BB 04-30-2021

 BRADFORD BULLETIN

VOLUME XIII, ISSUE 31

APRIL 30, 2021

 

FROM THE OFFICE

Miss Windes sends this reminder along:  Thanks so much to all of you who have filled out the student career exploration survey! I am excited about the doors this will open for the students. If you have not yet filled out the survey, you may do so here. 

Upper school students:  Please see email for notes about TWO fun events coming up on May 13th!  

Donations would be appreciated!  Clorox wipes, paper towels, and big band-aids (for knees!)

UPCOMING

NEXT WEEK:

  • Mon, 5/3:  Girls soccer practice
  • Tues, 5/4:  Girls vball practice;  XC practice
  • Wed, 5/5:  Special forum at upper school re: Bradford Games
  • Thurs, 5/6: XC practice
  • Fri, 5/7:   Teacher Appreciation Day!
  • Sat, 5/8:    Revolutionary War Living History in Hillsborough. 10:00 – 4:00 In person or virtual.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE:

  • 5/13:  
    • Bradford Games – at Main Campus – 6th – 12th graders
    • Upper School Bonfire! – 5:30 – 8:30 – all 6th – 12th graders
  • 5/14:  Teacher Workday – no school
  • 5/20:  Career Night 6:30-8:30pm (8th-12th grades), Rain date: 5/25
  • 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 John’s writing of his vision of Heaven.  TK students enjoyed imagining the perfect place God has created for believers to enjoy and spend eternity together worshipping Him. 
Theme Adventure
  •  This week TK learned all about community helpers and had a career day.  All week long we had special guests come in and share about their career.  We are thankful for our community helpers in Mebane.  
Literacy
  •  TK students continue to blend sounds together to make small words.  
  • Students enjoyed reading books about different community helpers and roll playing different jobs commonly found. 
Math
  •  Students demonstrated mastery of comparison of numbers by playing the card game, War!   
Arts and Sciences
  • The butterflies in the TK classrooms have begun to emerge from their chrysalides!  What an exciting time for the students.  We will release the butterflies next week! 

Lower School P.E. (Mr. Davis)

K – 5th:  This week the students played many fun games that help develop their hand and eye coordination as well as their fine motor skills. It was a great week of PE!

Kindergarten (Mrs. Rivera & Mrs. McDorman)

This Week
  • “Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your soul.” (Jonathan Edwards) It is our desire to see our young scholars come to know, love, and serve God. This year we have been memorizing the answers to the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The Catechism has been acknowledged to be the most accurate and succinct summary of the Christian faith ever produced. The Catechism reminds us that our beliefs should shape our attitudes and actions, and not the other way around. Ask your child what is the chief end of man. They will reply with,”man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” The Catechism focuses our eyes on God and teaches us that the Christian life is a God-centered life. This week in math, we learned how to measure line segments to the nearest centimeter, identify a fractional part of a set, and identify geometric solids, like cubes and cylinders. We completed another spelling list, and, in science, we introduced the nervous system and reviewed all of the other systems. Next week, we will be assembling our human body model.
Memory Work:
  • John 1:1

 

1st Grade (Mrs. Morgan & Mr. Law)

This Week
  •  The students have been taking on some truly advanced subjects in math, including parallel lines and calculating the perimeter of shapes. They have also begun multiplication tables with the number 5, which has been going great! In phonics, the students have been reading a story about the “Moon Mission”. They even made rockets of their own. In grammar, we have been working on correcting sentences that have various errors. Every sentence needs a capital letter and an end mark, too! In history, we have begun work on our Abraham Lincoln reports. It will be great to hear the students give their presentations next week!
Memory Work:  
  • Psalm 67:1-7
Upcoming:
  • Abraham Lincoln reports due next week.

 

2nd Grade (Mrs. Jones & Mrs. Batten)

This Week
  • Students have been challenged with another week of multiple history cards to fill in some of the time between The Later New Kingdom in Egypt and the Davidic Kingdom in Israel. They have learned so much about the life of Samuel, Saul, and David from reading different chapters in the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 Chronicles. See if your child can tell you who these three men were and what their jobs were! Students were surprised to see and learn that King David came from the town of Bethlehem, and that his line of descendants would bring forth the Messiah, Jesus!  In reading, we have been continuing on in Baby Island and have explored different ways the children survived on the island. Ask your child if they remember what a “pram” is from one of our most recent chapters. Students have been spending lots of time outside in the beautiful weather this week, and have enjoyed learning about different art techniques and types of rocks in both art and science. 
Memory Work: 
  • Hebrews 11:32-35

 

3rd Grade (Mrs. Garner)

