BB 2019-09-06

BRADFORD BULLETIN

VOLUME XII, ISSUE 5

September 6th, 2019

 

FROM THE OFFICE

A few quick reminders:

 

  • EDUCATE log in:  From our report, we see that there are quite a few of you who have not yet logged in to EDUCATE.  Perhaps your spouse has logged in, so you don’t feel it is necessary to do so. While we pray and trust that we will never have an emergency situation, we do think it would be best for both parents to be on the list to receive important alerts.   But AT THE LEAST, one parent from every household needs to be logged in and have their communication preferences set up.  
  • Return summer reading books:  Please take a look around your home and return any books your child borrowed over the summer.  

 

UPCOMING

NEXT WEEK:

  • SCHOOL SAFETY WEEK @ Lower School:  Moved to week of 9/9 (instead of previously announced 9/16)
  • Tuesday, 9/10/19:  
    • XC Alamance County Championship @ Cedar Rock Park
    • V volleyball game, away
  • Wednesday, 9/11/19:  V volleyball game, Home, 4:30
  • Thursday, 9/12/19:
    • JV soccer game @ Home, 4:30
    • V volleyball game, away
  • Friday, 9/13/19 – XC meet @ Home, 4:30

IN THE NEAR FUTURE:

  • Red envelopes may be sent back next week as well (or later if necessary).  Thank you for the generous contributions that have already come in!
  • Mebane Rotary is sponsoring a 5K race to raise money for Thanksgiving meals to benefit needy families in Mebane.  You can find all of the information and register for the race here!
  • 9/19:  Bradford Spirit Night at HWY 55
  • 9/25:  Soccer Tournament (PE):  12:00 – 2:45 – more details to come!
  • 10/1:  6th grade to Museum of Life and Science
  • 10/4:  4th grade to Museum of Natural Science
  • 10/9:  1st and 5th grades to Alamance Battleground
  • 10/11:  
    • 3rd grade to Greensboro Science Museum
    • End of first quarter:  Report cards will be posted to EDUCATE.  
  • 10/14 – 10/18:  FALL BREAK

 

FROM THE TEACHER’s DESK

 

GRAMMAR SCHOOL

 

Transitional Kindergarten (Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Grubb)

Bible
  •  This week TK began learning about creation.  The very first account in the Bible is full of God’s glory and his goodness is on display.  Students are hard at work sequencing the days of creation and creating their very own creation book! 
Theme Adventure
  • This week TK began practicing for safety week.  We discussed ways to be safe at school should anything abnormal at school.  TK students learned that the safest place to be is with a teacher, to be quiet, and to listen and obey immediately.  We are very proud of how well they responded. Next week is safety week for the Academy at which time we will practice the drills with K-6th.  
Literacy
  • TK students have begun an introduction to letter formation.  We are learning songs about how to write numbers and letters.  The students have been using wooden pieces and playdough to build letters and sky writing in order for them to be prepared for next week when we begin teaching crayon grip.  
  • Next week TK will begin pre-writing exercises in their school workbook.  Students will be working with aiming and scribbling which develops fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.  
  • TK continues to explore parts of books to gain an understanding of how books work.  
Math
  •  This week in Math, TK had their first assessment on identifying shapes.  
  • TK also created an AB color pattern with class counting bears.  
  • All of TK gathered for a math lesson to identify TK’s favorite color of bear by placing a colored bear on a chart.  Red is the favorite this year! 
  • TK continued practice with positional phrases.  
Arts and Sciences
  • TK continues to create and design their creation books. 
  • Students dissected and tasted cherry tomatoes this week!  They discovered how tomatoes are used to make some of their favorite foods!  

Kindergarten (Mrs. Rivera & Mrs. McDorman)

