BB 04-23-2021
BRADFORD BULLETIN
VOLUME XIII, ISSUE 30
APRIL 23, 2021
FROM THE OFFICE
The end of the school year brings many special events…something we sorely missed last year! Keep an eye on e-mails and these important dates so you don’t miss a thing!
NEXT WEEK:
- Monday, 4/26: Girls’ soccer practice
- Tuesday, 4/27:
- Girls’ volleyball practice
- XC Spring training
- Wednesday, 4/28: CLT10 – 9th and 10th graders
- Thursday, 4/29:
- Girls’ volleyball practice
- XC Spring training
- Friday, 4/30:
- Field trip to NCMA – 9th grade
- Girls’ soccer practice
IN THE NEAR FUTURE:
- 5/7: Teacher Appreciation Day!
- 5/8: Revolutionary War Living History in Hillsborough. 10:00 – 4:00 In person or virtual.
- 5/13: Bradford Games – at Main Campus – 6th – 12th graders
- 5/14: Teacher Workday – no school
- 5/20: Career Fair (TBD)
- 5/25 – 5/26: Standardized Testing (1st – 8th grades)
- 5/31: Memorial Day – no school
- 6/2:
- Verse Bee – K – 5th grades
- Jr / Sr Gala – 6pm – 9pm
- 6/3: Baccalaureate – upper school
- 6/4:
- Field day / Ultimate Frisbee – all students on Main Campus
- GRADUATION – 7pm
FROM THE TEACHER’S DESK
GRAMMAR SCHOOL
Transitional Kindergarten (Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Grubb)
Bible
- This week TK students learned about the transformation of Saul to Paul. After the prayer with Ananias, Saul’s vision was restored but he saw with new eyes. With love in his heart for the Lord, Paul was used to tell the whole world about Jesus Christ.
Theme Adventure
- This week the theme was teddy bears. Lessons and books contained bear themes. On Thursday, students brought their teddy bears to school to teach their bears how to be students. It was a fun day!
Literacy
- TK students sorted items by the beginning sound of the item.
- TK students continue to match letters to their sounds and match capital letters with their lowercase partners.
- This week students also developed story comprehension.
- Students continued to practice word families.
Math
- This week students practiced paying for items using nickels and counting by fives.
- Students continued to practice with ABC patterns and identifying missing numbers.
- Students are able to independently write the numbers 1-20 in order.
Arts and Sciences
- TK students used their ability to identify shapes and their sizes to build a “Corduroy” teddy bear out of paper and glue.
Lower School P.E. (Mr. Davis)
K – 5th: This week the students worked on speed and coordination drills.
Kindergarten (Mrs. Rivera & Mrs. McDorman)
This Week
- This week we took advantage of this beautiful weather and finished our study of the Renaissance period outside painting the Mona Lisa. We then discovered that in 1517 the protestant reformation began with Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the Castle Church at Wittenberg. In math, students used dimes, nickels, and pennies to purchase items. Counting the various coins has proved a challenge since many of us have switched to plastic, but they continue to practice and persevere through the task. Try letting your student use change to purchase a small item at the store! In phonics, we read our next primer “In the Camel’s Eye”. After learning well over half the phonograms, students have the tools needed to decode multisyllabic words. In science we discussed the next two body systems, the muscular and skeletal system, and how they work together to help us move, jump, run, and skip! We also learned that smooth and cardiac muscles help our digestive system and our circulatory system. Our bodies are wonderfully made!
Memory Work:
- John 1:1
1st Grade (Mrs. Morgan & Mr. Law)
This Week
- Our studious 1st graders have been enjoying some new concepts in math this week, including telling time by the minute and parallel lines. We have also been playing Bingo with telling time, counting money, and fractions. The students love it! In phonics, we have been reading “Cyrus the Archer”, the story of a Persian fighter on his way to mainland Greece to fight. In grammar, the students have been putting together a lot of their knowledge and correcting sentences that have errors in them. In history, we have been learning about the life of “Buffalo” Bill Cody. In science, we have begun learning about light and how it passes through certain things and not others.
