Weekly Update 12/9

Dear NCHS Family,

Happy Friday!

Grades:

Progress reports will be available for viewing on Friday evening.  If you have any concerns about your child’s academic progress, please contact the teacher directly.

Important Information Regarding Uber Transportation:

Some of our students have called Uber to transport them from campus into town or home during the school day. We are concerned about students using this service during school hours for a variety of reasons including:

·     no parental permission has been explicitly given for this driver to transport a student.

·    neither the school nor parents have any way of knowing the qualifications/background of any Uber driver.

·  transporting anyone under 18 without an accompanying adult is a violation of Uber’s own policies.

When we have become aware of a student attempting to leave campus in an Uber, we have intervened and will continue to do so, but unlike taxis, most Uber cars are indistinguishable from other traffic entering or exiting campus. We have reached out to Uber in an attempt to discourage drivers from picking up students at school, but the service views each driver as an independent contractor who makes his/her decision about taking on customers.

Please talk to your child to reinforce their adherence to rules regarding off-campus privilege and to help us discourage use of this service during the school day.

Study Hall:

Some Freshman parents have requested their child be enrolled in study hall. We do not automatically place Freshman in study halls and students learn utilize their free time effectively. Please know that if you would like your child enrolled in a study hall, contact your child’s counselor at 203-594-4649 and ask for them to placed in a study hall.

SENIOR INTERNSHIP PROGRAM (SIP):

The link to the SIP application has been sent to all seniors. Seniors MUST BE USING THEIR NCPS EMAIL TO ACCESS THE APPLICATION. The electronic application and paper permission form attached to the application are due by the end of the school day on December 12th(Monday).

The internship will run from May 15 to June 16, 2017 (end date remains flexible, depending on the weather!).

The SIP committee will match students with an internship based on the interest demonstrated on their applications. Students are also invited to create an internship of their own design but will need to submit their ideas to the SIP Steering Committee for approval. There is no guarantee that every applicant will obtain an internship.

Interns will be expected to work 25 hours a week in lieu of attending classes and may still participate in all after school activities such as athletics and theater. Interns’ grades will be frozen before the internship begins.

If you have any questions, please contact Susan Carroll in the College and Career Center (susan.carroll@ncps-k12.org).

Upcoming Events:

12/10 Class L State Football Championship 2:30 pm New Britain Willowbrook Park

12/14 Choir Concert 7:00 pm St. Mark’s Church

12/19 BOE Meeting 7:00 pm Wagner Room

12/22 PFA Alumni Brunch 8:23 am

12/23 Half day early dismissal

12/26 Holiday Break, school resumes January 3, 2017

Wishing you all the best,

Bill Egan

Football News:

Class L State Football Championship

When:                  Saturday, December 10th

Where:                 Willowbrook Park, New Britain

Kickoff:                 2:30p.m.

Willowbrook Park is located in New Britain, CT and will be an excellent venue for the championship game. Driving time with normal traffic should be approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Pre-sale tickets are available online at ciacsports.ticketleap.com. All tickets are $10.00. There will not be a shortage of tickets so you can also purchase tickets at the stadium on Saturday.

Hope you will come out and support the team on Saturday. Please dress in warm clothing.

It is going to be cold! Go Rams!!!!  

Pictures from around NCHS:

Department News:

VPA News:

On Sunday, December 11th our NCHS choir students will perform in a collaborative concert with St. Luke's School and the New Haven Civic Orchestra featuring music from The Messiah by G. F. Handel.  The performance is at Woolsey Hall at Yale University, starting at 3:30 PM.  Tickets are $10 students/seniors and $15 adults.

Congratulations to five NCHS photography students and Ms. McDonagh whose work was accepted into the 37th Annual Photography Show at the Carriage Barn Arts Center. Their work will be on exhibit until January 19.

The following works are on exhibit:

Liz Bochicchio, "Barbie Floats" & "Finding Delia"

Caroline Challe, "Shadows" won first place in the student category.

Sophie Graham, " Rainbow Wood"

Timothy Hardy, "Berry" & "Drum to Your Own Beat"

Danielle Klapper, "White Walls"

Jeanne McDonagh, "Mary Theresa"

English Department News:

It’s been a busy time in the English department, as the Writing Center was updating, administering, and scoring the 10th grade writing benchmark for Social Studies classes.  

In classroom news, students in Ms. Nigro’s short fiction elective course are creating podcasts to host a book review talk show of their favorite short stories from a horror unit. They are also going to use the podcast as a platform to discuss/debate why the genre continues to be so popular given the macabre topics. Students will be publishing the podcasts to the class website -- so if you are a horror fan, check them out!

In Mr. Remley’s and Mr. McAteer’s AP LIt. classes, students have been reading Dante’s Inferno and performing certain cantos aloud and engaging with the powerful, figurative language of this canonical text.  

Many Juniors have already begun their research units, and the library media center has been abuzz with student activity.  Students have worked on gathering resources and narrowing their research focus. Interests cover a wide range of topics!

Math Department News:  

Algebra I students worked on a graphing activity. They graphed color coded lines and worked in groups to compare different components of the equations and their graphs such as slope, intercepts, and they identified relationships between the lines they graphed.

Students in M2 Geometry used their devices to further their understanding of proving two lines cut by a traversal parallel. This activity provided students to work together and articulate the concepts surrounding the topic of angle relationships within parallel lines. (see screenshot below).

In the next coming weeks, Mathematics students will be participating in two holiday-themed events.  The Ninth Annual Math Music Video Contest has kicked off, with videos due on December 20.  In addition, several Math teachers are participating in a holiday gift collection for children in Spanish Harlem (Through the Fraternite de Notre Dame).  These gifts will be collected by the Fraternite de Notre Dame on Monday, December 12 so that they can be given to needy children in Spanish Harlem at a holiday party later that week..

CTE Department News:   

​Mrs. O'Connor's class worked on their projects in Game Design, prepping for Monday's Beta Testing, Civil Engineering Architecture, preparing for their Gingerbread models, Web Design, and preparing for student critiques outside of the class. Her Woodworking classes worked on learning the variety of machines and testing on them.

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Mr. Zambarano’s Yearbook students have been hard at work with senior baby pictures, quotes, Dot-Dots and ads, along with continuing to work with parents one on one to create their ads from scratch.

Mr. Zambarano’ Digital Electronics students are now working on Boolean Algebra, K-mapping and creating circuits from their design solutions.

Ms Martinich's AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) classes have just started their practice Create Performance task for the AP Exam they will take in May. Students are creating their own socially useful cell phone applications. Projects in the classes range from an alarm clock that requires solving a hexidecimal binary conversion to turn it off to a children's math game to a two-player Battleship game.

In May students will be submitting a coding project and a research paper to College Board as well as take a typical sit down multiple choice test.

Child Development students prepared lessons for the month of December that included a Gingerbread theme and a Snow theme. Preschoolers made gingerbread and polar masks, decorated gingerbread cookies and played in the "snow."

Ms. Zilly's Foods & Nutrition classes are whipping up some chicken stir-fry as they learn about proteins. In Baking this week the students have truly become cookie experts. They are giving presentations and leading their classmates in labs for specific cookie categories.  At the end of the lab they are responsible for judging the fresh out of oven cookie made by each lab group.... It's a tough job tasting all those cookies!

Mrs. Sapienza's Baking class made Raspberry Vanilla Cream tarts as the students practice making a Pate Sablee crust. The Foods and Nutrition students studied the principles of egg cookery and made individual omelets and egg breakfast sandwiches.  Culinary students are preparing for Rams Cafe this week and preparing tomato sauce, meatballs and minestrone soup.