Electionem suffragio...update!

In case you haven't heard, there is a big election next Tuesday.  Consider yourself updated. I could not help but find it humorous that the Latin word to vote (suffragio) sounds like suffer.  Regardless of any specific political view, we have all suffered through a barrage of opinions over the last few months.  Enough of that. 8th grade Latin students inspired the title of this update as they were busy creating Propaganda Posters for candidates in Ancient Rome.  Huge posters were plastered in the hall for them to cover with typical Latin phrases they translated while studying local elections in Ancient Rome.  I was pleasantly surprised to stumble into 8th graders creating graffiti on a Friday morning; according to Ms. Latham: This activity is part of the Local Elections unit in which students learn about the various positions one might run for in local elections in ancient Rome, what the duties of these officials were, and the overall election process.  We study the ancient election slogans that were found on the walls of the forum during the excavation of Pompeii and learn many of the various abbreviations that were commonly used in such election 'graffiti.'  The culminating activity of this unit is the mock election with four teams of candidates running for positions.  As a part of this project, students were writing their election slogans on the walls of our 'forum.'  They were required to use the same style of lettering found in Pompeii, three of the newly learned 'Special Verbs, ' and four of the abbreviations they learned from the ancient election graffiti found in Pompeii.   It was awesome! Speaking of studying another part of the world, I received an email from WA today extending a fantastic opportunity to our 8th graders: Colonialism and Conquest in the Pacific Eighth grade students at Stony Brook School have the opportunity to join students from Westford Academy on an educational experience to New Zealand, Australia & Hawaii upon completion of their freshman year at the high school. The trip runs for two weeks beginning at the end of June 2018. Enrollment has begun and over twenty spots have been filled. Interested candidates should contact Westford Academy History teacher Mr. Stephen Scully (sscully@westfordk12.us) for details and pricing. Back to great things happening here, another highlight of the week was watching some of the 6th grade presentations in both Engineering and Theater Arts.  Engineering students were presenting their research on rockets prior to the next phase in which they build their own.  There was a wide variety of information as students created guiding questions to focus their research and had multiple options as to how they wanted to present their information.  They are now working on creating their own rockets which will be launched in the weeks to come.  The students in Theater Arts were tasked with creating marketing commercials for alternative uses of regular house hold objects.  Their work was creative, thoughtful and very entertaining.  In order to develop an alternative use, students needed to examine the initial object closely and determine another possible way to utilize it. Following that, they needed to collaborate on a script that could successfully persuade someone to purchase the object. Finally, I was fortunate to observe a Milky Way Plate Tectonics lab during 7th grade science classes.  Students collected data on the effects various force had on the Milky Way bars as they study plate tectonics.  The gooeyness of the activity created a lot of laughter in addition to the demonstrated will power necessary to not eat the models.  Personally, I was not tempted as I have seen enough sweets lately to last me until...well, Thanksgiving. Have a wonderful weekend! Chris