A Day in the Life...

The first thing you need to know about being in 6th grade is that you are now a middle schooler. What does that mean? Well, to start, different days have different schedules, and each class has its own teacher. Let's dive into one of my favorite days - Day 4!

 

Homeroom: At 8:35 a.m., the bell rings to start the day, and all students enter their advisory classroom. Your advisory is a group of 15 or so students that you see every day before classes and after classes. My advisor is Ms. Nanavati. She is great. In your advisory, you go through the day’s classes and what to do, and where to go. You also can't forget to pick up your computer. You need it for all your classes!

 

Period 1 - Science: Everyone enters the science classroom ready to learn about the earth’s systems. Everyone’s favorite science teacher, Mr. Pollard, teaches us so much stuff from measuring the volume of objects on a scale to all the different parts of the earth. Students engage in hands-on activities and experiments. When the bell rings, students leave full of knowledge about everything science!

 

Period 2 - Spanish: After the hands-on science class activities, students go into the Spanish classroom, ready to learn a new language. With our Spanish teacher, Maestra Rivera, we study new vocabulary in many ways. We do word searches, games, and learning activities. The Spanish classroom is one of the best places to learn something new; I think we can all agree.

 

Break: Then, everyone has their first break of the day. People do everything. Some play sports and some people just talk. Everyone does their own thing. But once the bell rings, we all head to the third period.

 

Period 3 - Drama: Everyone loves drama! You act, sing, and get to play fun activities!

What's better than that? Even though it sounds like all fun and games, you also learn a ton. Students learn about the terms of a stage, how to act onstage, and how to PERFORM! Everyone gets to perform in skits and scenes. Our teacher, Mr. Faso, makes sure that everyone is fully prepared when they step on stage. Once you finish up in drama class, the bell rings for lunch!

 

Lunch: At Redwood Day, you can sit anywhere on campus for lunch. Students eat until the first bell rings, telling them they can get up and play. Yeah, that's a rule; the first 15 minutes of lunch is only for eating and nothing else! Besides that, the rest of lunch is just like a break.

 

People play sports, like basketball and football, and talk until the bell tells us to go to fourth-period rings.

 

Period 4 - History: In history, Ms. Stoler teaches students all about ancient humans in awesome ways. You make maps, take notes, and perform speeches about your topic. Perform speeches? Yeah, it sounds like Drama class, but it’s not, trust me. Even when you have quizzes, you are fully prepared with all the new knowledge you have. Learning is hard work, though, so leaving the class you are tired, but don’t worry; the day is almost over.

 

Break: Just like the break before, people do all sorts of things. It’s your choice. Just don’t play too hard because there is one thing left in the day.

 

Study Hall: Study hall is a forty-minute section in the day for students to finish some work before they go home. You can work on anything and get a lot done! I can tell you that everyone appreciates the time to do homework. Once the final bell rings, students head back to their advisory for the end of the day. In advisory, students usually drop off their computers, and then the day is done! It went by quickly! Now everyone either goes to X-Care, which is after-school care for students that get picked up late, or they can go to the curb to get picked up by their guardian.

 

There you have it. That’s one of my favorite days. Other days have different classes, like English, Math, Art, Music, DBI, and PE, and sometimes special things like an assembly or an activity for everyone! -  Coltrane S.

We Redwood Day 7th-graders, have a lot on our plates. Grades, tests, studying, and homework take up much of our time. Many of us also have a lot of extra-curricular activities, including sports and music. In seventh-grade, expectations rise and pressures are more imminent. 

Today is day 8, which means we have English, Physical Education, Art, and Mathematics.

But before our academic classes, we have a 6-minute homeroom with our advisory. During homeroom, we grab our computers and check in with our advisors. After a 3-minute passing period, we are off to class. 

English is up first! In every English class, we have a book club. Every student reads one of four books, and we discuss it with a book club group. In our group, we have a facilitator, vocab tracker, and note taker. We then express our understanding through One-pagers, a combination of drawing and writing. Right now, in English class, we are also working on a short story, and we have been taking notes about what makes good writing. From the introduction to the resolution, we learn about plot points, characters, settings, and more. 

Next is Physical Education, or PE. We get changed in the locker rooms before the warm-up. We jog, skip and sprint along with other dynamic stretches. Right now, we are working on basketball, we learn how to dribble, shoot, pivot, and triple threat! Sometimes, we even play small-sided games with teams of two or three. Another common activity is a layup line, which can sometimes lead to a competition. 

After we are dismissed, we have a 10-ish minute break. You can eat snacks, swing on the swings, play on the turf, or hang out and talk. The break is a great time to grab something from your locker or talk with people from a different class.

Up next is Art! 75 minutes of drawing, sketching, painting, or cutting. Occasional Kahoots are a fun and competitive way to review our learning. And, as an added bonus, the prize is candy! Currently, in art, we are working on sketching realistic faces. Before this project, we worked on a still life. Each person’s art was unique. We have also learned the many styles and strategies for making art. 