This Week
  • Our kindergarten scholars are settling in to their daily routines and quickly learning the classroom systems. In Math, we boarded the Bradford Express to help us act out some and some more stories and some and some went away. We used geoboards to create triangles, squares, and other polygons. Move over Land O’ Lakes butter. There is a new product developed in our very own test lab: Bradford Butter! Our students made fresh creamery butter and enjoyed eating it on warm Italian bread. This was a wonderful way to complete our study of the letter B. We continued our unit the five senses by testing our sense of smell. Our young scientists worked in pairs to identify lavender, chocolate, coffee, peppermint, and citrus scents. Encourage your child to go on a letter hunt around their house to identify objects that begin with the letters A,M, and B. We have some extremely impressive letter detectives this year. You can add to their fun by giving them a magnifying glass to take on their adventure.  
Music 
  • This week we began class with our “Good Morning!” song. Then we had prayer, reviewed our monthly praise verse, Psalm 47:1, and sang, “Clap Your Hands!” We spent some time listening to Vivaldi’s “Summer” section of “The Four Seasons.” Our lesson was based on learning how to match pitch. We had an exercise where the teacher sang the pitch, then the students repeated or matched what she sang. Finally, we practiced “Non Nobis Domine” and sang our quarterly hymns together.
Memory Work:
  • 1Corinthians 13:4-8a, review Proverbs 1:7

 

1st Grade (Mrs. Campbell & Mrs. Morgan)

This Week
  • This week our class enjoyed discovering patterns and relationships between shapes and sizes in math.  We continued reading Leif the Lucky and learned that he traveled from Greenland to Norway to meet King Olaf.  Leif’s use of good manners before the king became a subject of discussion as this made him presentable and well-accepted at such a young age.  In Phonics, the R blends (cr, dr, br, fr, gr, tr, pr, wr) are rolling off our tongues as we discover how many words begin with these sounds. Make it a game and see how many R blends you and your child can pick out in your conversations at home!
Music 
  • This week we began class with our “Good Morning!” song. Then we had prayer, reviewed our monthly praise verse, Psalm 47:1, and sang, “Clap Your Hands!” We spent some time listening to Vivaldi’s “Summer” section of “The Four Seasons.” Our lesson was based on learning how to match pitch. We had an exercise where the teacher sang the pitch, then the students repeated or matched what she sang. Finally, we practiced “Non Nobis Domine” and sang our quarterly hymns together.
P.E.
  •  This week the students worked on speed and coordination drills, as well as basic soccer skills. 
Memory Work:  
  • Psalm 145:9

 

2nd Grade (Mrs. Jones)

This Week
  • This week we began reading  Prairie School, where the students were introduced to 9 year old Noah. Noah, who lives on a farm, doesn’t see any value in learning to read or in going to school. Ask your child how they feel about Noah’s attitude towards education. We’ve also been working hard on learning about the structure of the Bible and how we will use it throughout the school year. As a class we’ve read through Genesis chapters 1-4 to truly understand the beginning of the world and the beginning of history as a whole. See if your child can tell you what the words “holy” and “genesis” mean.
Music 
  • This week we began class with our “Good Morning!” song. Then we had prayer, reviewed our monthly praise verse, Psalm 47:1, and sang, “Clap Your Hands!” We spent some time listening to Vivaldi’s “Summer” section of “The Four Seasons.” Our lesson was based on learning how to match pitch. We had an exercise where the teacher sang the pitch, then the students repeated or matched what she sang. Finally, we practiced “Non Nobis Domine” and sang our quarterly hymns together.
P.E.
  • This week the students worked on speed and coordination drills, as well as basic soccer skills. 
Memory Work: 
  • Philippians 2:4
  • Matthew 22:37-39

 

3rd Grade (Mrs. Garner)

This Week
  • Mental computation of 2-digit numbers has been our theme almost all week. We have all really loved going to the pretend “Bradford Ice Cream Shop” and the “Bradford Snack Shop”, where we took each others orders and worked on finding the exact cost and estimating the cost. (Please work on counting at home by multiples of 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12.) In Grammar, we loved learning about adverbs, adjectives, and article adjectives. Latin took us into declining nouns in Chapter 3, in which we learned that noun endings tell us things like gender, number, and case. We took a break from our Black Ships Before Troy and have read a short novel called, The Trojan Horse, to go along with our “Trojan War” history card. In the novel, we enjoyed learning more details about how the Greeks won the war with our reading partners. We have begun our journey into writing in our IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) workbooks. This week we practiced reading through a text and creating an outline to help us retell the information in our own words.  
  • A quick reminder: please make sure your child is neatly completing their homework in cursive and that you are checking over their work.
Music 
  • This week we began class with our “Good Morning!” song. Then we had prayer, reviewed our monthly praise verse, Psalm 47:1, and sang, “Clap Your Hands!” We spent some time listening to Vivaldi’s “Summer” section of “The Four Seasons.” Our lesson was based on identifying and describing sounds. We had an exercise where we listened to sounds, wrote down on our worksheet what we thought the sound was, and then learned the correct answer. Finally, we warmed up our voices and sang our quarterly hymns together.
P.E.
  • This week the students worked on speed and coordination drills, as well as basic soccer skills. 

