.

 

Vocal Music 7: Seventh-grade choir students will continue to focus on music theory and also on vocal technique. We are exploring essential questions about these fields of music. Lots of how’s and why’s. As always, students strive to become better vocal musicians by building sight-reading skills and singing a wide variety of repertoire including some historical music, some folk songs, and some music in other languages. In April students will study the poetry of their choir music and dissect the text. In May students will observe Jewish/American Heritage by singing music in Hebrew and discuss why this culture’s music is important to the choir. 

 

Art 7: Seventh-grade artists are diving into experimentation with color. Students have designed and carved rubber printing blocks and will explore acrylic paints and block printing to make a series of artist trading cards inspired by Andy Warhol. Seventh-grade artists will then start to think about clothing design and fashion to customize a clothing item of their choice using various techniques (patching, printing, embroidery, etc.)

 

History 7:  As spring arrives, students are almost done recording their podcasts related to Black history. They have been hard at work generating questions, researching, writing, and recording their podcasts that will teach their audience something about their topics. Once this major project is behind us, we begin our final unit of the year: the U.S. Government. We will learn about the US governmental structure, examine the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, learn how a bill becomes a law, and much more. Students will conduct research on a topic of their choosing and practice their historical writing skills by using evidence from research to support a claim. The unit will conclude with in-class debates on issues the students select related to the government and/or current events.

 

PE 7: 7th graders are finishing up a unit on speedball/team handball. They have also worked on their second-semester project which they will do after conferences. It is a teaching assignment introducing a sport or activity not played in the US. They will also have a week-long climbing unit on the wall in SPARC. After this is all done, we will start our speedminton unit.

 

Health and Wellness 7: We started off this month in our human reproductive system unit, reviewing puberty and the reproductive system. Kathleen Hicks will join our class to talk about terms related to gender and sexual identity, and we’ll talk about the importance of recognizing individuals’ personal pronouns. From there we’ll delve into social media and our online footprint and how to be thoughtful about how we engage in relationships and communication online. 

 

Science 7: Seventh-grade scientists are knee-deep into science research! April and May will be busy with students setting up their Science Research Projects (SRP). The students have been working on designing and proposing their experiment ideas and will now begin the background research portion of the process. Next is the most fun part of this process—conducting their experiments and engineering their designs. Students will work on the data collection process over the next few weeks, and then afterward students will begin to analyze and graph their data and write their lab reports. Finally, students will present their research to a public audience with all of you during Science Research night on June 1. 

 

French 7: Our curriculum this month includes vocabulary for expressing dates, ages, personalities, and professions. Students will grow their skills in describing themselves and others. They will add regular -ir verbs, the irregular verb venir, and to their growing repertoire of verb conjugations. We will study holidays in francophone countries, saint’s days, and ways that birthdays are celebrated differently in francophone countries. Later this month, students will create their “Famous Family Tree.” Be sure to ask your child about this later in the month! Also in April, we will watch the French classic film, Jean de Florette, which is full of intrigue, villainous treachery, and many opportunities to explore the question, “What is family?” and “What does it mean to be ‘other’?” During the month of May, we dive into Unit 6 where students will learn different ways to talk about clothing, stores, and how to choose items. We will explore popular flea markets and visit a French supermarket online. Students will expand their communication skills with new verbs conjugations for acheter, vouloir, and regular -re verbs. We’re always on the lookout for what we call PFGs—petites fautes de grammaire—those little grammar mistakes we try to avoid when writing. The culture sections in the book are now in French, which will help reinforce reading skills. 

 

Chinese 7: In April and May, we will continue to learn Unit 6 Preferences & Abilities. Students will be able to discuss their own language abilities and those of others and distinguish between spoken and written languages. Then we will start Unit 7: Activities. Students will inquire about asking and answering questions about the availability and price of products and inquire about and state the time of the events. For grammar pieces, students will be engaged in using 多少 meaning how much/how many, and expressing opinions on and negotiating an item’s price. For cultural immersion, students will explore the life of students in China and Traditional martial arts. For the summative assessment, students will create mini flea markets and pretend to bargain in Chinese. They will also work on a daily vlog project to compare and contrast the differences between the daily life routines of American students and Chinese students.