Lunchtime on even days is at 12:46, so most of us are hungry. The first half of lunch, you eat, but in the second half, you can swing on the swings, go to the gym, hang out, or play. Lunch is often filled with competitions, fun, and food. 

Math class is last today. We spend the 75 minutes doing worksheets, practicing, or starting our homework. Every few days, we have a skills check; a quick quiz to assess your knowledge. Recently in math, we have been working on percentages, percent proportions, and converting between fractions, decimals, and percentages. We also show our learning through projects, such as the recent dream house project, where we designed a house and converted the measurements to fit the paper. This is only one of the ways that we use to understand math in real life. 

After another short break, we have activities. In activities, we join a group of other middle schoolers; they could be in 6th, 7th, or 8th. The activities range from Floor Hockey with Mr. Faso to Heartstopper with Mr. Bernfield. Activities only happen on day 8, and you are only with a group for one semester. But activities are always fun at the end of the day! - Caroline G.

“Have fun, work hard!” my mom calls out to me every morning when I leave for school. Today I leave early for Redwood Day’s 8th-grade rock band practice before classes start. I’m not big on mornings, but I signed up because I really enjoy seeing my friends outside of class, and I like playing the piano. We worked on the song that we all voted for (“Where is My Mind” by the Pixies), and I think it will be great to show it off at our next major assembly. The band director is also our music teacher, who is helping us learn how to play the ukulele in music class. 

After band practice, the first class every day is Advisory, where we pick up our Chromebooks and hang out with our advisor and fellow advisees. Sometimes we do community-building exercises or play games. What is an Advisory? It’s a small group of students assigned to an advisor who stays the same for all of middle school. I can’t believe I have been with the same classmates and advisor for three years already. I’m going to miss them when we all graduate.

After Advisory, I head to my first-period class. Our passing period is three minutes to get from one room to another, and today I just carried all of my things in the morning instead of going to my locker. Today, I have an elective Advanced Topic Design Build Innovate class which I chose at the beginning of the semester. Some students picked advanced art, literature, or history for their advanced topics, but hands-on projects are really fun for me, so I chose this one. Today, I laser cut a journal cover which I designed in Adobe Illustrator. Picking an elective means I didn’t get to do drama this year, but I still get to have an art class (we are learning about value and color mixing for a painting project). 

Second period is math. We are studying algebra and different ways to find a slope. Our teacher assigns us some IXL online practice that feels more like a game than homework. Even though some of the assignments are optional, I do them anyway because math is fun. If you use your time well, you can usually do all of the math homework during class. Time for lunch!

During lunch, we have a specific eating period, and then we can do whatever we want, like see teachers keep eating, or hang out. I bring my lunch every day, but some students sign up for a hot lunch which looks so good that I want to ask my parents if I can sign up for some days. Then I talk to friends and challenge myself by climbing up the swings in the play yard. If it’s raining, we eat in our advisory rooms, but luckily the weather is almost always nice enough to stay outside.

There’s a Health and Life Skills class after lunch. This class is on our schedule to help us learn about tricky subjects like social media and mental health. Sometimes we have guest teachers, and sometimes the class is run by our regular teachers. Today we learned about digital citizenship and how the internet is forever. I don’t think our parents had to worry about this stuff when they were in middle school, so I’m glad that Redwood Day is teaching us. After 3rd period we always have a break. I talk with my friends and eat a snack but mostly get outside for fresh air.

I’m sometimes tired by 4th period, which happens to be English on this day. But because our schedule rotates, the subject in 4th period always changes to give every subject a chance to move around in the day. We found out what books our “book club” will read in this next section. Our English teacher also gave us a Membean online vocabulary quiz, and thankfully she let us take it more than once if we didn’t like our first score. I took mine twice and felt pretty good about my second try. 

Today, at the end of the day, we had study hall. This is a free period with a different teacher that changes throughout the week. You can do homework, meet with teachers, or work with classmates on projects. I know that the more I do during study hall, the more free time I will have at home, but sometimes I want to give my brain a break with independent reading.

After school, we can go home, go to our teachers’ office hours or attend an after-school activity like sports or drama. In my case, I have a cross-country meet in Berkeley. We practice twice a week after school and have a bunch of races. It was fun to see friends from other schools all at the same event. I think there were almost 150 runners in my field. Our coach gave us a pep talk, encouraged us to warm up, and cheered us on at the start. 

After the race, I got home and checked Google Classroom and my planner to see what assignments were due. During the day, I keep track of my assignments in my planner, but I also really, really like the Google Classroom “to-do” list because it is so satisfying to check off when assignments are done and to see what’s coming up. Thankfully, I could do some of my homework in study hall. I also did an easy 15 minutes of vocabulary practice during the drive home, so there wasn’t too much to do at home, which was great because I was tired from the race and an early morning. But I did have a question for my history teacher about our next class, so I emailed (and got an answer back right away!). I also saw that I already finished my Spanish and science homework during class, so I decided it was time to get to bed. It was a long day, but I definitely had fun and worked hard! - Zane V.