Spanish: Mr. Paras, Grades 6-8, [email protected]; Señora Green, Grade 6, [email protected]
Grade 6: Students will be learning to distinguish between indefinite and definite articles and the concept of masculine and feminine nouns. Vocabulary will focus on parts of the body and colors, which will reinforce the grammar concepts of noun gender and adjective agreement. Students will then move on to word order in Spanish which is different from English.
Grade 7: Grade 7 students will be working on food vocabulary for breakfast, lunch, dinner and desserts. To go along with this we will review time and what we eat at certain times of the day. Students will review er and ir verb endings as well as the differences and similarities between me gusta and me encanta. We will then move on to foods that go along with a healthy lifestyle.
Grade 8: Grade 8 students will be learning a new tense for verbs, the present progressive. We will work with household chores and what chores people do at certain times. We will show pictures of different scenarios and have students describe what the people are doing in the pictures. We will then ask questions and give oral answers about the scenarios in the picture. Students will then create a present progressive book for a project. Lastly, we will move onto affirmative tú commands and how to form them and when to use them.
French: Sarah Bilodeau, Grades 6-8, [email protected]
6th Grade: This month 6th graders created storyboards about their favorite activities using spelling change verbs in the present tense. They will end the month of February creating their own mancala boards and learning about the literary and intellectual traditions of Mali OR creating puppets following the tradition on the Guignol puppet theatre in Lyon, France. This final week of February marks our own way of celebrating “Carnaval” season at RAUC. Students will play mancala, present mini puppet shows and enjoy speaking as much French together as we can as we celebrate the season following traditions of the Francophone world.
7th Grade: 7th graders are wrapping up their family unit. This week they will create their own family trees, either describing an imaginary family or their own. They will be as creative as possible, with options to use posters, sculpture or mosaic to make a lasting manipulative to help them retain this vocabulary and make reference to it in the future. Weather permitting, we hope to take a walk around the outside of the building to do a mock “carnaval” parade to celebrate the season and to gather branches and other natural realia we can use to make our “trees”. In 7th grade, we are talking a lot about how language learning is a building process and we want to carry our new knowledge from one unit to the next to build proficiency. The students have begun putting together their own language learning “dossier” or “handbooks” where they organize vocabulary and grammar manipulatives in an effort to keep track of their learning and access it easily as the class becomes more and more proficient together.
8th grade: At the beginning of February, students presented their dialogues between a travel agent and tourist choosing to travel to Port-au-Prince, Haiti OR Paris, France. It was quite close, but the majority of RAUC students recommended a tourist wanting to visit a Francophone nation go to Port-au-Prince, Haiti (just letting RAUC families know for your family vacation planning this summer as your students are wonderful travel agents!). Some students also chose to make their own recommendations based on personal experience and we learned about Canada, Morocco and Algeria. Not only were the dialogues well-written, but the accompanying illustrations of sites in Port-au-Prince and Paris were beautiful. Many RAUC faculty and students told me how much they enjoyed stopping by the French bulletin board to see the illustrated monuments. In February and March we will dig more deeply into the connected history of Port-au-Prince and Haiti and narrating stories in the past tense. The week before February break, students studied how to form verbs in the past tense and began working in groups to make large wall posters for the grammar rules. They decided that this was the best way for them to use the rules correctly as they work in teams to create short stories or fairy tales about an ideal day spent visiting Paris or Port-au-Prince (or another major city in the Francophone world). Their stories will be published with illustrations in a book for the students to take home and share with families. We hope to have our work complete by the end of March. In addition to their story-writing, students will be thinking about how major cities tell their stories and how we interpret them.
Health: Justin McNulty, Grades 6-8, [email protected]
6th Grade: Students continue to learn and engage in our Social and Emotional Learning Unit, Second Step. Students will be discussing about bullying, how to be an ally, respectful disagreements and what it means to consider other people’s perspectives.
7th Grade: Students have begun their Bullying and Ally Unit, Let’s Get Real. Students will be identifying ways that students are bullied and how they can be an ally and create a safe learning environment in school.
8th Grade: Students are coming to the end of their Sexual Education Unit, Get Real. The next couple weeks students will be focusing on healthy relationships, steps to making a healthy decision and a unit assessment.