 

Spanish 7: The DOP unit that is ending will sign the beginning of the more complicated and challenging aspects of Spanish language learning. It is really important that students check in with me if there are any lingering doubts or questions about the grammar, we have covered this year. We will start informal commands, which is always a lot of fun! Who doesn’t enjoy commanding others to do something? Besides playing everyone's favorite game of Simón Dice (Simon Says), students will also present skits, look at how others live around the world, compare/contrast housing, and discuss their favorite (and least favorite) chores.
 

During the month of May, we will begin our final grammar unit for the year—el pretérito perfecto (the present perfect). Students will work with grammatical constructions around what we “have done.” This unit also tends to be everyone’s favorite, and not simply because this is the first glimpse into a past tense, but because this unit’s vocabulary is based around food! During this unit, students will learn about foods of various countries, navigate menus, and design a menu for their own fake restaurant. Their menu will include detailed descriptions of the foods using the pretérito perfecto and a variety of vocabulary words. I’m excited to see what this creative bunch comes up with!

 

Pre-Algebra 7: Congratulations to the PA students for beginning Algebra 1. Throughout the month they will explore graphing linear equations using different methods. They have just completed learning how to create a table of values to generate their ordered pairs, creating solutions to the equation. Their exploration of slope is the groundwork for the lessons to come. Graphing linear equations in slope intercept form is their next lesson. With slope intercept, they will have a good idea of what their graphed equations will look like before graphing them. A review of isolating ‘y’ will be part of the coming lessons as they learn how to write linear equations in slope intercept form. The Standard Form is a lesson that should prove useful for setting up and graphing a solution to word problems. This also gives them an opportunity to predict possible solutions. Exploring Point Slope Form as yet another form used to solve linear equations is also a part of the coming attractions.

 

Algebra 7: We continue with non-linear algebra topics this spring. In April, we will look at how to add, subtract, and multiply polynomial expressions using various methods. We then “undo” our work and learn how to factor polynomials. In May, we will switch gears and explore quadratics. We will graph quadratic functions and learn multiple methods of solving quadratic equations, culminating in how to derive and apply the quadratic formula. 

 

English 7: In April and May seventh grade English students will read Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir in verse, Brown Girl Dreaming. Winner of multiple awards, including the National Book Award, Woodson’s story of her early life and her path to becoming a writer highlights themes including family, friendship, faith, and identity. Also, soon after spring vacation, students will select the poem they will learn by heart* to recite to the class. The final presentation date is not yet set, but it will probably take place in June, so students will have a lot of time to spend with their poems to prepare. In the next few weeks, we will also discuss some strategies for learning and remembering poems. 

*These two quotes explain some of my rationale behind asking students to learn poetry by heart:

Ted Hughes, in a 1988 letter to the British Secretary of State for Education on the special place of poetry in the education of children, writes:

“What kids need is a headfull [sic] of songs that are not songs but blocks of refined and achieved and exemplary language.”  [When that happens, children have] “the guardian angel installed behind the tongue.” (Taken from an article in The Economist, November 24, 2007)

Robert Frost:
“People keep saying it’s not good
To learn things by heart.
But pretty things well said—
It’s nice to have them in your head.”

Technology 7: Welcome to your seventh-grade Technology class! Throughout this course, students will broaden and deepen their knowledge and understanding of the technology tools they and their peers have previously explored, and new technologies they are interested in. They will be asked to identify a person or group and an issue they have, develop a project to help solve the problem, and demonstrate their ability to use technology to support this endeavor. They will also be asked to explain how it supports them and their learning, as well as document the process of how they gained these skills. Some examples of technologies students may select from are 3D printing, VR and AR, the Swift programming environment, CoSpaces, Micro:bits, and more!  

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 April 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 April and into May, 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 among 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. 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.

   

Eighth Grade
May/June 2022

 

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 semester 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. The next step for our 8th graders during early April 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 off of; 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 late April and early May students will be formulating their guiding questions, engaging in more detailed research, and beginning the process of interviewing an expert on their topic.

