Picking Up Speed With Mavis Beacon
The middle school classes have been practicing their tying skills using Mavis Beacon. Our goal is to work up to 30 words per minute with 95-100% accuracy. We have also just finished our 2nd MAP testing so we will be able to see student growth in Reading and Math. For the academic fair, which is coming up in March, we have learned how to use the reference toolbar in Microsoft Word to cite our sources in MLA format and create a bibliography page.
Miss Stahler
Resource Room News
January was quite an eventful month: midterms, new students, academic fair, and more. Congratulations to our students whose study skills paid off and who were exempt from any of their midterm exams. Congratulations to those who took their midterms and did well. And congratulations to our 11th graders that passed an RCT or two!
We also welcome 4 new Chinese students and an American Student from New Jersey. We look forward to getting to know them and we’re glad they can join us in the adventure of learning through the last half of the school year.
Part of the adventure is working through all the phases of the academic fair process which helps ideas come to life. This month very interesting topics have been explored and research started. Some of the topics included skate boarding, gymnastics, basketball, terrestrial and jovian planets, the origins of chocolate, baking a cake, Puerto Rican cookies, volcanoes of Hawaii, Hawaiian culture and language, and international flight. Do you get the feeling some students are really hungry and some are ready for warmer weather? We look forward to seeing all these wonderful ideas blossom into research papers, projects, and presentation boards by March 18th.
Mrs. Kemp and Mrs. Hampton
Check Mate!
On Wednesday, January 13th, Evangel Christian School hosted a Chess Tournament in preparation for the first Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) Chess Tournament. Schools throughout the Northeast region will come together to participate in this fun yet challenging game of strategy. Students played multiple games in the intense elimination rounds. We thank all the students who participated and are praying for the team members who will be competing on February 12th in Newton Square, PA.
Christmas Program
Go! That was the theme shared by our 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students on Thursday, December 17th at Evangel Christian School’s Annual Christmas Program. Using the Christmas story as the basis, Middle School demonstrated how God calls us to Go Lead!, Go Obey!, Go Risk!, Go Tell!, and Go Serve! Students read poems they had written on their own, sang songs, danced, and performed dramas as each segment demonstrated how we can do one of the five “Go’s.” The grand finale featuring all Middle School students singing Jesus, Jesus, Oh What a Wonderful Child ended the performance on a truly high note. The students practiced many hours and their hard work did not go unnoticed as many guests shared how blessed and touched they were by the message. So remember, when God tells you to go–GO!
Mrs. Candelier
Joy
We studied Joy, this month, which was fitting seeing how it was the holiday season. We looked at the life of Mary and the joy Jesus must have brought to her life. We also wrote poems to express the joy that Jesus brings to our lives. It was awesome to see some of the young people share their poems during the Christmas program.
Mr. Lopez
Hope and a Future
We studied God’s purpose and plan for our lives. We learned that we are unique and designed with a purpose. It’s important that our young people know there life has hope. The absence of hope is the presence of depression. There are a lot of young people walking around aimlessly, but we know that “God has given us a Hope and a Future!” Praise the Lord!
Mr. Lopez
Music Class
Students are continuing to learn the guitar. Throughout this month students will be learning three more songs. They really like coming in and playing each week. It is challenging for many of them but they seem to really be picking it up. Some have even started looking at songs they know and realize they can now play those songs on the guitar because of the chords they have learned so far. I really enjoy seeing their faces as they discover that in a few short months they have learned enough to begin playing real songs.
Mrs. Racoma
Resource Room
December is such a wonderful month as everything around us remembers the birth of our Savior. This year we added Advent reflections to devotional/prayer time. Our favorite passage by Dennis Bratcher was:
“We live in a world in which bigger and better define our expectations for much of life. We have become so enamored by super size, super stars, and high definition that we tend to view life through a lens that so magnifies what we expect out of the world that we tend not to see potential in small things. But as the prophet Zechariah reminds us (Zech 4:10), we should not “despise the day of small things,” because God does some of his best work with small beginnings and impossible situations.”
The students read them and came up with their own reflections, which graced our bulletin boards. They wrote them on angel shapes and decorated their version of an angel. It is always nice to see students using their creativity especially as a way to worship.
Enrichment Class
Happy New Year’s. I pray everyone had a safe Christmas break. The group projects are starting to heat up. Most of the research has been done and now the teams are writing or typing their final papers. When your child has their work online they will be able to show you what they have been working on. The research has made way for the English side of learning. The groups are continuing to write about this new technology. The artisan is about to push their way into the project when the group starts working on their simulated web pages. This simulated web page is all about their technology. If you child’s group wins the regional judging they will get the opportunity to create a web page that may be put on the internet. Examples of winning projects can be seen at: www.dmail.exploravision.org. Click on winning entries and scroll to the age group you would like to look at and click view winning website. Time is short and the deadline is coming soon. January 25th for the paper part of the project and February 2nd for the electronic part of the projects.
God is good and His mercy endures forever.
Dustin Penland
Spanish
This month I am going to continue to encourage the students to draw and label comic strip type dialogs in Spanish. I will also look ahead to fostering more self motivated practice in listening skills.
Mr. Hernandez