This Week in Sally's Core

Dear 8th grade families and friends!

We’re off to a predictably busy start in 8th grade! In an effort to keep you abreast of what's afoot so you can stay ahead...I'll do my best to post weekly reports to let you know what we've been doing in our Language Arts / Humanities cores.

In this week we sharpened our focus on the original Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci and his concept of "Curiosità," defined as "an insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning." Our goal is to emulate Leo's insatiable curiosity as we explore the many facets of our 8th grade year. Having each recorded one hundred "burning questions" in our Curiosità Journals, we're now in the process of generating ten "power questions" per student - i.e., ten questions from our one hundred that seem the most important or pressing. I look forward to assembling, surveying and then discussing these questions on Monday. We will work extensively with these “power questions” and will spend significant time reflecting on them in our journals.

In addition to Leonardo's concept of Curiosità, we delved more deeply into self-examination and awareness through our recent teambuilding / "True Colors Workshop," conducted by facilitator, Chris Youngberg of Canfield and Associates. Our students determined their personal array of colors - complete with personality traits and tendencies. Be sure to ask your 8th grader whether she's primarily a gold, orange, blue or green...and what it all means! We will return to their findings as we work on teambuilding throughout the year. We also discussed and experienced Dr. Martin Seligman's online "Signature Strengths" assessment (see "Authentichappiness.org" for more details) and will return to these results as well as we seek to capitalize on our innate strengths rather than lament our ubiquitous deficits!

Our "Word-of-the-Day" (henchforth referred to as WOD) routine is already well entrenched with impressive results. Basically 8th graders encounter words in their every day dealings that alternately intrigue or perturb them...and then each student investigates said word as her own individual "WOD." The student then brings her WOD to her table, where one word is selected by the members of each table group for an all-group consideration. Today alone we discussed such words as penury, epithets, calamity, allocation, and - my all-time favorite - sycophant!

Looking ahead, in two week’s time the 8th grade will begin a reading/writing/reflecting project called "The Significant Adult Book Reflection." Basically, each girl will approach a "significant adult" in her life and ask what book particularly impressed him/her when he/she was her age. Then the student will read that book, conduct an in-depth, guided interview, and then
write a reflection paper about that experience. Soooo...in the off chance that your 8th grader might consider YOU a "significant adult," I wanted to give you fair warning!

See many of you at Flight Day...my fingers are crossed for cloudless skies and gentle breezes!

Sally

Upcoming Field Trips and Off-Campus Events

This week is a busy one for the 8th grade! Here are a couple of key reminders as we kick off the week...

Tuesday, September 18 - We'll be at the Museum of Flight for programs related to our upcoming flight day. Many thanks to all the wonderful parents who have offered to drive carpools. We'll be meeting at SGS at 8:30am and departing as soon as possible. After a full day of activities at the Aviation Learning Center and a Flying Gizmos Show, we'll depart the Museum of Flight at 2:30pm to make sure we are back at school well before the end of the day. Students should bring a sack lunch and snacks.

Friday, September 21 - Young Eagles Flight Day! Please remember that students should be dropped off and picked up at Galvin Flying. I sent an email to the 8th grade family distribution list with driving instructions. If for some reason, you did not receive that email - please let one of the 8th grade faculty know and we'll have your email added to this all important list. But until then, you can retrieve directions on my website under Flight Day Info. The link can be found in the sidebar to your right.

Thanks again for your ongoing support.
MM

Welcome to the 8th Grade Blog

Happy Start of the School Year!
We've been enjoying getting to know your daughters over the last few days and are all anticipating a great school year. We have lots of exciting activities and events in 8th grade and this blog is an opportunity for you to follow along with what's happening in each of our classes. It is designed specifically to let parents and families get a bird's eye view of daily life in the 8th grade. Check it at your convenience and see what is going on here at SGS!

High Tech Geometry

Hello families and friends of the 8th grade!
In between our filming and editing for the Production we continue to move forward with our math studies. This week we had our first geometry quiz...and we took it online. Using a site called QuizStar, students registered for my class and can take their assessments online. This is particularly useful for our beginning geometry pursuits because it is so vocabulary based. If you'd like to take a peek at the interface your daughters will be using the next weeks, I've created a "sample quiz" for the first 10 interested people to take a peek at. If you're interested, go to http://quizstar.4teachers.org/indexs.jsp , user name: sgsguest, password: sgsguest
I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Separation anxiety

During the rather infrequent lulls between location shots and editing mania in the past few days, several students spontaneously and independently approached me with fears and concerns about their next big adventure: moving on! As I understood it, their trepidation centered around two major events: entering high school in fall, and more immediately, leaving the nest - better known as SGS - in a matter of weeks. With these various conversations in mind, I awoke yesterday morning with the realization that we, as a group, needed to talk, so I laid aside my envisioned lesson plan and instead, we spent a good segment of yesterday examining and then sharing our concerns. After a brief introduction about feelings - "they aren't right or wrong, they simply are" - and dealing with fear - (I related the story of a woman who had recurring dreams about being chased by a monster that only went away when, in her last dream of this nature, she turned and faced the monster instead of running, only to have it evaporate, along with the dreams, before her very eyes) - I asked each student to take a few moments and write about that which was paramount on her mind at that moment. Reading through their reflections last night, I saw what I expected to see: much concern over friendships lapsing due to separation, issues about starting over in a new, unfamiliar, large, SCARY environment (aka High School), worry about measuring up, myriad fears about psycho/emotional safety and the lack thereof... We began a discussion in each core which then naturally led to an all-group lunch meeting where we continued to share. As each girl spoke from the heart about her concerns, we then examined the feelings that lay just beneath the surface of the story: fear, sadness, excitement, confusion. While this will necessarily constitute an ongoing conversation, it has begun, and the accompanying release of a certain amount of tension is noticeable as a result. I suspect that these conversations might be occurring at home as well. If not, I suspect they will be! As always, feel free to communicate with any of us about issues you see mattering to your 8th grader!

And now it's on to the Museum of Flight for our big "on location" shot!

Oh and…don't forget to bring your dirty cars our 8th grade car wash in the church parking lot across from SGS from 12:30 to 4:30 THIS SATURDAY! We thank you in advance for your patronage!