Good luck to The Summit's Middle School History Bowl team! They will be competing tomorrow for the first time to demonstrate their knowledge on a wide range of topics, including:

20th Century, Space Race, WWII Eastern Front, American West, Industrial Revolution, MLB History, World Capitals, the American Revolution, Ancient Mesopotamia, Reconstruction, Colonial America 1600-1750, World War I, and the Roman Empire  

If ABC wants our advice, we think this group would make a pretty excellent team on Jeopardy! Watch out, Ken Jennings!

Questions? Contact the Front Desk.

We are pleased to announce that after receiving an overwhelmingly positive response to their spring virtual parent education series, the Independent School Association of the Central States (ISACS) is offering another five-part webinar series in Spring 2022.

We hope you consider joining other independent school parents for any of the five evening sessions led by a variety of experts to help you support your children socially, emotionally, educationally, and developmentally as we all continue to learn and grow. Please use the link below to register for the live webinars, which will be held from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Central time.

To accommodate busy schedules, recordings of the webinars will be available until June 30, 2022. Be sure to check the Raven Report each week for instructions on accessing the webinar recordings after the live presentation date!

Feeling Buddies are a new tool added to the first grade classroom to help students understand and manage their emotions.

The buddy set includes eight common feelings. The buddies' faces help visually represent each feeling. When a child is trying to process a feeling, they can use the faces on the Feeling Buddies to help identify what they are experiencing.

After identifying the feeling, they pick up the matching buddy and use it to help process their emotion. They follow a script to help their buddy through the emotion. Students have been practicing in class with each buddy and are becoming more and more independent at talking their buddies through the emotions.

Here's what a child might say if they were holding Worried:

"Hello, Worried. Welcome, Worried. Your eyes are going like this. Your mouth is going like this. You seem worried."

"Breathe with me, Worried. You're safe. You can handle this."

As students help their buddies handle tough emotions, they strengthen their own self-regulation skills. First graders can access the Feeling Buddies anytime they feel it will help them. Some students even enjoy visiting Happy and Calm because positive feelings are worth acknowledging, too!

Fifth graders are performing experiments to test whether various common classroom materials were electrical conductors or insulators. Using some alligator clip wires, students hooked up a battery to a small flashlight bulb. Then, they attempted to complete the circuit by touching the wires to opposite ends of objects like paper clips, popsicle sticks, colored pencils, different coins, jewelry, and many other things found around the classroom. If the lightbulb glowed, they knew that the material completed the circuit and therefore must allow electricity to flow through it, making it a conductor. Students are busy analyzing these results and distilling their conclusions about what types of materials make good conductors of electricity and which materials insulate electricity.

 

As an added bonus, Mr. Powers stopped by to join in the experiment. He lent some excellent insights into their explorations and even took the class to observe the school’s new 3D printer! It was busy printing a test cube at the time. Fifth graders are super excited to brainstorm ways they might be able to use it to enhance their learning. Thank you, State Farm, for partnering with The Summit to provide the STEM grant that purchased our new 3D printers!

Sign up to join the Middle School Girls Volleyball team at The Summit Prep! Practices will take place from 3:30-5:00 p.m. at Grace Nazarene Church, beginning on Tuesday, February 1st.

Due to MSHSAA rules, all players must have 14 practices before the first game. For the month of February, the team will have practices on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to ensure players meet this requirement.

Use the registration link below to learn more and sign up!

We are excited to offer an 8-week video game club beginning in January with The Summit Prep's Esports coach, Trevor Long!

The club will be offered in two sessions for 2nd-3rd grades and 4th-5th grades.

Video Gaming Club (2nd-3rd): First practice on Tuesday, January 11th and will continue on Tuesday mornings, 7:45-8:30 a.m.

Video Gaming Club (4th-5th): First practice on Thursday, January 13th and will continue on Thursday mornings, 7:45-8:30 a.m.

We currently have 3 Esport machines available. Students are encouraged to bring their own devices to play on as well (Chromebooks, iPads, etc.).

Space is limited for these clubs, so use the registration links below to learn more and sign up today!

The next round of Raven Clubhouse after school enrichment sessions will begin on Tuesday, January 18th, and run for six weeks.

Clubs meet once a week, from 3:30-4:30 p.m., on the days listed on the registration form below.

Feel free to invite your non-Summit friends to join as well!