September 4, 2015
Dear NCHS Family,
It has been a great first week of school at New Canaan High School. On my first day, we were greeted by music and seniors (at 6:10 a.m.) demonstrating their school spirit. In the end, all students are little kids at heart. It was great to see the students back in class and I was amazed by the turnout at the PFA networking events and I look forward to seeing everyone at the PFA General Membership meeting on September 9th.
Please consider joining us throughout the year at athletic and VPA events.
Upcoming events:
- 9/8 Board of Education Meeting 7:00 p.m Wagner Room
- 9/9 PFA General Membership Meeting
- 9/10 New to New Canaan Parent Coffee
- 9/11 Senior Parents Program 8:00-9:00a.m.
- Open House 9/17 6:30 pm Freshman Orientation and 7:15 all Grades
Department News
September 4, 2015 English Department Update:
This summer several members of the English Department worked on curriculum. Bob Darken and Mike McAteer developed a unit on “Problem-Based Learning”, an instructional paradigm that focuses on problem solving to increase student engagement and the use of a variety of 21st century skills. Arri Weeks attended an “un-conference” on technology in the classroom this past weekend called Ed-Camp Manhattanville. Matt Quinn and Marianne Cohen are the new American Studies instructional team, and they spent time this summer writing curriculum for their new course. Emily Hernberg and Arri Weeks spent three weeks in London this summer attending Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance, a program for secondary teachers of Shakespeare. Jessica Cullen attended the Taft program for teachers of AP Literature and Composition this past summer.
September 4, 2015 This week in the Counseling office
As students settle into the first days, counselors are working to help with the transition. We are adjusting schedules, re-balancing semesters, helping students to become comfortable with new classes, teachers, routines and checking senior schedules and transcripts to make sure graduation requirements will be met. We are informing teachers about our students if there are circumstances that they need to be aware or sensitive toward. Our secretaries have eased anxious parents and lost students, sent out 504 plans and updated our website. We are registering students for the PSAT in the College and Career Center. On the first day, counselors met with their freshmen to go over what to expect this year and introduce ourselves. We met with freshmen and sophomore PFA groups to talk about their respective years as well. This week we are preparing to go into senior classes for next week, to kick off the college application season.
September 4, 2015 - Math Department Update
An Algebra I class played BINGO where they translated mathematical expressions to written expressions and vice versa in order to fill in squares. Precalculus students did a pendulum project to discover the linear relationship between length of the string and time it took the pendulum to swing 10 times. In Algebra Math Center, an exercise on creating figures led to a discussion on "perfect directions" and how directions can sometimes be too vague or too detailed. One of our teachers collaborated with the Library Media Specialists to develop their active space in the library and gave them a Lego activity for the Lego table which has students use Legos to model a furniture company. It is a very common linear programming model used to discuss constraints, feasible regions and systems to maximize profit.
