Sidney Riverbend

This semester we offered Modern World History, Geography and World Cultures, and Civics. The Civics class utilizes games from iCivics.org to reinforce lessons for the class. Students also created poster projects and used the information they have been learning to create a menu for our upcoming International Food week.

We have a full plate of mathematics courses of high school pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, and algebra two. Mark has been implementing teaching assessments and teaching strategies from the Math4ME trainings he is attending.

We offered Internet Safety and Computer Use as an elective class. The students learn about keeping one's personal identification information safe on the internet. The students also learned about using credible sources and using MLA format for research papers.

English classes are working on analyzing themes in books, and what the author wants the reader to know One high school class is currently reading A Separate Peace, and the other high school class is reading All the Light We Cannot See. Both books focus on themes of power and change, nationality and loyalty, as well as shame and guilt.

Physical Science class has begun to learn about Chemistry. Students will be exploring periodic table, learning chemical equations and how to balance them, as well as what makes chemistry so important in our daily lives Our Earth Science class is in the middle of a unit on Earth's oceans. We have explored ocean landforms, and talking about climate change and how it affects the habitat of our oceans.

One of the electives offered this semester is Poetry. Students are learning about figurative language and elements of poetry. Another elective is Dystopian Book Club. Starting off the semester, we've been looking at elements of literature and discussing what makes a book apart of the "dystopian" genre.

The students in the Mythology elective are beginning to learn about the major Greek Mythological figures and their Roman counter parts. Eventually they will learn common mythology tales and explore the Mythology of other cultures.

The Current Issues class is learning about current issues from a variety of sources and comparing the information each source provides. They are also tuning into CNN10 for a daily 10-minute news brief of current events.

Happenings

Last summer our students explored Aquaponics and had individual aquaponics tanks with guppies and grew wheat grass and a variety of sprouts. Recently our system expanded and we are now learning how to care for guppy fry (baby fish). We have a tank with about a dozen babies who were rescued from the adult tanks and are thriving on their own. Guppy fry born in Dec. (left) and 1 month later (right) The students used a background of notebook paper for scale.