The Ceremony of Seven

Dear Community Members,

It is with great honor that you have graduated from the Ceremony of Seven, and we now welcome you to your official place in the collective. After careful consideration and precise training, you are ready to take your place in our community. We have laughed through the Wanting, been awestruck by the reality of release, and have wanted to punch a wall at the abstract ending of the story. But as you become a part of our collective, you will no longer feel these emotions. Instead, you will become a responsible individual who thinks with the mind of the community so that we may maintain our peaceful Utopia. It is with power, control, and absolute authority that your assignments have been given. Remember, we know what is best for you.

Thank you for your childhood.

Link to Album

How to Decrease our Global Impact

Grade 7 Service Learning

Grade 7 students, using the scientific method, have selected, performed, and analyzed individual conservation-based experiments, in order to measure their long-term effect and impact on the global commons.  

Advisory

Today in Advisory, students discussed the following prompts:

-As an advisory, can we rank the categories of carbon usage from biggest to smallest?  (Categories:  transportation, home, food, purchases)

-Can you remember which factors contribute to each usage category?

Then students were asked to think about how they might reduce their carbon usage for --

• transportation: (train instead of plane, carpooling, biking, public transport)
• home: (size of house, type of house, heating method, temperature inside home while heating / air conditioning in the summer, lights, water usage [dishes, clothes, showers, sprinklers, teeth-brushing], waste management)
• food: diet, eating organic, eating local, composting
• purchases: types of containers, electronics, drinking water, shopping bags, natural fabrics vs synthetic

Students analyzed  their own data and came up with 3 different ways they could personally reduce carbon usage on a daily basis. Here are some examples:

Conservation Experiment:

Each student will be doing a two-week experiment using one of the conservation ideas that was brainstormed during advisory today. They just need to have some idea what experiment they will do (they will need a hypothesis, way of measuring data, method of recording data, method of presenting data in a lab report, and a conclusion backed by clear evidence). These lab reports will be reviewed and worked on in Science Class.

At home:

We would like to encourage families to discuss this experiment with your child, and to support their efforts by monitoring their progress.

Religions Field Trip in Budapest

Grade 7 experienced monotheistic religions first-hand by exploring Budapest. We started off our day learning about Islam at a mosque in Buda. Next, we took a guided tour through the streets of Pest to learn more about Judaism in Hungary. And finally, students explored a Christian basilica to see the famous right hand of St. Istvan. It may have been freezing, but hot chocolate at the winter market warmed us all right up when we needed it the most. Hopefully, Grade 7 students now have a stronger understanding of the role these religions play in our host country.

Click here to see more pictures from our "World Religions Unit" 

Service Learning Project

Last week, Grade 7 students started to work on this year's Service Learning project. To begin with, they were asked to answer the questions "What makes you happy?" and "What is happiness?"

Here is a word-cloud created with some of their answers:

They then connected their answers with the idea of sustainability, after watching this video:

The story of stuff

Today, students learned and discussed about the Carbon Cycle, and their own carbon footprint. In order to develop this further, students have been asked to fill out a worksheet at home, with parents' assistance. The worksheet is due next Wednesday, November 30th. 

We thank you in advance for your support!