Here is another video from December’s St. George and the Dragon performance, featuring The Fool, Father Christmas, Holly, Ivy, Mistletoe, Mother Dolly and the Dragon of Air.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
A bilingual assembly with bonus car racing
Oscar’s Senior Spanish class had an unusual presentation on Friday. The class has been working on a project called El mundo hispano. They have studied the 21 Spanish-speaking countries around the world in addition to the Spanish-speaking population of the United States. Each student researched their assigned country and then made a detailed poster about it. At Friday’s assembly, the class lined up and spoke about their country in Spanish. The middle schoolers in the audience had been assigned twelve different questions about the countries – the questions and answers were both in Spanish. Here are some of the students with their posters:
A presentation on Venezuela
The posters had information about population, the flag, imports/exports and more
The presentation was a challenging exercise in spoken Spanish, both for the presenters and the questioners. The senior class is still working on the Power Point presentations about their countries. Next week, the middle schoolers will be posing as non-Spanish speaking weather and news people to practice the negative forms of speech.
Oscar’s Senior class sings the song Palo Bonito from Puerto Rico.
Also at this assembly, Maggie’s Senior science class demonstrated their K’NEX cars from the previous week’s experiments (See the February 13th post for more information on this). The students all showed their cars to the group and talked about their design. Then the top performing cars were demonstrated on the ramp. It was an excellent visual demonstration of how the largest cars or the cars with the most wheels were not necessarily the fastest. In fact, the second fastest car was the smallest!
Happy Valentine's Day!
This morning the big room was full of students and teachers tucking Valentines in boxes. It’s a North Branch tradition to make beautifully decorated Valentine containers – the younger students do them in class, and the older students make theirs at home. Many of them are quite elaborate!
The very creative Junior One table
I loved this little robot box
Early Primary's ruffled bags
Some of the older students' boxes - and a toaster!
Lift the lid on this piano to deliver your valentine
Below, Krista’s class recites “I love you more than applesauce” by Jack Prelutsky. The end got cut off but it was too sweet not to share!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
This morning the big room was full of students and teachers tucking Valentines in boxes. It’s a North Branch tradition to make beautifully decorated Valentine containers – the younger students do them in class, and the older students make theirs at home. Many of them are quite elaborate!
The very creative Junior One table
I loved this little robot box
Early Primary's ruffled bags
Some of the older students' boxes - and a toaster!
Lift the lid on this piano to deliver your valentine
Below, Krista’s class recites “I love you more than applesauce” by Jack Prelutsky. The end got cut off but it was too sweet not to share!
Senior Class Science – How far will a K'NEX car go?
Maggie’s Senior (5th and 6th grade) science students have been learning about potential and kinetic energy. To make it tangible and fun, Maggie had the students each design and build a car with K’NEX pieces. The students could opt for several different design features, such as wheel size and number, body length and width, and distribution of mass. Students based these decisions on earlier experiments in which they had controlled all design variables except one, determining how that design feature impacted the performance of the car. They made predictions about how far their cars would go based on design and mass. Cars were tested on ramps set up in the school’s central “Big Room.”
Two of the students with their car designs
Measuring multiple trials gave students a chance to hone their metric measuring skills. The students were surprised by many of the findings, and discovered that the biggest cars did not always travel the farthest. Graphing the results has helped students deepen their understanding of the physics concept: Potential Energy is proportional to Mass x Height.
A graph showing the results of the car trials
More of the different designs
The students also drew ads to feature the different design features of their cars. The students are still analyzing the data from the ramp trials, and will plot their final results on a graph that measures mass vs. distance traveled. Students have been thinking about real-world car design features like stability, control and fuel efficiency in new ways!
The Speck and its ad
Senior Class Science – How far will a K’NEX car go?
Maggie’s Senior (5th and 6th grade) science students have been learning about potential and kinetic energy. To make it tangible and fun, Maggie had the students each design and build a car with K’NEX pieces. The students could opt for several different design features, such as wheel size and number, body length and width, and distribution of mass. Students based these decisions on earlier experiments in which they had controlled all design variables except one, determining how that design feature impacted the performance of the car. They made predictions about how far their cars would go based on design and mass. Cars were tested on ramps set up in the school’s central “Big Room.”
Two of the students with their car designs
Measuring multiple trials gave students a chance to hone their metric measuring skills. The students were surprised by many of the findings, and discovered that the biggest cars did not always travel the farthest. Graphing the results has helped students deepen their understanding of the physics concept: Potential Energy is proportional to Mass x Height.
A graph showing the results of the car trials
More of the different designs
The students also drew ads to feature the different design features of their cars. The students are still analyzing the data from the ramp trials, and will plot their final results on a graph that measures mass vs. distance traveled. Students have been thinking about real-world car design features like stability, control and fuel efficiency in new ways!
The Speck and its ad
The penguins were here all week
This last week at school there was penguin fever in the air. Both Junior classes have been reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins, and they celebrated the end of the book by putting on a series of penguin skits. Friday’s assembly was well-attended by penguin supporters including parents, grandparents, siblings and friends. There were three skits – my favorite moment was the slap fight between two penguins. Also, watch for the “honorary penguin,” the littlest member of Jessie’s Junior One class – she didn’t want to be left out of the play and was delighted to be allowed to roam the stage.
The extra penguin
Mr. Popper realizes the house may be too small for two penguins
The Junior Ones take a bow
In the next clip from the second skit, Mr. and Mrs. Popper attempt to control their household (with limited results).
Admiral Drake talks with Mrs. and Mr. Popper
The Popper house gets a little more organized….
In the Mr. Popper’s Penguins finale, all of the Juniors sang “Your Personal Penguin!”by Sandra Boynton.
“I want to be Your Personal Penguin
I want to walk right by your side
I want to be Your Personal Penguin
I want to travel with you far and wide…”
We also listened to several well-played recorder performances. Below, Katrien and some of the Junior Twos play “Moving Forward” by Chris Judah-Lauder.
Here, most of the Seniors play “Jingle Bells.”