This Week
  • We have continued our poetry study this week with writing cinquains. Our class is thoroughly enjoying the creativity that is found in this area of language arts. As we read throughout our day, our class made note of quotation marks and punctuation as it was our grammar lesson for chapter seventeen.  We found it most easily in our Misty novel, while we read about Paul and Maureen’s first interactions with the Phantom and Misty, as they make a plan to come up with the money to buy both ponies. In math, we tackled one difficult concept after another. One day we were working with protractors drawing angles. Another day, we were working with perfect square roots to help us approximate irrational square roots. Our class is now mastering converting numbers into percentages, common fractions, and decimal fractions within a given time frame. All I can say is that these Bradford scholars are rising to the challenge and they are impressive! 
Memory Work:
  • Reviewing First Quarter Verses in preparation for Bible Bee
Upcoming:
  • Tests
    • 5/4 – Math Assessments (Fact and Written)
    • 5/6 – Grammar Ch. 18 
    • 5/7 – Spelling List O-5, Latin Ch. 28, History (Timeline portion only)

 

4th Grade (Mrs. Burtram) 

This Week
  •  Our week has been filled with wonderful learning experiences.  We enjoyed learning about John Calvin and his call to follow the Lord sharing God’s gift of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.  The students explored their artistic talents painting outdoors this week.  All of the skills we have been learning over the last couple of weeks are coming together with their final painting project.  Math has been so engaging as the students learned about how to round mixed numbers and decimals.  We explored volume and cubic feet and how that compares to perimeter and area.  In literature, we started a new book called  The King’s Shadow.  We are keeping a journal and plan to narrate our chapters.  The students loved incorporating their writing tools with their literature journals.
Science
  •  We continued working on Keva challenges and incorporating vocabulary to explain creations.
Memory Work:
  • Psalm 139: 7-10, Quarter 1,2, and 3 Verses 
Upcoming:
  • Quarter 1,2, and 3 Verse Challenge

 

5th Grade (Ms. Vogus) 

This Week
  • We have had an excellent week in 5th grade. We studied the second great awakening and compared and contrasted it to the first great awakening. In math we have continued learning about geometry, formulas, and different types of triangles. We finished up a creative writing story and we are about to begin a history essay. In art we are finishing up a watercolor project, which the students are enjoying immensely.  Lastly, we are continuing our read of Treasure Island. I’m looking forward to next week! 
Memory Work:
  • 1st-4th quarter review
Upcoming:
  • 1st-4th quarter review 

 

LOGIC & RHETORIC SCHOOL

Mr. Batten

Language Arts
  • This week we continued reading Fahrenheit 451 and discussed how Bradbury’s vision of the future is close in many ways. In addition, students turned in their essays, and took a quiz on the structure of an outline for persuasive essays. 
History
  • We began our unit on the Cold War. We talked about what communism is and is not, discussed the impact of the nuclear bomb on society, and watched old “duck and cover” videos. 
Science
  • We continued our unit on physics by reviewing calculating velocity and acceleration before moving into units of measurements, weight, and density. 
6th Logic
  • We discussed the fallacies of exigency and repetition. 
7th Logic
  • Students learned about the fallacies of accent and distinguish without difference. We are wrapping up fallacies of clarity 
8th Logic
  • We continued learning about fallacies and how to identify them in syllogisms. In addition, students began preparing for their next debates. 
Upcoming:
  • We will finish 1 John 5:1-12 and take a quiz on it. We will also move into the Korean War.

 

Mrs. Byrd

Physics
  • After concluding our study of static charges this week, we began to consider the concept of electric potential vs electric potential energy.
Precalculus
  • We’ve learned to verify trig identities, solve trig equations, and apply various trig formulas to simplify and transform expressions.  Our next topic will be learning to solve for missing parts of non-right triangles using Law of Sines and Law of Cosines.
Geometry 
  • Students did well in learning to compute volume of various prisms, cylinders, and spheres.  We are now beginning to study the concepts of similarity, proportions, and scale factor.  This will lead into our final topic of the year – trig ratios- which are based on similar triangles.

Dr. Byrd

10th Bible Survey
  • This week we have covered Ephesians, learning about our position in Christ and our practice for Christ. We also took time to study about ancient Ephesus. 
  • Students are taking a test and the  verse memory for the week is II Cor. 13:14

Mr. Davis

6th – 10 PE
  • This week the students did a quick workout and then played kickball. It was a great week for the students! 

 

Mrs. Frueh

7th Grade Science:
  • As we wrapped up our study of the relationship between the Earth and the Moon, the students participated in a Socratic Seminar discussion of the various secular theories of the moon’s origin. They all did a great job analyzing the various theories, identifying the supporting evidence for each, as well as identifying the many problems with each of the four most popular theories. We also took our final unit test on the Earth and the Moon.
  • Docendo discimus presentations will begin on May 11th!
8th Grade Science:
  • We continued our study of physics by reviewing how to calculate velocity and acceleration. The students are learning to manipulate equations to solve for the unknown, as well as how to use dimensional analysis to convert between units of measure. Next up, Newton’s Laws of Motion! 

