The celebration of Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when Mexican troops defeated the French army. The Mexican Americans living in the United States celebrate Cinco de Mayo with parades, street festivals, and cultural events.

Mrs. González and Mrs. Sarrazín’s Spanish Eight Grade class celebrated Cinco de Mayo by working together in a Hispanic Cultural Fair. Students learned about the twenty-one Spanish speaking countries. They researched the geography, the people, the culture, religion, music, art, cuisine, flags, population, currency, language, government and the most important tourist attractions of each country. They prepared wonderful posters and they practiced presenting their poster in class. The posters showed the most important aspects of each country. The students were enthusiastic when working on their projects and put forth a lot of effort. The final product was the Hispanic Cultural Fair where parents and students enjoyed their presentations!

This year’s 8th grade speaker series wrapped up with a variety of topics including personal experiences to places abroad to topics that students wanted to learn more about.  Click on the player below to hear these speeches.

Charlie - My Experience to India

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Stephen - Overfishing

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Greg - My Experience to Costa Rica

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Matt - My Trip to Hawaii

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Amy - Synchronized Swimming

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Continuing with our 8th grade speaker series, a wide variety of topics were presented.    Everything from the history of jazz to the experience of being a part of a crew team.  Click the player below to hear these speeches.

Katherine - The History of Jazz

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Matthew - The joy of Basketball

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Mackenzie - Wild Horse Conservation

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Kai - Rollerblading

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Timmy - Being a part of a Crew team

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The eighth grade is spending the week at The Rocking Horse Ranch in Highland, New York! In addition to horseback riding, students are boating, swimming, playing mini-golf, playing tennis, and dancing the night away. The eighth grade is certainly enjoying their stay and having a great time with each other!  Check back, as we will be adding more photos of our trip!

As part of our ongoing collaboration, students in 8A became official Student Docents at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield after completing four weeks of training. Each pair of docents had a group of fourth, fifth, and eighth grade students they took on a tour through the museum, and they engaged in meaningful and insightful conversation about the current exhibits. By focusing on personal interpretation rather than artists’ statements or factual information, the docents were able to cull interesting reflections and commentary from the students through a series of carefully-worded open ended questions. It was the first visit to the Aldrich for many of the students and their first exposure to contemporary art. It was a fantastic morning rich in aesthetic conversation and art appreciation.

These students take charge and independently implement the curriculum. They are self starters who execute fitness warm-ups and half-mile runs while cradling lacrosse sticks before the class begins. Skills sets are student-led with enthusiasm and it is a pleasure to witness this age group lead. They are in game mode during PE class, as they prepare for team games and high school competition for next year. Lacrosse, baseball, tennis, field hockey and The President’s Fitness Challenge will be covered over the next eight weeks. It will be a wonderful finale to their time here at Unquowa!

The eighth graders recently completed an intensive printmaking/radial design project involving the creation of mandalas. From the Sanskrit, “mandala” means essence or center and is closely related to the idea of a circle. In many Eastern religions, mandalas have been used as a spiritual teaching tool to help focus one’s thoughts and evoke peace. Most impressive are the ephemeral Sand-Mandalas, painstakingly created by Buddhist monks as a form of meditation on the concept of impermanence. The sand is carefully arranged into an intricate pattern, and then it is symbolically swept away. The students started their mandalas with a single eighth of a circle. They created a design and then carved it into a printing block. If the design was symmetrical, they were ready to print. If not, they had to carve the reverse of their design onto the back of the block. They then printed eight times in a circle to complete the pattern. Next, they designed an extension of the image in the margins of the paper. They copied this over and over until the radial pattern was finished. The mandalas were then colored with markers and chalk. Viewing their completed and intricate designs definitely evokes a sense of peace and serrenity.

Eighth grade completely threw themselves into a unique writing assignment. They were to compose vignettes in which underage soldiers are either leaving their family to fight for the Confederacy or Union in The Civil War or realizing the harsh reality of the war after enlisting. The scenes involved developing historically accurate characters, detailed and dramatic writing, and using facts from Jim Murphy’s non-fiction book, The Boys’ War. Southern dialect, historical references, and some creative props were used to execute these well-written scenes. It was a fun writing and acting experience for all!

While many of you were sleeping in on a snowy Saturday morning, eight of our very talented students were with Mrs. Haseltine at Fairfield University to participate in the Mathcounts Chapter competition.

The nationwide Mathcounts program is now in its 27th year. Here at Unquowa, Mathcounts has been a part of the mathematics curriculum since 1991. On February 27, after months of preparation, our only academic team assembled at Fairfield University for its one opportunity to compete against other local teams.

And compete they did! We beat seven other teams, including five large public middle schools, to finish 13th. Charlie J. placed 23rd out of 140 students and qualified to compete at the state competition.

It is a joy to work with these talented and enthusiastic students and they have done an outstanding job of representing Unquowa. Congratulations!

The eighth grade students in Mrs. Haseltine’s Algebra 1 class were recently given an assignment to create math worksheets for students in kindergarten through third grade. Using published “Try a Tile” activities as models, each eighth grader formulated four sets of problems with solutions which used the digits 0 through 9 exactly once. After the worksheets were carefully edited and formatted, we discussed the benefits of asking additional questions, as opposed to giving the answers. Armed with enthusiasm for math, plastic number tiles and colorful worksheets with titles such as Erica’s Equations, Baer’s Bears, Cooke’s Calculations, and Andres’ Arithmetic, the eighth graders visited kindergarten and first grade.

The lower school students, as always, enjoyed the attention of the “big kids” and were engaged and eager learners for forty minutes. Each young student received a collection of nine activities to share at home. Several parents have told me how much their children enjoyed doing the activities and how impressed they were with the creativity of the eighth graders.

After reflecting on their experience, the eighth graders made some changes to their worksheets for grades two and three and are ready for their next opportunity to be mentors of math.