Physical Education: Michael O’Connell, Grades 6-8, [email protected]
6th - 8th Grade: Students are currently halfway through their Fitness Units. 6th graders have been learning about the components of skill-related fitness by participating in a variety of strength and endurance fitness activities and games. 7th graders have been demonstrating an understanding of both skill-related and health-related fitness components by participating in self-selected strength and endurance fitness activities. Using skill-related and health-related fitness components, 8th graders have identified areas to improve and now participate in conditioning activities specific to those areas. Students record their daily conditioning activities and results.
Art: Lucia Lee, Grades 6-8, [email protected]
6th graders just started their semester of Art and have recently finished a “police sketch artist” partner drawing exercise. They are now starting on a Leluja paper cutout project in preparation for Spring.
7th graders finished designing their names in bubble letters/transforming objects into their names/arranging letters in a creative and personal way. They have started to transfer their designs onto copper foil in preparation for creating metal art using repoussé techniques.
8th graders are continuing to use the grid method and techniques on their two-tone high contrast self-portraits. They will first use the grid method to draw and enlarge the shapes of their facial features onto a canvas panel, which is a laborious process. When the outline and shapes are accurate, they will turn their drawings into paintings.
Chorus: Joshua DeWitte, Grades 6-8, [email protected]
6th Grade: After an inspiring performance at their concert, singers are working on group projects to create a musical scene based on a song of their choice. Students are acting, directing, and choreographing their scenes. Groups are using a mix of existing songs and original work. Once the projects are completed the last week of February, we will begin learning new repertoire as well as focusing on music literacy.
7th Grade: After an inspiring performance at their concert, singers are working in groups on arranging and performing an acapella song. Students break down the song into its various instrumental and vocal parts and decide how to best imitate the instrumental parts vocally. Students will perform their pieces the end of February. We will then beginning learning new repertoire as well as focusing on music literacy.
8th Grade: After an inspiring performance at their concert, singers are working on their 8th grade recital pieces. In the tradition of vocal studios in high school and college, students will perform a solo or small ensemble piece. The recital will be held over 2 class periods in March. This is an opportunity for all singers to demonstrate the progress they have made over the past 3 years.
String Orchestra: Brittany Phillips, Grades 6-8, [email protected]
6th grade orchestra: Congratulations on an excellent concert! The 6th grade students wowed the RAUC community with their music earlier this month, and are well on their way to furthering their musical growth. We have started our new piece, “Rhythm N’ Blues”, and are investigating the roots of Blues and Jazz music in American history. Students are working on swinging rhythms, and playing the funky walking bass line along with the I-IV-V progression.
The 7th graders did a fantastic job at our February concert. Congratulations to all students! Their hard work paid off enormously, and we are ready for more challenging repertoire this semester. Students are learning about the differences between major and minor scales with our two new pieces, “Canon Power” in D major, and “Pirates of the Caribbean” in d minor. Additionally, students learning WHY it is so important to understand key signatures and scale patterns-realizing that scales are the basis of all music we play. Students are also continuing to work on their solo literature and shifting exercises.
Congratulations to the 8th grade orchestra on their wonderful performance! “Speak Your Mind” left a big impression on students and audience members, and it connected well to our core values of Reflecting, Aiming High and Seeking Unity. Speaking of Aiming High, eighth grade students committed to working hard, and are setting weekly practice goals for “Pirates of the Caribbean” in order to have it performance ready by May. In addition to this thematic piece, students will also be working on a project around J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 1.” We will be focusing on combining modern dubstep and r&b influences with the Baroque style of Bach. There is a lot of work to be done, but I am confident in the abilities and work ethic of our 8th grade string students.
Band: Mr. Wroge, Grades 5-8, [email protected]
6th - 8th Grade Band: Thank you for the great concert!! Job well done! We are now starting to work on new music. I have recently passed out “Bad” by Michael Jackson, which is a fun tune to play together! We always continue to reinforce the basics such as music literacy, ensemble playing, posture, breath support, play position, and rest position. For 7th and 8th graders, I have also passed out “Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple, “Cissy Strut” by the Meters, and “The Chronicles Of Narnia”.
Library Technology: Sam Musher, [email protected]
8th grade: 8th grade social studies students have chosen a social movement they’re interested in, such as Black Lives Matter or the fight to win women the right to vote. They will write a paper about how the movement started and its successes and failures. I’ve been working with them every day to choose trustworthy web sources and useful database articles. Every time they find a website now, they ask themselves: what kind of source is this (media, organization, something else)? Does it have a good reputation? Does it quote experts? I’m very proud of our critical researchers!