 

Mr. Hamilton

9th Logic
  • This week we did more work with real-world arguments and formal proofs. The class is doing a great job getting many of these concepts down!
9th Historic Theology
  • Our focus this week was on the English Reformation, which, despite its unsavory origins, went on to influence the modern world in profound ways, even in the realm of politics.
10th History
  • This week students worked hard on their Roman history projects.
10th Literature
  • Our focus at the present is on Stoicism, in particular the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In our introduction to Stoicism, we worked hard to examine both its similarities and differences with Christian beliefs.
11th Philosophy/Apologetics
  • After a successful midterm exam,  we took a look at the argument from religious experience.
12th History
  • More discussions of modernism this week in conjunction with literature.
12th Literature
  • Our focus at present is on the short story, as we are reading and discussing several paradigmatic examples from the late 19th and 20th centuries.

 

Mrs. Hamilton

Logic School Music
  • In performance, students are continuing to progress in their ensemble pieces! 
  • In music history, students did a great job on their opera vocabulary quiz. 
Music Elective
  • The folk music of Eastern Europe that so inspired Béla Bartók, who began the field of ethnomusicology, gave us a much needed break from the cacophony of the previous weeks. In England, we were very much ensouled by the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and his reflective approach in The Lark Ascending and Fantasy On a Theme by Thomas Tallis. We ended the week with the Soviet era composers–Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich–whose satirical approach to music reflected the social and political unrest of the communist era. 

 

Ms. Hutchison
7th Grade Omnibus
  • History:  7th graders have begun reading Livy’s The Early History of Rome this week.  It is a dense, factual history, but also examines the lives of the “players” on the historical stage.  Livy will be our last major book of the year.
  • Literature:  We have concluded our study of Till We Have Faces, which was a class favorite.  To balance our heavy reading of Livy, I have begun a class read-aloud, Detectives in Togas, which is a historical fiction book, following the adventures of seven Roman schoolboys during the Roman Empire.  LTW Essay 3 is due on Monday, May 3.  
  • Bible:  We have studied the life of an early Christian martyr, Perpetua, during the early  part of the 3rd century AD.  Our discussions in Forum have been related to the victory that we have as Christians, regardless of our circumstances and the power of Christian love to “conquer” everything.  This notion is in stark contrast to the idea of “conquering” which the Romans had at the time of the New Testament.
9th Grade Biology
  • Bio students spent the early part of the week finishing up our Evolution Seminar, and have been assigned a particular phylum or class in the Animal Kingdom to research.  These written reports will be due on Wednesday, May 26.  Students were assigned lab partners and “met” their frogs, which we will be dissecting next week.

 

Dr. James

10th Chemistry
  • This week we finished our discussion of reaction kinetics and equilibria. The students have a take home test to be completed over the weekend.
  • Next week we will begin our discussion of acids and bases, which will be the last topics of the school year.

 

Miss Oldham

9th Grade Literature
  • We wrapped up Animal Farm and looked at how communism could take over Russia so easily. 
9th Grade History
  • We are discussing the time between the World Wars, especially what led to World War 2. 
11th Grade Literature
  • We will wrap up our look at the Arthurian Legends on Monday with student presentations. 
11th Grade History
  • Students have rough drafts due for their final research papers. 
10th Rhetoric I
  • Students have been doing impromptu speeches as well as writing a speech on the definition of a hero. 
12th Rhetoric II
  • Theses have been turned in and practice defense is scheduled for May 12th. We are almost there! 

 

Mrs. Palmer 

6th Art
  • This week we worked on finishing our colored pencil botanical drawings. 
7th Art
  • This week we worked on our Mary Cassat oil pastel finals. 
8th Art
  • This week we continued working on our colored pencil artist portrait finals. These are coming along nicely! 
9th Spanish 
  •  This week we worked with indirect objects and their pronouns. We reviewed vocabulary and took a quiz. We also began the preterite tense. 

10th Spanish

  • This week we worked on subjunctive and its uses some more. We reviewed vocabulary and worked on a Spanish reading. 

Mr. Palmer

6th Math
  • This week we took a test and worked with increasing and decreasing percentages.
7th Pre-Algebra
  • This week we took a test and then spent some time looking back over the test for there were many mistakes. We then worked on 2-step algebraic problems.
8th Algebra I
  • This week we took a test and then spent some time looking back over the test for there were many mistakes. We then learned the pythagorean theorem.
10th Algebra II
  • This week we began our journey into logs. We will spend about a week working with them.
11th / 12th NT Greek
  • This week we took a vocab quiz and began translating I John.

 

Miss Windes
8th Grade Omnibus
  • History: This week we have been discussing the medieval church – its practices and beliefs, its relationship to the state, the monastic orders that emerged, and the crusades that it inspired.
  • Literature: We finished up discussions on Macbeth and the students took their test, and then we dove into the dark depths of Dante’s Inferno, the first section of his Divine Comedy.
  • Composition: Students began revising their research essays this week.
6th Grade LATIN
  • Students took their vocabulary quizzes and then worked on translations. They translated a longer section of a historical story, and then we began a new set of vocabulary.
7th Grade LATIN
  • In 7th grade Latin we reviewed old vocabulary, began a new set of vocabulary, and then began learning about the irregular verbs. 
8th Grade LATIN
  • The eighth graders are learning the last set of declension endings – 5th declension – as well as a new set of vocabulary words in the 5th declension.