Welcome to our third quarter issue of "Inside the Classroom!"

In each issue, we hope to highlight our middle school academics. Based on decades of experience, our program is designed to support the multifaceted developmental needs of middle school girls so they are well prepared for the transition to high school.

We prioritize igniting intrinsic motivation, building self-confidence across disciplines, and creating a welcoming learning environment that encourages learning from mistakes. We hope this newsletter serves as a mid-quarter update and an extra avenue of communication by bringing you inside the classroom.

In this issue, we are specifically highlighting our writing program. We use a curriculum called Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) and provide multiple opportunities to improve writing skills, including across disciplines and in our co-curricular activities.

Math 6:

Equation Superbowl

Students have begun learning how to solve equations and inequalities for variables. They’ve practiced with worksheets and played some fun games involving jeopardy and a superbowl showdown of equations!

Geography 6:

Extra Personal Cylinder Seals

While studying Mesopotamia, students made cylinder seals, experimented with cuneiform, and had the option of making a model of the legendary Hanging Gardens. 

The cylinder seals were extra special this year because Isabel Yalda presented to the students about the ancient Assyrian Empire and then wrote all of the students’ names in Assyrian so they could carve them into their cylinder seals. The challenge was carving the Assyrian names backwards so they would come out properly when the seals were rolled onto the clay!

Life Sciences 7:

Off With Their Heads

Featured is a sample lab report about an experiment with flatworms “Off with their heads!” 

Students each transferred a worm using a micropipette and then cut off the head using a coverslip. Then, they watched as the planaria worms regenerated their heads!

Students collected data for several weeks and then wrote up a formal lab report using scientific writing - concise and complete as well as creative and analytical.

Theology 7:

The Church Suffering

Students have been exploring the Mystical Body of Christ by learning about the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. With special attention paid to the Church Suffering, students drew out what they imagined purgatory to be like and also made prayer cards for loved ones who have passed away as a reminder to pray for them.

Mrs. Cataniag’s expertise, including her history and liberal arts degrees and her IEW certification, and wide breadth of educational experience shape her philosophy of English education. She firmly believes in the necessity of intentional knowledge acquisition and practice in language arts. “Writing was initially taught to me as ‘something that just happens,’ and ‘with enough practice, you will improve,’” she recounts, but she disagrees. “No one improves her piano playing simply by hitting keys without any instruction or practice.”

When she discovered IEW, she found a curriculum that provided a method for teaching writing equivalent to the systematic process found in curricula for subjects. IEW gives practical tools to improve writing–such as a variety of sentence structures, different types of clauses, and a range of literary devices in increasing complexity–and opportunities to practice all of these techniques regularly. Although no curriculum is perfect (the English department supplements with Grammar Revolution, a different grammar program which is based on sentence diagramming) Mrs. Cataniag praises many of IEW’s methods, including the “checklist,” a list of requirements for grading student writing. The "checklist" allows for clear expectations of measuring growth in writing for both teachers and students.

Although this is only Mrs. Cataniag’s second year at Willows, she has already formed strong relationships with her students and colleagues. She is the faculty advisor of the middle school newspaper and loves being part of the all-girl environment. As an educator of over twenty years, but always in a co-educational setting, Mrs. Cataniag clearly sees the difference that an all-girls environment makes. “They are more sincere, more blunt, and take more chances in volunteering answers and hypothesizing about the ‘why’ and ‘how’,” she says. She has observed first hand that a Willows’ all-girls environment allows students to be bolder and make more mistakes, which in turn allows them to develop more genuine knowledge, cultivate true respect, and form deeper relationships with their peers and teachers.