16 Wednesday, October 10, 2012 The Current
Spotlight on Schools British School of Washington
In Year 4 Edinburgh, we started the year with an exciting International Primary Curriculum topic, volcanoes! We started by researching the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii. One of our tasks was to write an eyewitness account in the form of a letter. Here is the opening to the letter I wrote: Dear Pliny, I hope that this letter finds you and your family well. While I was in Pompeii, I witnessed something terrible. Mount Vesuvius erupted! I was walking in the marketplace, I looked over my shoulder, and saw grayish-black smoke coming out of the top of the mountain. Rocks were rolling down the hill towards the village and making a rumbling noise. Red sparks flew out into the sky, people were terrified! They ran and screamed and pushed as they tried to get away. — Maya Perry- Pradhan, Year 4 Edinburgh (third-grader)
Eaton Elementary
Every Friday, third, fourth and fifth grades separate into different classrooms to learn about subjects of their choice in Eagle Time and ER2 (Enrichment, Re-teach, Extend, Remediate). Each ER2 class includes third-, fourth- and fifth-graders learning together. Classroom teachers work with small groups while the resource teachers challenge other kids. ER2 offerings are Chinese, music, physical education, computers, 21st-century media, technical art and library. The Eagle Time classes are for all third- through fifth-graders and give kids the chance to experience new things. The third-grade choices for Eagle Time are Orffestra, Geoplunge, Recycled Art, Lego Robotics, Continent Quest, Games Italia and Challenge 24. One student who does Challenge 24 with the math specialist said, “I’m glad I’m in third grade so I can do Eagle Time.” Another student who participates in Recycled Art said that she loves art and she didn’t know she could make so much out of recycled materials. Fourth-graders have the same choices. The kids taking Continent Quest are learning about map reading and love having a geography bee each time to test what they learn. The Geoplunge kids are learning about U.S. geography. A team from Eaton will go to a Geoplunge tournament. The fifth-grade choices are Podcast Productions, Geoplunge, Set & Costume Design, Lego Robotics and Continent Quest. In Lego Robotics, students learn how to build robots with the different types of Legos, mechanical parts and computer programming. Everyone will do three Eagle
School DISPATCHES
Time classes this year. — Julius Boxer-Cooper and Charlotte Patrick-Dooling, thirdgraders; Danny Ringel, fourthgrader; and Lilly Koerner and Isabella Wood, fifth-graders
Edmund Burke School
I distinctly remember the faint smell of wood and saxophone reeds from the first time I entered the band room: the smell of music. The bands at Burke are fantastic. We all come to Burke with a set instrument that we play or want to play, and we leave learning three more. I came to Burke playing violin. Although I have only been here for one year, I now know how to play the drums and bass and to sing. It is pure magic how John Howard, the band teacher, can do this. When I came to Burke in seventh grade, the music program was the thing I wanted to do most. I have been classically trained for the violin and thought that there would be an orchestra. I heard that there was only a band and I was disappointed. But I came to figure out that the band can be great. After you have completed a song and it is pretty good, you get to perform at assembly. It is kind of nerve-racking to be in front of the entire school, but you get the hang of it. There are a total of eight different bands: seventh-grade band, eighth-grade band, Band A, Band B, Band C and Band D. In addition to these student bands, there is a pit band for the musical in the spring, which anyone can join, and a faculty band limited to members of the faculty. — Nathan Saindon, eighth-grader
Field School
Since Field’s founding in 1972, winter internship has been an opportunity for students to go out into the real world and experience working in a structured environment. Students get two weeks off of school in February to pursue their interests in the community by taking part in an unpaid internship. In the past, seventh- through 12thgraders have interned at a variety of places including soup kitchens, bakeries, hospitals and even on Capitol Hill. This year the new sixth grade will also be a part of internship, but will do activities in the D.C. area as a group. To kick off internship this year, students gathered early last week in the gym for an assembly. Teachers and faculty members discussed the program, how to choose an internship and how to succeed in a working environment. To encourage students to be proactive about getting their internships, teachers performed a skit mimicking the popular TV show “The Voice,” internship-style. Four teachers played the roles of the iconic judges: Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Blake
Shelton and Adam Levine. A few other teachers performed songs and chose their internship mentors from the group of judges. This week is Spirit Week at Field, and organizers planned a theme for each day of school. With no school on Columbus Day, the week kicked off Tuesday with Harvest Day. For the rest of the week, students were to dress up as twins on Wednesday and babies or senior citizens on Thursday, then wear Field gear on Friday. The week culminates in homecoming. — Maddie Williams, sixth-grader, and Lila Bromberg and Jana Cohen, eighth-graders
Hearst Elementary
Our class has adopted a bison, Buddy Bison, from the National Park Trust. Each day a student from our class takes Buddy home along with a writing journal. We write about an outdoor experience we have with Buddy and take a picture with him in the great outdoors. We want to thank the National Park Trust for letting us participate in the Buddy Bison program. Here are some things we want to say about our experiences with Buddy. He is afraid of the dark, so we keep a nightlight on for him when he spends the night at our houses. Buddy is friendly and quiet. He is forgiving. Buddy is on a rawfoods diet. He only eats grass (one student called him a lawnmower because of this). Buddy is like family to us. He goes where we go. If our class goes on a field trip, he goes with us. Most of all, he likes the outdoors and helps us by getting us to play outside. — Third-graders
Janney Elementary
Last month the fifth-graders went to Calleva Farm in Poolesville, Md., for a field trip to learn about team building. The students are incorporating this theme into their school year. Activities at Calleva included the round robin, where every student started at a different place on an obstacle course filled with ropes and wires and worked as a team to make it all the way around. In another activity, two students walked across a plank of wood that acted as a seesaw, balancing their weight to get to the middle. There was also a high wire and “the log,” where students climbed up a tree to reach a wire or a log about 25 to 50 feet in the air. Then they could walk across the wire or log and rappel down to ground level. A little scary, right? Janney fifth-graders have gone to Calleva for the last five years. “We looked at places that had a specific program for team building, and we contacted several camps and schools, and we felt that Calleva was the best choice for our kids,” said fifth-grade teacher Mary Osterman. The goal of team building is to See Dispatches/Page 17