 

4th Grade (Mrs. Hamilton) 

This Week
  • After the completion of the wonderful coming-of-age story, The Door in the Wall, students had a very meaningful discussion regarding the theme of the book. While we continued working slowly through our initial stories and summaries in Writing, students also enjoyed learning about St. Jerome and his translation of the Bible into common Latin, The Vulgate. We used this opportunity to look at the myriad of paintings of St. Jerome through the centuries, all of them using the same symbolic elements, such as the skull, the color red, the bird, the lion, spectacles, etc. In Math, we focused on reviewing multiplication facts and finding missing numbers in a subtraction problem. The highlight of the week continues to be Science, where students continued their study of plants by learning the difference between gymnosperms and angiosperms and began yet another adventure into the forest, trying to identify different trees.
  • Upcoming: October 4–Field Trip to the NC Museum of Natural Science in downtown Raleigh. 
Music
  • This week we began class with prayer, reviewed our monthly praise verse, Psalm 47:1, and sang “Clap Your Hands!” We spent some time listening to Vivaldi’s “Summer” section of “The Four Seasons.” Our lesson was based on identifying and describing sounds. We had an exercise where we listened to sounds, wrote down on our worksheet what we thought the sound was, and then learned the correct answer. Finally, we practiced on our recorders. We played, “Merrily We Roll Along,” together. Then, we learned the fingerings for C and D, and our homework was to learn and practice the song, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” 
P.E.
  • This week the students worked on speed and coordination drills, as well as basic soccer skills. 
Memory Work:
  • Plant sound off
  • Philippians 4:4-8
  • History Song

 

5th Grade (Ms. Windes) 

This Week
  • Throughout fifth grade, a theme that often arises is being on a journey, exploring,  encountering surprising and unexpected challenges along the way, and learning from those difficulties. In The Hobbit, Bilbo and his fellow travelers have run into their first serious challenges. We are studying our third explorer this week, Ferdinand Magellan, who in his attempt to travel west to get to the Indies discovered that the Pacific Ocean was not nearly so peaceful (the Latin word for peace is pax, pacis) as he assumed nor as small as he had calculated. This was devastating for his crew of 277 men; only 18 (not including Magellan) returned to Spain three years after he set out but they were the first known voyage to completely circumnavigate the earth. We are hitting our own challenges as the students turned in their first serious writing assignment this week, a series of three short paragraphs about Prince Henry the Navigator. They did a great job, and we look forward to diving in even more deeply to all sorts of writing this year! 
  • Upcoming Tests
    • Tuesday, September 10: Math test 2 and subtraction facts
    • Friday, September 13: Spanish explorers history test, Ch. 4 Latin test, Spelling test
Music 
  • This week we began class with prayer, reviewed our monthly praise verse, Psalm 47:1, and sang “Clap Your Hands!” We spent some time listening to Vivaldi’s “Summer” section of “The Four Seasons.” Our lesson was based on identifying and describing sounds. We had an exercise where we listened to sounds, wrote down on our worksheet what we thought the sound was, and then learned the correct answer. Finally, we warmed up our voices and sang our quarterly hymns together.
P.E.
  • This week the students worked on speed and coordination drills, as well as basic soccer skills. 

Science

  • Students continued the study of bones and the skeletal system and prepared for their first anatomy test, reviewing the organ hierarchy and the functions of the skeletal system, as well as naming the twenty-one major bones in a human body. However, fifth graders learned much more than just the information for the test; they were surprised at the functions of osteoclasts and osteoblasts, the role of hormones in the bone formation, as well as at the importance of a balanced diet and movement in maintaining bone integrity. 
  • Bones test: Monday, September 16

Memory Work:

  • Romans 12:6-8
  • Literary Devices song
  • History song

 

6th Grade (Mrs. Garrett) 

