May/June 2012
Dear Middle School Parents,
In June, we conclude the academic year with our moving up ceremonies, a celebration of our Middle School. Below is a snapshot of the dynamic teaching and learning that took place in Middle School during the 2011-2012 school year.
- Classical Ballet classes for Classes IV and V, including a morning workshop at the American Ballet Theatre.
- Class IV’s composition of “mini-musicals.” Garage Band was used to compose scene change music for their show.
- The Golden Ratio Lab in Class VI where students’ compared their measurements to the Fibonacci sequence and Pascal’s triangle. At the Met, they made mathematical and artistic connections.
- Students learned metric units using a “Brain Pop” animated interactive lesson.
- Creation of car animations and music videos.
- Integration of the Fabrication Lab into our curriculum, particularly the marriage of art, design, and technology.
- Class V’s first Middle School overnight to Camp Greenkill, where they engaged in a variety of team-building activities.
- iPoetry websites, which provide students a forum where they can share poems (either by published poets or their own original poems). The blog format enables students to provide feedback to one another.
- After their study of ligaments, bones, and muscles of the human hand, Class VII dissected a bird wing to observe how it moved. They investigated how certain common kitchen tools and utensils function. As a result of their studies, girls designed and constructed prosthetic hands that are able to pick up, move, and put down a full soda can.
- Our Class VII botanists discovered alternative ways to grow plants in an urban environment. Beginning with seeds in small self-irrigating greenhouses, which they helped design, the girls transplanted their vegetables and herbs to our own vertical wall garden.
- During the study of Christology, students visited the Medieval Galleries at the Met. They learned through paintings and sculptures, how artists throughout the ages attempt to explain the ineffable theological mystery through creative symbolism.
- With the collaboration of parents, who organized our tours of the Louvre and the Opera Garnier, the Class VII trip to Europe was our best yet.
- In world languages, girls used their iPads to film their dialogues.
- Creation of iBooks to illustrate grammatical topics from apostrophes to complex sentences, each with clickable videos and interactive multiple-choice quizzes.
- Production of iMovies to illustrate the differences between verbal, situational, and dramatic irony.
- During their study of Newton’s laws, Class V designed their own simple machines out of everyday materials. Inventions included roller coasters, which fed fish, cookie-making factories, and cupcake decoration machines.
Happy Summer!
Sincerely,
Jane F. Bell
Divisional Head, Middle School