Weekly School Updates

Dear Churchill Community,

We have started to celebrate Black History Month through different activities done in class with the teachers. We will also exhibit in the school a number of portraits of African American authors, educators, politicians, artists, musicians. An assembly on that same theme will be held on Friday the 24th.

News from Churchill Campus 

In English CM1 class, students will be exploring Black History Month and African American culture within the US in social studies, and through reading and writing biographies. In ESL, all grades are using learned vocabulary and grammar to write sentences about things and people they love for Valentine’s Day. 

This week, the CE2 students are creating a Valentine’s Day card inspired by the Brazilian artist Romero Britto and its famous art piece “Love is in the air.” They are also finishing their Irish art piece for the school gala in March and signed each as artists themselves! The three classes rehearsed songs to prepare for our coming visit to our neighboring retirement center. They will bring love, songs and make a flower garland to decorate the center’s living room on February 20th.

In English, CE2 students are working on grammar tenses. They learned about the past, present and future tenses and how to grammatically mark them. They are now applying this knowledge to their reading and writing.

In U.S. Math, the second graders started a new unit on graphs and data. While learning about different types of scientists, they will master collecting data by creating and reading tally charts, bar graphs, pictographs and line plots. This week we focused on collecting data and what herpetologists are and what they do. They will put together a graphing project as they progress in the unit. After working hard on divisions, the fourth graders move to a new focal area: Geometry. They began the week with a math history lesson: Why is a circle 360 degrees? When they return from break, they will learn how to use a protractor to measure, draw and find missing angles. 

This week in STEM, students finished the large structure creation sequence. From kindergarten to third grade they built buildings using cups. The children started by creating simple towers and ended by building real pyramids. For the CM1 they finished creating wooden bridges using glue guns, which allowed us to test their structural integrity. 

From Elisabeth Sham, Counselor

This week was National School Counseling Week, and this year’s program, “School Counselors: Helping Students Dream Big,” helps to focus public attention on the unique contribution of school counselors within U.S. school systems. National School Counseling Week, sponsored by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA), highlights school counselors’ tremendous impact in helping students achieve school success and plan for careers.

This week also overlaps with International School Counseling Week. Please visit ASCA’s NSCW website or ISCA’s ISCW website for more information.

100 Days

We will be celebrating the 100 Days of School the week after the break. My next letter will reflect the different events we have planned.

Thank you very much. I wish you all a wonderful weekend and a wonderful break.

Sincerely,

Franck Philipp