Thanksgiving Bingo!

Today at SVHS we are playing a game called "Thanksgiving Bingo".  This morning each student was given a bingo card with 25 squares and a list of 40 Thanksgiving-related words to choose from to enter in the squares.  At the beginning of each period we are reading four words.  Students who get five words in a row across, down or diagonally can come down to the office to claim a prize.  It's amazing how excited supposedly jaded teenagers get about games like this.  Thanks to the following local businesses and people who donated prizes:  Dunkin Donuts, Friendly River Music, JROTC, the WOW Program, the MSAD 55 Tech Department, and Mr. and Mrs. Hodgdon.  Special thanks to Mr. Kaleta for gathering prizes and organizing the game.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Atoms: The Building Blocks of Matter

This morning I observed Miss Blodgett's chemistry class.  The students were working on a lab in which they had to build models of chemical compounds using Lego blocks to represent atoms that are rearranged in the course of the reaction.  In this lab they were mixing calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).  This lab activity reinforces the law of conservation of mass, which says that the same number of atoms must exist on both sides of a chemical equation.

Hawks Football Team Receives Western Class "D" Sportsmanship Award.

Team captain Sawyer Cote along with teammates Roderick Maynard and Patrick Westberry were present along with Coach Chuck Hamaty and myself at "Gold Ball Saturday" at Fitzpatrick Stadium today to receive the Western Class D Sportsmanship Award banner.  This award was based on votes cast by all Class D coaches.  This is the second year in a row that the Hawks have received this honor. Congratulations to our football team--we are proud of you!

Photo by Cynde LaPierre

No Fear Shakespeare!

Sophomore English teacher Jessica Webber has been using props and a modern language translation (with original Shakespearean language on each facing page) called "No Fear Shakespeare" to make Shakespeare more fun and accessible for students.  This year for the first time she has attempted to have all of her students read MacBeth.  They have been working on this for the past several weeks.  Kudos to Ms. Webber for challenging all of the students with this challenging piece of literature and for working so hard to make it fun!

Construction Update 11/21/13

This week workers from DS Foundations dug a 15 foot pit outside the front entrance and today started building the form for the foundation footing of the new elevator tower.  The footing will be poured tomorrow.

Announcing my new blog

I am starting this blog as a way to communicate quickly and directly with members of the school community.  Parents, students, teachers and other members of the community will be able to subscribe to it and receive new posts as they are made to their phones or email accounts through an RSS feed.  I am still working on the technical logistics of this but making progress--in my spare time (hah!)  I also want to use this space as a platform to post photos and video of what's going on at SVHS on a day-to-day basis.