Weekly Update 10/28

Dear NCHS Family,

Spirit Week:

Spirit Week was a tremendous success.  The students were excited for each of the spirit days and they respected themselves, each other and the community.  Thank you to the students for their tremendous spirit. Here are some pics from the Pep Rally.

Student/ Staff member of the month:

We had over 90 nominations for the staff member of the month.  Thank you to our amazing student body for being so thoughtful and nominating our staff. Winners will be announced soon.

We have also had a huge response from our faculty in nominating our students. It is so hard to choose from so many deserving students. Look for the winners soon.

Close up of the Week: We have had no winners this week!!!!!

Cyber Security:

A few weeks ago NCPS Superintendent Dr. Bryan Luizzi created a Cyber Security team focused on training our staff, with Scott Barnett, NCPS District Technology Manager going to faculty meetings with a presentation about ways to keep themselves and our network safe. This has been going very well and the District is creating a regular communication with faculty/staff to keep them thinking cyber safety.

The Team also spent 3 hours with FBI specialists in August to review our security protocols and to learn directly from them about the threats and what we should be protecting against in our network.  Additionally, we now have a standing item at Crisis Advisory Board focused on cyber security.

While recent events have shown that you can never say a network is 100% secure, we wanted to share these pro-active cybersecurity measures that are in place to keep our data safe and our network secure at the NCPS.

I look forward to seeing you at the many events throughout the year.

As always, thank you for your support!

Be well and stay healthy NCHS!

Bill Egan

Upcoming Events:

10/27 Bonfire 6:30pm

10/28 Homecoming Game Dunning 2pm

10/28 Homecoming Dance NCHS Gym 7pm

11/2 NCHS PFA: Raising Resilient Children 7PM Saxe Auditorium

11/2 End of first quarter

11/4 SAT

Pictures from around NCHS:

From the Post Prom Committee:

New Canaan High School Fashion Show!

March 23, 2018.  All proceeds to go to the 2018 Post Prom!

2018 Parents & Seniors – Help Support the 2018 Post Prom! The NCHS Post Prom committee is part of a charity shopping event on Nov. 18 with Lord & Taylor. Please support us and help us keep our Seniors safe after prom. For more information please contact Lisa Arnone lisaaarnone@gmail.com; Wendy Sloane whatsupwithwendy@gmail.com or Ann Marie Greco   anna528@aol.com

Department News:

Administrator’s Perspective:

It’s Spirit Week at NCHS! This week, Mr. Gusitsch takes a look at this longstanding tradition with a set of fresh eyes. Feel free to check it out, here.

NCTV Broadcast:

English Department:  The end of the quarter is nearly upon us and teachers have been busy grading essay drafts while students have been busy revising them.  It wasn’t all work this week, as Mr McAteer had students playing knockout and ultimate frisbee to remind them of childhood experiences to spark some creative writing.  In the photo below, Mr. Remley and David Kelly paused for a photo opp during “turn back the clock day”.  The 80’s and 90’s were in full effect!

Science Department News:

In forensics this week, students were learning how to run an electrophoresis gel in order to analyze DNA found at the scene of the crime. The blue gel picture is an example of the DNA from the crime scene, the victim, and 2 suspects.

AP Biology students are shown using Vernier CO2 gas sensors to study how temperature affects cellular respiration of crickets.

Students in Physics classes set up a system to measure force vectors as a precursor to our unit on projectile motion.

VPA News:

NCHS VPA Department’s version of a Rainbow created for Spirit Week.!

Jewelry Class

On October 21 Ms. Core's Jewelry class had a visiting artist who demonstrated making precious metals clay silver rings.  Students then created their own silver rings with PMC clay, textures, and embellishments that were fired and smoothed the following Monday.

Band

NCHS Band members heard a performance by the United States Marine Band at Ridgefield HS on October 24 at 7:30 P.M.  Established by an Act of Congress in 1798, the United States Marine Band is America's oldest continuously active professional musical organization.  Its mission is unique - to provide music for the President of the United States and the Commandant

of the Marine Corps.

 

The picture above of the full band is at the end of the encore, the US National March, "Stars and Stripes Forever", and after the unveiling of the American Flag.  

Band members pictured from left to right are..Isaac Chou, Haonan Zheng, Emma Gibbens, Sarah Bazata, Mr. Cranston, Tim Manzella, Clare Herzog, Alex Rashad, Emma St. Raymond, and Tucker Morley.

Mr. Cranston is photographed with Master Gunnery Sergeant Christian Ferrari- trumpet, who are friends and musician colleagues from high school in New York State.

World Language:

Mrs. Corona’s students in Latin IV Honors are seeing the light at the end of the very dark grammar tunnel: after four units of Subjunctives in Independent and Dependent Clauses, they are preparing to move into reading unadapted Latin literature, having acquired necessary concepts for reading advanced texts. Vocabulary and grammar mastery is often tested via Quizlet live where students must work in teams of three or four to answer the questions posed. Their team performance is on display making it a fun and competitive formative assessment.

Students in Latin II Honors are putting finishing touches on presentations, movies, websites  and infographics  that explore various  Roman rites of passage.  They have just  finished three units in which they mastered passive voice tenses in Indicative and  deponent verbs. They also read various stories from the Aeneid that had been adapted to feature the new grammar, while exposing them to one of a the most influential epic of the Western civilization. During the upcoming annual visit to the Met., students will be able to further see this influence featured in  several paintings and  tapestries.

The Latin Club met three times so far, celebrating Vergil’s birthday on Oct 15th by writing in calligraphy one of the most famous passages from the Aeneid. This week , working in grade level teams, club members labeled parts of the human body. Freshmen and sophomores weren’t spooked by the competition (or by the skeletons) and won!                                         

Honors Latin V-UConn
Costume day meets Catullus' poem 14. Two retro cheerleaders in Honors Latin V-UConn
present their translations and analysis of Catullus poem 14 "To Calvus."
Catullus wasn't happy with the gift from Calvus but he did appreciate the students' enthusiasm.

Latin 2 class is doing a unit long writing assignment in Latin.  They are taking information from an English article about the eruption of Vesuvius as seen and recorded by an eyewitness, Pliny the Younger, and writing simple Latin sentences in a narrative format.  They are using google draw so that they can illustrate vocabulary words that they might not remember.  At the end of the unit, they will have a paragraph in Latin about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in a fun, illustrated format that will printed and displayed.

French Classes:

Madame Yzerman came in and spoke about French culture to the French 2 and 2 honors classes and French 1 classes on Monday.