Memory Work:
- Psalm 67:1-7
2nd Grade (Mrs. Jones & Mrs. Batten)
This Week
- God has gifted us another beautiful week for learning in Second Grade! We have continued our reading of Baby Island as a class, and students have loved seeing how these two young sisters have been quick to think of creative ways to survive on a desert island. We enjoyed eating bananas as a class while reading chapter four! In History this week, we have been filling in some of the time between our last Egyptian pharaoh and the Davidic Kingdom by learning about the life of Joshua and how God finally gifted the Israelites with the Promised Land. Ask your child if they remember what the Promised Land was called before the Israelites took over. Bonus if they can tell you who the only tribe to listen to God’s command was! In Grammar, students were introduced to sentences that used pronouns in place of names. They loved getting to come up with their own sentences to follow different sentence patterns that we have studied this year already! See if your child can tell you the different parts of speech that we have studied.
Memory Work:
- Hebrews 11:32-35
3rd Grade (Mrs. Garner)
This Week
- This week we have studied the tragedy of Pompeii. We finished up our informational text about the epic event and learned many interesting facts about ancient Roman life. While we are studying the center of gravity in science, we took a little time to create our own volcano. We all had an exciting time watching them erupt! In Latin, we learned the irregular present tense verb conjugation for “to go.” Our previous Latin studies helped us out this week with our English grammar concept, in which we studied how to identify linking verbs, predicate nouns, and predicate adjectives. We finished our week with our research presentations on our early church fathers. It was so interesting to see how the Lord used people from all over to establish the beginnings of His church!
Memory Work:
- 1 Peter 5:8
Upcoming:
- Tests:
- 4/30- Latin Ch.28, Spelling List O-5, Grammar Ch. 17, Roman Empire Splits
4th Grade (Mrs. Burtram)
This Week
- We have enjoyed creating many writing pieces this week from thank you notes, letters, addressing an envelope, and creating invitations. The students really enjoyed creating their own businesses and writing business letters to one another. We are continuing our study in art instruction with watercolor paints and sketching. The students are working hard in Math and applying their knowledge of place value to see the relationship of decimals and fractions. We finished the week learning about King Henry VIII and his many wives.
Science
- We have had a wonderful week competing in Keva Challenges using STEM plans. The students are working in groups creating designs based on parameters that incorporate physics vocabulary and creativity.
Memory Work:
- Psalm 139: 1-6 and Review First and Second Quarter Verses
Upcoming:
- Art Project, Physics Challenge
5th Grade (Ms. Vogus)
This Week
- This week in art we have continued working on watercolor painting techniques and sketching. In grammar we finished up learning about regular and irregular verbs. We have spent time working on a creative writing story. The students have used this assignment to practice peer reviewing and editing. In history we learned about the Lewis and Clark expedition. The students enjoyed reading excerpts from their journal and hearing about what they had to eat during the exploration. In math we have begun to learn geometric formulas. I’m looking forward to a wonderful next week.
Memory Work:
- Isaiah 40: 1-8 Review
Upcoming:
- Bible Bee Practice
LOGIC & RHETORIC SCHOOL
Mr. Batten
Language Arts
- We wrapped up The Hiding Place with a quiz, and began Fahrenheit 451. Students will begin examining Bradbury’s thoughts on free thinking and discuss parallels in today’s world.
History
- We wrapped up WW2 with a quiz, and began discussing the Cold War. Students learned what communism is before delving into the details of the war.
Science
- We reviewed calculating acceleration, velocity, and speed and took a quiz on Friday.
6th Logic
- Students learned about the appeal to pity and appeal to fear fallacies. We discussed how even when there may be truth to statements, there is not always a logical reason to act.
7th Logic
- We continued with the fallacies of clarity through learning about equivocation. In addition, we discussed what it means to have freedom of press, and whether or not it is appropriate to report on everything, even if we have the right to do so.
8th Logic
- We took a quiz on fallacies from last week, and moved forward with our debates. Students are continuing to become more fluent in cross-examination and rebuttals.
