Gilman Blue and Gray March/April 2015

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the newspaper of gilman’s middle school

volume c

issue 5

march-april 2015

ALL WRITE. ALL RIGHT.

proudly serving Gilman School for 100 years

jolly good shows! LET’S ‘ARLES’ ‘ESCARGOT’ Noah Seth, B&G Staff with Thomas Langston, Ben Richardson, and Matt Rodgville

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Stirling, the Hounds toured the city, its castle, and visited the William Wallace monument, dedicated to Braveheart’s protagonist and the Scots’ most famous independence martyr. We arrived in Edinburgh, where Thomas

and paris one of best ever by

Grant Emry & Jalen Rucker, B&G Staff

AVIGNON - As we sat around the table, and Cameron finished what might have been his fifth croissant, everyone had this silly look on his face and began to realize that we were actually in France, the place we have been studying since sixth grade.

hour transfer, the group finally touched down in Avignon around ten a.m….the next day, of course. We began our time in Provence in tasty fashion by going to the Chocolaterie Bernard Castelain in Châteauneuf-du-

photo courtesy of ESesler-Beckman

UNITED KINGDOM - For this first-ever Spring Break trip, one that invited Upper Schoolers and Middle Schoolers to travel together throughout the United Kingdom, it was fitting that every day was a new adventure.

2015 spring break trip to provence

photo courtesy of DAbrams

gilman middle and upper schoolers sing their way across the u.k. over spring break

The combined Gilman Choirs gather for a photo op outside Edinburgh Castle.

The GMSers huddle up in the courtyard in front of Notre Dame in Paris.

Combining their voices with those of twenty members of the Upper School’s Glee Club and Traveling Men, seventeen GMS Middlemen enjoyed an eight-day tour of the U.K. that included four performances. During their Spring Break ‘across the pond,’ the singers collaborated to write a day-by-day blog wherein they captured the highlights of the trip, a few snippets of which are included here. First staying in the Scottish city of

This past March, the annual foreign language Spring Break trip journeyed to the South of France and then to Paris for more than a week of sights, sounds, and tastes. All the build-up over a full year of lunch meetings, presentations, and even Métro practice had prepared the eighth graders for this trip, which for many was the first to a foreign country. After an eight-hour flight and a one-

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nulli secundus eighth grade quintet shines at mdjcl certamen competition by John

Floersheimer, B&G Staff

HIGH I.Q by

FREDERICK - They came. They saw. They conquered. On Saturday, March 7, GMS eighth graders Finn Arthur, Sam Bloomberg, Andrew Diehl, Folahan Koleosho, and Nichi Pandey competed against teams from across the state in Latin grammar and vocab and Roman myth and history at a Certamen competition, held at Tuscarora High School and sponsored by the Maryland Junior Classical League. After all of the dust and declensions had settled, the GMSers learned that that they had placed first in the Level 2 competition and second in Level 1. Early that Saturday morning, the GMSers left in a minibus with Mr. Burke and Upper School Classics teacher Mr.

Houston. Upon arrival in Frederick, the students engaged in both Level 1 and 2 competitions, where everyone performed well. Nichi said that the hardest part of the competition was the random history questions while Andrew believed that the grammar was the toughest part. After the exciting morning, the students were served lunch and then attended to the awards ceremony. Looking back, Nichi thought that the best part of the day was beating the team from St. Mary’s (Annapolis). Andrew enjoyed being with his friends and teachers even more than beating other

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PAGE follow us! GMS Student Council members present at special leadership event at RPCS, plus The Smyth Report and upcoming events

PAGE CHIPS AND CREPES B&G Staffers Grant Emry, Jalen Rucker, and Noah Seth recount Spring Break trips to U.K. and France with plenty of photos

PAGE TAKING PART IN ART GMSers perform and have artwork displayed at annual MS Fine Arts Festival, and ‘NWN’ spends one year at GMS

PAGE FACES & FUN This or That?, 3 Truths & a Lie, Know the Flow, Avery Merlo joins Class of 2019, and Apple starts telling time for us

PAGE RUNNERS AND RUNS Track squad races to another fast start in first two meets, baseball starts out 0-3, and Joe Mather plays O’s manager

PAGE ALMOST PERFECT Tennis begins season 6-0, eighth grade lacrosse is 4-0-1, and first-ever seventh grade lacrosse team nets win in season opener

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author roland smith spends day at gms

Enzo Metsopoulos, B&G Staff

GMS - As part of Ms. Wegloski’s program to bring a professional author to speak to students each year, Roland Smith visited campus on April 22. He ran a seminar with Mr. Legg’s fifth period L.A.8 class and then treated the school to a special assembly during seventh period. During Mr. Legg’s class, Mr. Smith did not lead a writing workshop but instead gave the students tips on how to be a successful writer, sharing his step-bystep process for writing novels, even saying that he usually rewrites a whole book ten to twenty times, using a storyboard, before it is published. During the assembly, Mr. Smith highlighted his love for animals and traveling the world to observe animals, all so that he can write about them and real events that affect them, such as the Exxon

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Pape. There, students were able to buy chocolate covered almonds, copious amounts of milk and dark chocolate, and some chocolate Easter bunnies. Our first dinner of the trip was enjoyed at our hotel - a wonderful meal of coq au vin, mashed potatoes, and ice cream for dessert - and I am pretty sure that most of us were passed out on the dinner table.

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Valdez oil spill. Roland Smith is the proud author of a series that many middle schoolers may have already read, I.Q , which ended with its sixth and final novel in the fall of 2014. He has written several other popular series, such as Mutation, Zach’s Lie, Eruption, and quite a few more. He explained that it took him ten years to write Elephant Run, during which time he spent a month living in Africa. Because of all of the rewrites he has done, he says that there are five different versions of this novel now. Because he has worked with nearextinction in animals, he has several books about cryptids, which are animals that are legends and cannot be proven to exist, such as Sasquatch.

PAGE ‘FORWARD, MARCH!’ Class of 2020 spends day at either Antietam or Gettysburg, and Music-8 students enjoy special evening at BSO

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[Langston, ’20] probably had his favorite moment of the trip, touching the nose of the Greyfriars Bobby, the famous statue of Edinburgh’s favorite dog and unofficial city mascot. We then visited the graves of William McGonagall and Thomas Riddle, whose names J.K. Rowling had found in the cemetery right next to the school on which the design of

GMSers revel in SuperGras fun, New GMSers enjoy welcome picnic, 2015 Festival of the Arts Family Day, and AppMaster Nico Adamo


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