Upper
October 2, 2020
Congratulations National Merit Commended Scholars
The Seven Hills School continues its tradition of excellence with 10 Seven Hills seniors—almost 13% of our graduating class—who were recently named Commended Students in the 2021 National Merit Program. The Seven Hills School congratulates the following National Merit Commended Students: Kurt Drath, Robert Jeon, Annabel Kleinwaechter, Nandini Likki, Steven Mu, Laxmi Namboodiri, Christina Torlone, Holly Weisfelder, Charlie Wood, and Aaron Ziegler. The National Merit Program also recently released the names of our National Merit Semifinalists, bringing the total number of 10 Commended Scholars and nine Semifinalists to 19, which is 24% of Seven Hills School’s Class of 2021. Students qualify for recognition in the National Merit programs with their scores on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
Pizarras Transparantes (Plexiglass as a whiteboard)
Using their new vocabulary of their next area of study, which is “In the Classroom,” Spanish I students recently read questions presented by their teacher, Teresa Bardon, and used their pizarras transparantes, or plexiglass dividers, to answers the questions and created complete sentences integrating the vocabulary. Bardon said because pizarra, the Spanish word for chalkboard or whiteboard, is a vocabulary word, using the dividers as a way to incorporate the vocabulary while maintaining a social distance in the classroom was an appropriate aspect of the lesson.
Juniors Study “The Crucible”
Juniors in Marielle Newton’s class are reading “The Crucible,” a book about the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts. “We’re talking about how much society should be based around punishment in order to achieve a truly moral society and versus much should be based on caring what happens to other people,” said Newton. Newton said students also took on character parts and then worked with peers in small groups to analyze which characters are motivated to look good and which are motivated to actually be good. Newton said her remote learning students joined in the discussions by working with her face-to-face students via Zoom during class. “The students are very interested in unpacking what parts of Puritan society haven’t changed all that much even in 2020,” she said.
Just How Do Store Receipts Get Designed?
AP Computer Science students in Marcus Twyford’s class recently worked on writing multiple codes in Java to study the concepts of Object Oriented Programming. To build something that students are more familiar with, they wrote their own scaled down version of Point-Of-Sale (POS) Software that simulates a self-checkout register, individual customer transactions, and a receipt of their transaction printed at the end. “Though the course follows and prepares students for the College Board AP exam, we spend weekly labs that go beyond the material to simulate writing solutions to more complex problems that students may interact with on a regular basis,” said Twyford. “Presently, students are using simple text editors and command line terminals to compile the code as they hone their foundational skills, but incorporate the use of version control software like Git and GitHub to more closely replicate current software development practices.”
Upper School Journalism Class Prepares First Issue of Newspaper
Journalism students are busy writing the school year’s first issue of Canvass, the Upper School’s student newspaper. During a recent class, students worked on their articles and shared their ledes, the opening of a news story, with journalism teacher Karla Dejean. “The lede is going to anchor you throughout your story,” Dejean said. “I want you to feel great about your lede.” Junior and Canvass reporter Kevin Chen said the Seven Hills community should be “excited” for Canvass. Student journalists are writing several stories, including articles about new safety protocols at Seven Hills and Chen is writing the first installment of a humor column. “We are all working very hard,” Chen said. “We are all putting in our best efforts.”
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Five Stingers Sign to Play in College
Five Stingers from the Class of 2024 signed their letters of intent to continue their athletic careers in college.
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