Welcome to 9-A!

Yesterday the girls of 9-A got to share their favorite holiday books with their Sixth Age Buddies. The Ninth Agers were looking forward to this opportunity all week, and everyone had a lot of fun!

Before the Thanksgiving holiday 9-A partnered with our 6-D buddies to complete Thanksgiving glyphs. The Nines helped the Sixes answer questions about their Thanksgiving traditions. They then used those answers to build a Thanksgiving place setting. The glyph's directions instructed them to choose a certain color of construction paper for their place mats depending on what time they eat Thanksgiving dinner and to choose certain foods to add to their plates depending on whether they eat at their own house or somewhere else. Everyone enjoyed the activity!

My Ninth Age reading class partnered with Ms. Gentry's before Thanksgiving to explore facts and myths about the first Thanksgiving. The students worked hard on their webquests with partners to explore the facts behind this fall holiday. Webquests are challenging because they require following multi-step directions, critical thinking and collaboration skills, and comprehension of informational text. Terrific job, readers!

Recently the girls played in their first Crow vs. Canary game. The sport was soccer, and the day was chilly. Everyone had a great time! Thanks to all the parents who toughed out the cold weather and came to watch!

The entire school got together to celebrate with a Multicultural Day on Friday. We took an all school picture,  learned about Bollywood, made pinatas, and played games. The girls had a blast!

9-A had a blast at the Lower School Halloween parade last week! We also had a great time playing some Halloween games in the classroom. Trick or Treat!

Yesterday 9-A and 9-B participated in a Greek God and Goddess Fashion Show. Each student dressed up like one of the Greek gods or goddesses and got her five seconds of fame on the stage to explain who she was and a little about her costume. The girls had a blast!

We had one more cave girl share her composition in 9-A. The girls had a blast dressing up and reading their essays!

Today we enjoyed an Orioles Dress Down Day. Go O's!

Here are some more 9-A cave girls!

Recently the girls wrote a composition about cave girl life. A few of the girls decided to dress up when they read their compositions to the class. Check back later this week for more photos!

The girls put together this tour of 9-A to show their parents at Back to School Night. Enjoy!

This year 9-A will enjoy a partnership with Mrs. Armstrong's class, 6-D. The girls are especially excited because this is their first opportunity to be the older buddy in this type of partnership. We will meet once a month and do a variety of activities like crafts, reading, and running around outside. The girls met their buddies on Thursday, and they were so excited!

We had a great first day of school in 9A! The girls learned about lots of new "Ninth Age" things, attended the all school assembly, and spoke to the class about things they are proud of. We are ready for a great year!

Molly-Chaparral

The rain held off and the girls were able to participate in Track and Field Day! Enjoy this slideshow of pictures from the event.

Last week was Earth Week at Calvert and to celebrate each grade enjoyed a morning of related activities. The Ninth Agers did a craft project, went on a nature walk, and participated in energy conservation discussions. It was a great morning!

We are doing a new research project in Ninth Age this year. Each student will be responsible for researching a biome. We plan to do lots of inter-class collaborating for this project. Here are the students of 9-A and 9-1 working together to sign up for Edmodo, an online "classroom" where teachers can post messages and research tips.

Recently the girls of 9-A wrote about what the world would be like if THEY were in charge. Enjoy!

Today the 9th Age Girls participated in the Seventh Annual Egg Drop. The girls packed an egg in a box and dropped if off of the balcony in the Girls' Gym. Anyone with a whole egg got to throw their boxes off the balcony the second time. This was one of the most successful drops yet-over half of the girls had whole eggs after both drops! We will write about the experience in composition this week.

Today we got to play Sharks and Minnows on the field with our friends from 6D. After that we got to watch the boy and girl who memorized the most digits of pi through real pies at Dr. Trusty. What a great afternoon!

Today, March 14th (3/14), is Pi Day. Usually we are on spring break on this particular day. We celebrated pi by measuring the circumference and diameter of different circles and noticing that the circumference was always about 3.14 times the diameter. We also had a competition to see who could memorize the most digits of pi. The winner will throw a pie at Dr. Trusty tomorrow. Lastly, we made bracelets to represent the first twenty digits of pi. Each digit corresponded to a different color bead. This provided a visual representation of pi and made it easy for the students to see that the digits in pi do not follow any pattern. Here are some pictures of the bracelet making activity.

A few more girls have finished their Shipwrecked Story Jumpers. Please click on a student's initials to read her story. We hope you enjoy them!
FCC
SCS
MHC
SJH

As part of our celebration of African American History Month we discussed how quilt squares were used to help people navigate the Underground Railroad. The different squares were symbols that served as reminders. For example, the Flying Geese square was a reminder to follow the geese that would be flying north in the springtime and would not be far from water. The girls made construction paper quilt squares. Didn't they do a great job?! Ask your daughter to identify her square and to tell you the secret code it held!

In composition the girls have been working on a creative writing essay called Shipwrecked. The girls pretend  to be stranded on a desert island. They got to create a digital book, complete with illustrations, to go along with it. Here are some completed books. Click on a student's initials to read her book!
LED 
CAS
ME
CCH
CMS
SEM
ACL

Today the girls gave their final performance of Twice Upon A Time, our Ninth Age play. We have spent the last six weeks rehearsing, and all of our hard work paid off! The shows were great, and the girls had a lot of fun. Here they are in their costumes before the show today.

We have been studying latitude and longitude in Geography. The girls recently had an opportunity to play a game to practice their new skills. They picked a card from the latitude pile and a card from the longitude pile. Then they used a map to locate the intersection of their two chosen lines. Their goal was to find an intersection that had an island on it. If they did, they got a point. At the end of the game, the girl with the most points was the winner!

Untitled from sarah preston on Vimeo.

On Friday the girls enjoyed a Martin Luther King assembly as well as a Ravens (or favorite sports team) dress down day. Both were a huge success, as you can see from the pictures. It is not often that the entire school (Lower and Middle) gets together, so this was a special time for everyone. We heard from parent and student speakers and sang a few songs together.

Here are some pictures of the early stages of play practice!