The Upper School team is so happy to have students back on campus today! We refreshed the middle school spaces a bit, and we changed up Advisory groups for the spring semester, and students have been wonderful to welcome the changes.
For advisory, 8th grade is now a unified group and meeting each day. Our specific focus areas will include career exploration, job shadowing opportunities, professional communication and dress, and fundraising and planning the 8th grade trip. We had a great start today, using the time to go over the semester’s topics and hear of each other’s breaks.
The sixth grade history class jumped right back in this morning. They began with some refresher questions posted to Classroom, and then they practiced terms and geography for an upcoming quiz. Once these housekeeping items were completed, we did a lesson on China during the Ming dynasty, reading a primary source from 1420 about European interactions. Primary sources are especially helpful in learning new vocabulary and learning to think critically about authorial intent and bias. We also learned about isolationism in Japan during the Tokugawa Era and discussed the reasons a nation might choose to isolate itself.