This Week
  • The focus of this week was learning about the various changes in America as politicians debated vigorously about the powers of the federal government. The students studied a multitude of maps to see the changes as the union grew. Growing pains accompanied much of the progress, and divisions and factions followed amongst the senators such as Calhoun, Clay and Webster. President Andrew Jackson’s election ushered in a new era as the common man without property was allowed to vote, and a man outside of the original thirteen colonies was allowed to run for president! Shocking! As we continue through the New Testament survey, the class discussed the gospel of Mark and the word that he uses, “ransom,” to describe Jesus’ payment for the sins of the world. 
  • Upcoming: 9/9: Vocabulary Test, 9/12: Science Test, 9/13: History Test; 9/16: Science Experiment materials due.
Music 
  • This week we began class with prayer, reviewed our monthly praise verse, Psalm 47:1, and sang “Clap Your Hands!” We spent some time listening to Vivaldi’s “Summer” section of “The Four Seasons.” Our lesson was based on identifying and describing sounds. We had an exercise where we listened to sounds, wrote down on our worksheet what we thought the sound was, and then learned the correct answer. We also learned about what acoustics are, and had a worksheet to take home and read for homework. Finally, we warmed up our voices and sang our quarterly hymns together.
P.E.
  • This week the students worked on speed and coordination drills, as well as basic soccer skills. 
Memory Work:
  • I John 1:1-8, The Literary Devices Song, Logic Sound Off

 

LOGIC & RHETORIC SCHOOL

 

Mrs. Byrd

Calculus
  • We are looking at continuity of functions and how it affects limit values.  Next we will investigate “infinite” limits (asymptotes).
Precalculus
  • We have learned several common “parent” functions and how they can be transformed by adjusting coefficients or variables.  Next we will take up composition of functions and inverse functions.
Geometry 
  • We have examined the basic terms and introductory postulates that form the basis for Euclidean geometry.  Next we will take up a few theorems that follow from these basic blocks. Our first test is planned for next Wednesday.

 

Dr. Byrd

10th Bible Survey
  • We have learned a great deal in our study of the book of Exodus this week. God called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt; although he protested against God. God promised He would be with Moses and would deliver His people. We also saw how we can be like the Israelites in our attitudes, complaining, and reactions to our circumstances. Our memory verse is Hebrews 12:1-2

Mrs. Dovan

10th Rhetoric I
  • This week, we rounded out our emphasis on ethos and began our study of pathos. For ethos, students completed their first speech, presenting a famous speech while focusing on voice quality, and they also submitted mock-college application essays which highlighted elements of moral virtue, practical wisdom, and goodwill.  We used speeches from Julius Caesar to understand how metaphor and image are used to stir up the emotions.
12th Rhetoric II (Senior Thesis)
  • Students have been memorizing and reciting the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) which we will soon present for residents of Hawfields.  Each of them is also working on a chreia speech, a 3-5 minute presentation that demonstrates the truth of a maxim. Come to all-school forum at 7:50 on September 24 to hear a few of our students present theirs to the upper school! 

Mrs. Frueh

7th Grade Science:
  • We completed our first unit of the year on scientific inquiry and the nature & scope of science. Students submitted their notebooks for the first grading of the year and took the unit exam.
  • We will dive into our study of astronomy next week by studying theories on the origins of the universe. Students will also begin their quarter project next week, a month-long moon log.
8th Grade Science:
  • We finished our mini math unit with an assessment this week. At this point, students should know how to convert between standard and scientific notation; how to add, subtract, multiply and divide using scientific notation; how to convert within the metric system and between metric units and U.S. Customary Units; and how to report all calculations with correct significant figures. 
  • We will begin our first chemistry unit next week, covering the classification of matter and the structure of atoms.

Mr. Hamilton

9th History
  • After a fascinating study of the spread of the Reformation throughout Europe, we have turned our attention to the age of exploration and colonization.
9th Literature
  • Our presentations on Pilgrim’s Progress took place this week. Students did a fantastic job of bringing out both the spiritual and the literary value of this classic allegory.
9th Theology
  • Our discussion through the Westminster Confession has been incredibly useful. This week, we are discussing the doctrines of God and election.
10th Literature
  • We continued to have extremely useful discussions on the book of Proverbs this week.
10th History
  • Our first unit of study, the world of ancient Mesopotamia, culminated in our first test this week.
11th Philosophy/Apologetics
  • We continued our discussion of Plato’s theory of the forms with a special emphasis on theistic conceptual realism, a Christian spin on Platonic realism.
12th Literature
  • We continued our study of Paradise Lost this week, discussing Milton’s fascinating study of Adam and Eve in a state of innocence.
12th History
  • This week we took our first exam on the Reformation and its effects throughout Europe.

