Great First Week for First Grade
First graders have been busy getting to know their teachers and cohorts. We have been playing a lot of community building games and practicing how to be back in school. Students have also been exploring many of the materials, some of them brand new, that they’ll be using this year. They have done a watercolor paint discovery, used their iPads and the Seesaw app, and have been eating lunch outside in their camping chairs. It’s been a great start to the year in first grade!
– Cicely Gibson and Katie Alexander, grade 1 teachers
Arts Set to Roll With New Six-Week Intensives
During this unprecedented year at Belmont Day, we are excited to continue providing a robust arts education that honors the whole child. Students will continue honing content-specific skills in six-week intensives that will intertwine socio-emotional learning with the arts disciplines. This adapted format will combine project-based learning with online sources and experiences. We will be using Chromebook applications to create a digital animation, use outdoor learning spaces to do collaborative music-making by grade cohorts, and even utilize individually assigned woodworking tools to problem-solve a task! We look forward to the growth opportunities of this new format and can’t wait to engage our students in all that the arts have to offer.
– Yui Kitamura, music teacher for grades 3 to 8
Eighth Grade Charges Into the New School Year
Eighth grade is off to a great start with students at school on Monday and Tuesday to have some advisory bonding time, meet their teachers, receive school supplies, and review new health and safety procedures. On Wednesday, we kicked off our first full day of school with a meeting, giving all of the students a chance to say hi to everyone in the grade and do some team building activities. Wednesday through Friday, students completed their first offsite classes with introductions to the curriculum. While at home students worked on a project to design an online poster using pictures and words to answer the question “Who Are We?” Students will have a chance to share their posters with their advisories starting Monday.
– Elinor Hannum, middle school math teacher and grade 8 advisor
Sixth Grade Welcomes New Students, Teachers
Handwashing, cookie recipes, mask-wearing, the periodic table of the elements, how to remember to keep our distance when we are excited to see our friends live and in person, outdoor snack, milk crates full of notebooks and supplies, and questions like “Does everyone grow up?” “How do things change?” “How do I decide what is right?” and “Who is left out?” These were all a part of our sixth grade students getting back to school on Monday and Tuesday afternoon. We welcomed sixteen new students to Belmont Day, three remote learners, two teachers who are new to the community—Matt Segil and Andrea Keohane—and one whole group of learners (both young and older) eager to get back to school. Welcome back, everyone!
– Dean Spencer, middle school social studies and grade 6 advisor