Upcoming:
- We will continue with 1 John 5, and delve further into the Cold War and Fahrenheit 451.
Mrs. Byrd
Physics
- This week we’ve been studying the properties of static charges. We did a couple of experiments to see how objects can be charged by conduction and induction.
Precalculus
- We are working our way through analytic trig. The class has learned how to verify trig identities and to solve trig equations. Next we will learn how to apply various trig identities to help simplify trig expressions and to solve trig equations.
Geometry
- The class is wrapping up a study of volume. We’ve learned to calculate the volume of prisms, cylinders, pyramids, cones, and spheres. Following a test early next week we will begin a study of similarity.
Dr. Byrd
10th Bible Survey
- We are working through the book of Galatians. Paul has a great burden they would continue in the gospel and not be deceived by false teachers.
- Students are also giving presentations on their book analysis projects this week. We have been challenged and encouraged in God’s grace.
- Test next Thursday.
Mr. Davis
6th – 10th PE
- This week the students worked on strength training and then played kickball.
Mrs. Fairchild
9th Grade Advanced Art: We are wrapping up our Norman Rockwell painting on Friday. This has been a great project for them to work on as a group. Next week will be gearing up for our field trip to the NCMA by having many worldview discussions and debates in class.
Mrs. Frueh
7th Grade Science:
- As we wrap up our study of the relationship between the Earth and our Moon, we took time this week to evaluate the various theories presented by secular scientists on the origin of our Moon. The students evaluated the supporting evidence for each theory and identified the many problems with each theory. They were quick to recognize the insufficiency of each theory to provide a full explanation of the Moon’s origin, especially given the uniqueness of our Moon in our solar system. It serves as just one more of the many ways we’ve seen creation pointing to our intelligent, orderly, perfect Creator.
8th Grade Science:
- Our final unit of the year will focus on mechanics and Newton’s Laws of Motion. This week, the students learned the difference between scalar and vector quantities, as well as the importance of defining the frame of reference when describing motion. We learned how to use a formula to solve for velocity, displacement, and time. All of these skills will be put to the test as the students work on their year-end-project: a self-propelled vehicle.
Mr. Hamilton
9th Logic
- More work with real-world arguments and formal proofs.
9th Historic Theology
- This week we took a closer look at early Reformation confessions, including those by French and Swiss reformers.
10th History
- We wrapped up Roman history with an examination of good and bad emperors in the early CE period.
10th Literature
- We have greatly enjoyed Ovid, but are starting to get a bit put-off by the dissipation of the gods.
11th Philosophy/Apologetics
- We took our mid-term test this week, which covered the Christian response to Darwinism, Intelligent Design, and the moral argument for God.
12th History
- Yet another discussion of modernism and its virtues and vices.
12th Literature
- We have begun reading several of the most well-known short stories of the 20th century.
Mrs. Hamilton
Logic School Music
- Theory: Students continued their study of keys (tonalities), learning all of the major sharp keys and their respective key signatures in order, including enharmonics.
- History: Introduction to Ludwig van Beethoven. Opera vocabulary quiz is next week.
- Performance: Ensemble pieces are beginning to take shape as students are commencing their intensive practice.
- Piano tutoring is now available on Tuesdays after school 2:45pm-3:45pm in the music room for any students who need a little extra help with their pieces or for those who prefer to complete their practice at school.
Music Elective
- Students continued to venture outside of the accepted and expected musical tradition with a short study of 12-tone technique in the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. Students were stunned at the unease and anguish the complete lack of tonality produced in them while listening to Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire and Berg’s Wozzeck. However, the radical characteristics of Stravinsky’s mature writing in Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), such as his use of polytonality, unusual instrumentation, reliance on strong, unpredictable meter as the driving force of the composition, thoroughly unconventional ballet (if one could even call it that!), as well as shocking and scandalous primitive subjects among others, have most certainly driven us into fruitful discussion of the ever-present tension between tradition and innovation up to this point in history and to the ramifications when the former is entirely abandoned.
