By Kandice Kimmel, Latin & History, 5th-8th Grade
The St James Day School Middle School choir made their way across town to carol and wish the residents at Cornerstone Retirement Community a Merry Christmas.
Sometimes the simple act of spending time visiting and sharing talents brings the most joy! The middle school students and teachers also enjoyed an Italian lunch out at Joe’s Pizza. Thank you, Joe’s Pizza for hosting our large group with kindness and efficiency!
Did you know over sixty percent of our English words are derived from Latin? Each week every Latin student is assigned a Latin root or word, and has to find English words that derived from the Latin root, define the word, and give examples. Every year the fifth through eighth students participate in a Derivative Tree Poster Contest. The derivative trees illustrate the importance of root meanings. The objective is to learn the meanings of the root to broaden vocabulary, and to understand or be able to 'figure out' the meaning of large/longer words. Example: the Latin root -vid/ -vis means 'to see' and we get the English words vision, visible, invisible, television, visit, video, evidence, etc.
Our wonderful middle school students have done it again! The 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders came together to pull off another successful pumpkin patch experience for our very own preschoolers. The event kicked off with the 7th and 8th grade students reading to them the stories they created, all the while dressed as one of the characters from their story. Then, they taught them all about the life cycle of pumpkins with a song and illustrations they had made. Next, our 5th and 6th graders hosted them for some fun carnival-style games in the open field next to the patch. Lastly, before hopping onto the trailer for a hayride, the preschoolers were able to pick their very own pumpkins from the patch to take with them. Our middle school students were involved with this project from start to finish. There was responsibility and teamwork that went into planting and caring for the pumpkins. Overall, their efforts made the event even more special for the preschoolers. Kudos to them all!
Students applied their knowledge of force and motion concepts to construct a marshmallow launcher. The launcher was constructed from a paper cut and a balloon. After following directions, it was time to apply our knowledge and have some fun launching marshmallows across the basketball court! Students were able to apply different levels of force in order to launch the marshmallow different distances.
A large portion of science includes scientific investigation and reasoning. The students develop abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry in classroom and outdoor investigations and learn how to plan and conduct descriptive investigations.
By Kandice Kimmel, Latin & History, 5-8th Grade
Project based learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex questions, problems or challenges.
To wrap up our world geography unit, our fifth and sixth grade students hosted an International Fair. They were each assigned a country to research, and designed a display, brought an international dish to sample, and presented for all of the students and teachers at St. James Day School. I am so incredibly proud of each and every one of these students!