 

Instrumental Music 8: Eighth-grade instrumental students will continue working on building their music literacy and ensemble skills. Our class focus during these next two months will be on chorals and choral playing, in which each section of the ensemble will carry the melody and harmony together. Listening to one another and matching articulation and phrasing are the key takeaways from this time. We will be using these skills to prepare for a performance set towards the end of the year!

 

Acting 8: In April and May eighth grade theatre students will complete two significant, culminating projects. The first is a recreation of a scene from a play, TV show, or movie that will then be filmed and edited in iMovie. We will have a film festival in late April to screen all of the films in class. This project requires skills from the EC Design process namely collaboration. The second project is a devised theatre piece based on a social action topic. We will create an original piece of theatre together as a group with roles for all. Time will be spent deciding what issue or topic the students want to explore through the medium of performance. This is a challenging yet extremely rewarding final project. 

 

Vocal Music 8: 8th Grade choir students will continue to focus on music theory and also on vocal technique. We are exploring essential questions about these fields of music. Lots of how’s and why’s. As always, students strive to become better vocal musicians by building sight-reading skills and singing a wide variety of repertoire including some historical music, some folk songs, and some music in other languages. In April students will study the poetry of their choir music and dissect the text. In May students will observe Jewish/American Heritage by singing music in Hebrew and discuss why this culture’s music is important to choir. 

 

Art 8: Eighth-grade artists are beginning a cycle of inquiry to develop an independent self-directed art project. They are practicing curation, exploring art museums online, and considering their personal preferences and tastes in art. Students will draw upon this research to propose an individual or shared project that considers concept, materials, and/or process. This will be a celebration of student choice and a way to conclude their exploration of art within the middle school.

 

History 8: To finish up our World War II unit, we will look at refugees all around the world. Then we’ll move onto our Cold War unit. Students will study the geography of Latin America as we explore different aspects of the Cold War from 1945–1991. We will continue to work on writing as well as making time for more public speaking practice. Students will have a chance to choose a subtopic to examine. 

 

PE 8: We will begin a new unit playing a game that has been growing in popularity by leaps and bounds: pickleball! After this unit, we’ll take advantage of improving weather for a short unit introducing a few track and field events and two weeks of tennis. In collaboration with the OES Outdoor Program, we’ll provide an opportunity for each 8th grade student to get out of their comfort zone on the ropes challenge course. Each class will also introduce students to a wide range of fitness activities and principles they can incorporate into their active lives. 

 

Health and Wellness 8: We will apply what we learned about the hardware of the brain and cognitive biases to help us understand stereotypes and microaggressions. We will define what a microaggression sounds like, and most importantly, how to respond if we hear one. In the weeks to come we will investigate the effects of biases by exploring the skills of critical media literacy. 

 

Science 8: April and May will be busy with students setting up their Science Research Projects. Some will pose science research questions, and others will pose engineering goals, so ask your child what they're specifically doing for SRP. They'll plan out their project, learn about safety and skills related to their work, and then execute their plan to gather data and determine learning and degree of success. It is very student driven, and teacher supported. This lets the students inquire and explore what they're interested in, and in a way that they have control over the project from start to finish.

 

French 8: What’s the French perspective on health and sickness? What are French tendencies for nutrition and wellness? What do we have in common? In April, students will learn vocabulary for the body, health, sickness and wellness. We will build communication skills using the impératif mode for verbs, which is how to give orders and tell people what to do. We will also build language skills for talking about the environment and current global challenges. Students will watch different types of videos to broaden their understanding of these topics. As a culminating activity, this material in Unit 9 provides an excellent opportunity for writing and recording a wacky dialogue between a doctor and a patient. In May, we will approach these questions: How does travel transform a person? During the final unit of 8th-grade French, students will study vocabulary related to travel and directions and learn to use a variety of negative expressions (nothing, never, no one, etc.). Keeping travel in mind, we’ll watch Koh-lanta! (Survivor in French). As always, we’re working on balancing communication skills with keeping an eye out for what we call PFGs—petites fautes de grammaire - those little grammar mistakes we work to avoid. The last few weeks of school are also dedicated to preparation for their final oral exam.