Ms. Hutchison
7th Grade Omnibus
- History: We are learning about the beginnings of the Roman Republic and the form of government established in Rome, which has influenced our own. Next week, we will begin our reading of Livy’s The Early History of Rome.
- Literature: 7th grade is almost finished with Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. This week, we took the Ungit gods to court, as Orual presented her case to the judge and jury against them. In Composition, we’ve worked on using active and precise verbs in our writing in preparation for the elocution of our third persuasive essay: whether or not the Persians should have tried to conquer the Greeks.
- Bible: Our theology discussions have been deep and meaningful this week. We’ve discussed Paul’s exhortation to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, and have been encouraged to be ready “in season and out of season”. We’ve taken a look at the purpose and practice of the drink offering in the Old Testament and have considered what Paul may have been getting at in his reference to the drink offering in 2 Timothy 4.
9th Grade Biology
- Biology students have been tested on Mendelian genetics and have had a two-day seminar on the theory of evolution. We have considered the scientific evidence for the case for intelligent design, and have enjoyed learning from Dr. Steven Meyer, of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Next week, we will begin our frog dissection.
Dr. James
10th Chemistry
- This week we discussed reaction kinetics pertaining to equilibrium reactions.
- Next week we will conclude the discussion on this topic, and the students will take their second test of Q4.
Miss Oldham
9th Grade Literature
- We started Animal Farm and are looking at the allegory Orwell presents.
9th Grade History
- We wrapped up World War 1 and are setting our sights on World War 2.
11th Grade Literature
- We are continuing through Le Morte d’Arthur and discussing what makes a good leader.
11th Grade History
- Students have a paper due next week that they have been diligently working on all semester.
10th Rhetoric I
- Students are continuing their speeches on the definition of a hero. We also did some impromptu speeches.
12th Rhetoric II
- Students turned in their final theses before heading off on the senior trip.
Mrs. Palmer
6th Art
- We worked on our colored pencil flower small studies this week.
7th Art
- We worked on our oil pastel Mary Cassat finals this week.
8th Art
- We worked on our colored pencil famous artist finals this week.
9th Spanish
- We talked about direct object and indirect object pronouns this week. We added new vocabulary and reviewed past vocabulary, as well as numbers. Students were given some time to do research for their cultural project finals.
10th Spanish
- We dove into the subjunctive more this week. Students practiced using it and saw it grammatically worked out. We also worked on vocabulary for this chapter as well as reviewed.
Mr. Palmer
6th Math
- This week we worked with like algebra terms and solving algebraic expressions. We have a test next week.
7th Pre-Algebra
- This week we worked with like algebra terms, moving terms from one side of an equation to another, and solving algebraic expressions. We also studied for a test and took a test.
8th Algebra I
- This week we learned what certain non-linear graphs looked like and how to use the difference of squares theorem. We also studied for a test that will be on Monday.
10th Algebra II
- This week we finished taking a test, worked on test corrections, and spent more time working with fractional exponents.
11th / 12th NT Greek
- This week we learned the perfect tense of Greek. Next week we will begin translating I John.
Miss Windes
8th Grade Omnibus
- History: We studied the medieval church this week, learning about the reforms of Gregory VII, the Investiture Controversy, the power of Pope Innocent III, and the developments in monasticism from that time.
- Literature: Our reading of Macbeth has brought out interesting discussions about guilt, the conscience, and the power of ambition. We finished the play by the end of the week, will take the test on Monday, and the students are beginning to prepare a short play they will perform.
- Composition: We worked this week on more matters of style – omitting needless words and replacing ‘to be’ verbs with stronger more precise verbs.
6th Grade LATIN
- Sixth graders learned about the various uses of the genitive case, practiced a new set of vocabulary, and continued to practice translations.
7th Grade LATIN
- Seventh graders continued practicing dative constructions and worked on a longer translation section with comprehension questions.
8th Grade LATIN
- In eighth grade Latin we reviewed and finished chapter four learning about the fourth declension, the vocative case, and several uses of the ablative.