Academic and social learning in math class Each year at Hyla, the 6th grade class embarks on the maze project: a major math and engineering study that takes students through all different phases of the engineering design cycle. Students sketch, blueprint to scale, develop functional prototypes, and then build their final products. To appreciate the scale of these mazes, imagine the metal ball labyrinth toys you played with as a child. Now expand that to a wooden version that’s 4 ft x 4 ft. Unlike the simple twists and dead ends in the toy version, the…

Lots going on in the Hyla library! “It’s usually pretty peaceful in here,” Cara said about the library, “but last week there was a lot of energy and activity for Hyla Read Week. It was awesome!” The fun began with spooky stories around a campfire in the library (well, not so much a campfire as a prop borrowed from the drama department). “The night before Halloween, kids shared their own scary stories and then I read some Grimm’s Fairytales,” said Cara. The next day students came in costumes and began earning raffle tickets with activities and…

Approaching math from a new angle Eighth graders recently approached algebra from a new angle: cubism. To help students see how math connects to other areas of academia, Cindy introduced a small project that combined both math and art. After a quick look at cubism, students created their own abstract art with simple straight lines. As they worked on their illustrations, they practiced finding slopes of a line, finding equations of a line, distance formula in coordinate geometry, the Pythagorean theorem, calculating area and perimeter on a coordinate grid, and systems of equations. This brief exercise…

Each year Hyla 8th grade students transform the art classroom, filling every square inch with installations. Incorporating floor, ceiling, windows and walls, they construct their installations over many months, and then showcase their creations to parents at “Art Night” in the spring. Each installation is focused around a theme, chosen collaboratively by students. Preparations for this year’s installations are well underway. Teacher Kate Lovejoy began with a ‘mini-installation’ project to enable students to “experiment with the concept of using art to explore a question without definitively answering it, and also to see how something like a…

2018 Global Leadership Summit with Hyla Teacher Jeff Steele and Education First   Dear Hyla Alumni Parents,  I invite your Hyla grads and their friends to travel with me on a delegation to London, Paris, and Berlin to attend the 2018 Education First Global Leadership Summit from July 5-16, 2018. The theme for this year’s conference is “The Influence of Technology on Society.” In addition to teaching at Hyla, I am a certified trip leader with Education First, an international education company that offers study abroad, language learning, cultural exchange and academic programs around the world…

The hallway outside the Humanities room has been transformed with the colorful cartography of the fictional worlds invented by 6th graders. The maps create a gallery of student enthusiasm, teacher responsiveness to student curiosity, and the incredible work that results.    To establish a vision of the world, and to expand student understanding of their place in it, Melissa began Humanities class with an introductory geography unit, including the seven-model continent plan as well as alternate views of the world.  Students then moved into a study of borders to understand the conditions and factors that influence them,…

Poems, collage, dioramas, and scale models are just a few of the ways that 7th and 8th graders represented the complex themes they discovered in their summer reading books. The assignment gave students a lot of choice and that was deliberate. “When we give them the opportunity to explore something with fewer parameters,” says Kim, “it can allow for more growth because there is no adult mandate that it should look a certain way.” What emerged from the 7th and 8th grade summer reading assignment is a gallery of creative methodologies. “When you let them decide…

Many years ago when Hyla moved to its current home on the property of the Bucklin Family homestead, we inherited a tradition of tending the land to grow food. Spanish teacher, Mike Fosmark, will tell you that the garden at Hyla “has been tended for over 100 years starting with the Bucklin family and then carried on by us.” This sense of history is important to Mike, who has taught 3 garden electives this year: one for garden design, one for digging and prep work, and one for planting. “I want to teach them about the…

Join us for two weeks of fun, adventure and discovery!   June 19 – 23 and June 26 – June 30 Morning classes 9 – 11:30 AM Afternoon classes 12:30 – 3 PM Click here for full class descriptions and the registration form.  Ages: For students entering grades 5-6-7-8-9 Cost: $160/week half-day, $320/week full-day Classes: • Improv  • Robotics & Programming • Rock Climbing • Adventure Quest • Tibetan Flag Making • Fort Building • Ultimate Frisbee • Alphabet Photography • Maker Lab • Creative Writing • Make your own stuffie • Strategy Games • Climb…