 

Dr. James

10th Chemistry
  • This week the students took their first test in Chemistry, and we began a discussion of measurements.
  • Next week we will continue the discussion of measurements, and we will do an exercise to look at sources for error in measurement and experimentation.

Miss Oldham

8th Grade Omnibus
  • The students enjoyed reading Augustine’s Confessions and are beginning to wrestle with his thoughts on the problem of evil. This discussion will continue through next week as well. 
11th Grade Literature
  • The students enjoyed discussing Charlemagne at Filament this week. We looked at how he has become more than a person, but rather a legend and what that means for us today. 
11th Grade History
  • The students have a history test on 9/13 and have been preparing by discussing the overarching themes we have seen in history so far. 
7th Latin
  • Our Latin scholars are learning about noun and adjective agreement. 
8th Latin
  • Our Latin scholars are learning about pronouns, both reflexive and personal, and how they look in Latin (as well as a reminder of what that means in English). 

Mrs. Palmer 

Art
  • 7th: This week we began sketching out various emotions and positions of our comic strip characters.  Students also created their comic strip dialogue.
  • 8th:  This week we began small studies of Bargue-inspired eyes, nose, and mouths.  These will help prepare us for our quarter final pen and ink drawings.
Spanish 
  •  9th Spanish: This week we continued to review number, colors, and beginning vocabulary.  We also learned about telling time in Spanish. Students participated in listening comprehension and were challenged with writing sentences in Spanish that were shared with the class.  They did great!
  • 10th/11th Spanish: This week we learned all about reflexive verbs, their conjugations, and how they are used in various forms.  We practiced with these verbs a lot and will continue to do so! 

 

Mr. Palmer

7th Pre-Algebra
  • This week we worked on recognizing prime numbers and factoring. So far the students seem to be doing well with their assignments. 
8th Algebra I
  • This week we worked on using PEMDAS correctly and also how to use the symbols of inclusion in mathematical equations.
10th Algebra II
  •  This week we reviewed for our very first test, and then we took that test. 
9th Intermediate Logic
  • This week we learned how to identify the truth values of an argument and how to set-up truth tables properly.
12th Systematic Theology
  • This week we talked about the Canon of scripture and how it came to be. 

 

Mr. Davis

7th and 8th Grade Choir
  • This week the students worked on Trisagion and Our Great God. 
7th Grade Logic
  • This week the students learned key terms and their definitions relative to logic. 
8th Grade Logic
  • This week the students took a test from the material taught from Lessons 1-5. The students did very well. They also worked on Lessons 6-7. 
10th Grade Advanced P.E.
  • This week the students worked on strength and core exercises.      

 

Ms. Hutchison

7th grade Forum
  • Hymn: It Is Well With My Soul, by Horatio Spafford
  • Personal entries in Forum Copy Book and written narrations
  • Key verse:  2 Timothy 3:16-17
7th grade Omnibus
  • This week, our students have delved into the history of various cultures in ancient Sumeria.  We’ve begun a class project to create a Timeline on our classroom wall, and each student has made a contribution to the timeline by designing a “visual” of an important event or person that we have studied thus far.  
  • Students have continued their reading of The Epic of Gilgamesh.  We have discussed the theme of friendship in the book and have examined the friendship of David and Jonathan in the Bible. Students have written an essay on friendship in their Omnibus Copy Book.
  • Your children continue to bless and amaze me.  
7th grade Composition
  • We have discussed the three problems every writer faces and three solutions that will help.
  • We specifically addressed the problem of coming up with ideas by applying the tool of creating an ANI chart (introduced last week).
  • Students created an ANI chart for the following issue: “Whether Edmund should have followed the White Witch.”
General Biology
  • Began Module 2: Kingdom Monera
  • Examine slides of bacteria under microscope
  • Collect pond water samples to prepare cultures for growing bacteria 
  • Begin Formal Lab Report: Experiment 2: Pond Life
Honors Biology
  • Diversity of polymers
  • Review and assess Functional Groups
  • Hydrolysis and dehydration synthesis
  • ATP-ADP cycle
  • Carbohydrates: 1 of 4 major classes of biological macromolecules