 

Chinese 8: For Chinese 8, at the beginning of April, we just finished learning the vocabulary and grammar for Lesson 23 Asking directions. Students will work on a Scratch Animation project in which students will create a story and script, and voiceover with animation. And after that, students will learn Lesson 24: Trip to China, in which they will learn to ask and answer questions about vacation plans and identify a few major cities and attractions in China. For grammar piece, students will learn how to 坐 meaning to travel by and 又....又... meaning A and B. For cultural immersion, we will learn about Tourism in China (Beijing, Shanghai, xian) and Chinese geography. We will also learn and make some of the most seen Chinese sports. At last, students will be the Chinese travel agency and create a detailed three-day travel itinerary in Chinese to attract customers. 

 

Spanish 8: After the prep for the Placement exam, we will move into our penultimate unit of the year—the future tense (i.e., “I WILL get good grades this year.”) Students really enjoy this grammar piece as the conjugations are pretty intuitive and quite easy compared to what we've already learned this year in other tenses. It's also very concrete in terms of usage. We have a chance to do some fun activities and projects based on what we will or won’t do.

We will read the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series of books. In small groups, students will take turns reading aloud one of the books and answering questions about the plot and sequencing of events checking for reading comprehension. Afterward, they will begin writing their own “If You Give a…” style short story with an animal of their choosing. 

 

Our last grammar unit of the year is the conditional tense (“I would do.") The conditional tense also has very simple conjugations, which is a welcome respite! We will ask and answer ridiculous hypothetical questions in class and have lots of opportunities for creativity and silliness, especially as this unit is paired with outer space-themed vocabulary!

 

Geometry 8: We are starting our study of right triangles. We just did a crash course on the Pythagorean theorem and now will connect right triangles with proportions based on similarity. Then we will explore 45-45-90 and 30-60-90 triangles before moving on to the basic trigonometric ratios which let us find distances and angle measures that are hard to measure in real life. You may even remember sine, cosine, and tangent. Then, as time allows, we will either delve into circles where students see how similarity once more comes into play or we will work on the concepts of area, perimeter, and volume. Right after spring break, all students took a math skills test, which is one factor used in determining the correct math course for students attending the OES Upper School. 

 

Algebra 8: We continue with non-linear algebra topics this spring. In April, we will look at how to add, subtract, and multiply polynomial expressions using various methods. We then “undo” our work and learn how to factor polynomials. In May, we will switch gears and explore quadratics. We will graph quadratic functions and learn multiple methods of solving quadratic equations, culminating in how to apply the quadratic formula. 

 

English 8: In English 8 we have begun our exploration of comics via MAUS and selections from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Students will read at least one other book from the connected Book Bundle list. The unit will conclude with a portfolio project that helps students explore comics as a medium of storytelling, tying it to their book bundle reading and study of World War II in history. After our current unit, we will move into our final book of the year, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. 

 

Technology 8: Welcome to 8th-grade Technology class! Throughout this course, we will broaden and deepen our knowledge and understanding of the technology tools students and their peers have previously explored, and new technologies they are interested in. They will be asked to identify a person or group and an issue they have, develop a project to help solve the problem, and demonstrate their ability to use technology to support this endeavor. They will also be asked to explain how it supports them and their learning, as well as document the process of how they gained these skills. Some examples of technologies students may select from are 3D printing, VR and AR, the Swift programming environment, CoSpaces, Micro:bits, and more! 

 

Religion 8: Welcome to Religion 8! This class offers students the opportunity to learn about and appreciate different faith traditions by exploring the ways in which various traditions worship and gather. We accomplish this by both examining the how and why behind worship practices and by also designing and leading our virtual weekly Middle Schools Chapels. Starting in April and continuing through May, 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. April and May are rich with various religious and cultural holidays, which offer students the opportunity to explore their meanings and traditions both in class and in the chapel. Specifically, students will explore the meanings and traditions of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the Christian seasons of Easter and Pentecost, as well as diving into the power of poetry and music. Lastly, as students gain experience and confidence in 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.