The arrival of May adds a frenetic sort of restlessness to the school’s campus, as a year of learning and creativity reaches its zenith. From students and staff to faculty and families, we all sense the impending end to the school year. Soon, exams will be passed out, turned in, and graded; final projects and presentations will be lauded; yearbooks will be signed; well wishes and requests to keep in touch will be offered to our graduating seniors; summer break will begin. In the last month before we close out the ’23-’24 school year, the Matthews Library will accomplish plenty, as was the case this past week.
Tuesday was Poem in Your Pocket day, which brought smiles to all our faces. Students read poetry to us in exchange for a piece of candy. Many chose to read poems they wrote. The day overflowed with creativity, art, and sweets. What more could you want?
All week, Ms. Melinson taught the 8th grade history classes how to sift through web searches to find nuggets of gold amidst the silt. As advertisements, paid search results, misinformation, and AI-generated articles have cluttered the top results of most google searches, fact checking and website evaluation have become vital skills for our students to learn. In addition, she walked them through citing their research using NoodleTools, the citation and outline software that the school uses to streamline the research learning process for Country Day students. Now, they’ll be on even more sturdy ground as they enter the world of high school-level research assignments in just a few months.
On Wednesday we hosted the last High School Book Club of the year, which was bitter sweet as we had to say our goodbyes to the seniors. To learn more about what we discussed, check out the post about it here.
Ms. Melinson’s advisory has deviated from its donut norm these past two Thursdays. Last week, Ashly brought cream puffs, and this week Jaq brought cinnamon rolls.
Enjoy the weekend, Country Day. All physical copies of our books will be due back on May 22nd, but our virtual library has hundreds of eBooks and eAudiobooks that are available to peruse 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year (or 366 as was the case this year). Check out the eBooks tab of our website for instructions on how to use it!