Seventh Grade French Students Educate on Climate Change
Following a short unit on weather vocabulary, seventh grade French students learned about various initiatives that can positively impact the effects and course of climate change. They explored some infographics and watched an informational video on the subject. In groups, they used the platform Canva to prepare their own posters (in French, of course) featuring actions we can all take. The posters were then displayed around BDS. The students also filmed a number of public service announcements to complement the messages of the posters.
– Jennifer Friborg, grades 7 & 8 French teacher
PE Update: Sledding For the Win
Upon first glance, the hill behind the Osborne tennis courts doesn’t appear very long or steep. Yet add two feet of snow, a bunch of sleds, and enthusiastic athletes, and suddenly there may be no hill more adventurous in all of New England.
All week long, shouts of joy could be heard as our students engaged in their annual sledding (as nature allows) in physical education class. For the students, it was pure joy, as they raced downhill solo, or in tandem, choosing tracks such as “lumpy-bumpy” or a smoother run. For the teachers, the balance, cooperation, and fitness required to fly downhill and then trudge uphill was nothing short of epic. Layers were shed, sweat poured, comfort zones were extended, and it was all via a simple piece of plastic equipment and a gentle slope covered in snow. Sledding for the win!
– Alex Tzelnic, physical education teacher
Eighth Graders Examine Different Forms of Poetry
Eighth grade students are deep in the trenches of studying poetry. We explored the ways sound creates meaning by reading “The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll and letting the sounds of its many nonsense words lead us to imagine what happens in the poem. Last week we learned about meter and rhythm with Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which is written in iambic tetrameter. We each found the emphasized syllables in our own names and tried out writing one line in iambic pentameter. This week we are exploring performance poetry, also known as spoken word or slam poetry. Soon we will begin memorizing poems to recite or perform for our peers later this spring.
– Elisabeth Klock, middle school English teacher
Pre-Kindergartners Celebrate the Snow and the Lunar New Year
It has been a very busy week for our youngest learners at BDS. On top of our daily schedule of learning and fun, this week brought two exciting opportunities for further exploration. First was the greeting of fresh snow which we embraced by engineering tunnels and collecting ice for a science lesson on how ice melts and how different compounds such as salt affect the melting process. This week we were also celebrating and learning about the Lunar New Year! We read several books about the holiday and we’re making lanterns, decorating red envelopes, and creating and painting a dragon!
– Nicole Siverls and Sharon Gillespy, pre-kindergarten teachers
