The holiday season is here, and we got the season underway in style in room 214 this week. It was abbreviated week, but we still took the opportunity to practice for our holiday show, do a little creative writing, and work on building some academic knowledge while also taking a moment to celebrate the people in our lives and our classroom community.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we used the vast majority of our time to practice for our holiday show performances of ‘Last Christmas’ and ‘Candy Cane Lane’. Perfecting our group singing and choreography moves. I was proud to see everything coming together so well, everyone worked so hard together and it paid off amazingly! Tuesday was a particularly exciting day as we got do our “dress rehearsal” where students got to practice both their songs as well as their emcee introductions in the actual venue they would be performing in later in the week!
When we weren’t practicing for the show, we spent some time doing a bit of creative writing as students made their own “pun snowmen”, based on their favorite celebrities, characters and athletes. After they created their snowmen they wrote their backstories and practiced their creative and narrative writing. We also took some time during the week to do some trivia, with both Christmas themed questions as well as NAQT quiz bowl questions.
Thursday was the big day we have been preparing for all month, and our preparation clearly paid off! We had an amazing show with great performances from my class as well as all of the younger groups, and my class also did an incredible job introducing the acts and hosting the show! I couldn’t be more proud of everyone’s efforts, and days like Thursday showcase what a great community we have here at Plato as well as a great educational institution! We also did our Christmas bake sale the day of the show, and raised almost $600 for our class trip, so thank you to all of our parents and relatives who helped us raise money, and thank you to our students for helping run the sale!
I hope everyone has an amazing Winter break and gets the opportunity to rest, relax, and spend time with family before we start our next term up in January! So to all of my readers, Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! And we’ll see everyone in January 2026!
It is the conclusion of another exciting week in room 214, and as we draw closer to our winter break, we are working on enriching our classroom community and preparing to put on a great holiday show for our school community in the coming days! We’re inching closer and closer to showtime, and the excitement is building as we prepare for a great show for all of our Plato parents and families!
Monday we started off our week by easing back into things and working on our Geometrocity projects, most of the groups have moved on to the fourth phase of their projects, where they are finally incorporating 3D geometry concepts and making 3D models of a district from their city. Those who completed this did a bit of self reflection and reflection on their partners by moving on to phase 5 which is the assessment, where students Grade themselves and their partners based on their contributions to the project and their work ethic throughout. After this we started to further prepare for our holiday show performances, by beginning to work on our choreography, and starting to make some stage props after having a collaborative group discussion on what we want those to look like.
Tuesday we continued to prepare for the Holiday concert by rehearsing our songs and choreography and starting to put the entire performance together – combining both singing and dancing for the first time in the preparation process. In our spare time, we did a bit of journaling and played some geometry trivia. Throughout the week when we had a few minutes to spare, students would play seterra map quiz on their devices to familiarize themselves with European geography in preparation for our upcoming World War 2 unit, as it will obviously be much easier to study the events of the war if we can all understand where the events are happening.
Wednesday we started off the day by having another special collaborative practice session with Ms. Mary’s class, where we started to get a better idea of how to perform the 2nd floor multi-classroom song “Candy Cane Lane” that our classes will be performing alongside Ms. Beth and Ms. Anna’s classes. Using Ms. Mary’s expertise we did some practice exercises that helped students understand what pitch and volume they needed to use while singing, and we managed to get both of our classrooms on the same page. After finishing the large group practice, we broke off and did some more practice of our song with just our classroom.
Thursday we started off the day with another large group rehearsal, this time with all of the 2nd floor classrooms! We all met downstairs in the foyer to practice both our large group song in English, as well as in Greek. It was so fun getting to see everything coming together and getting to hear all of the classes perform together for the first time! After we finished the large group practice, we went back to our classroom and kept practicing for our individual class song, and started to make some of our candy cane props for the “Candy Cane Lane” performance. We also received scripts for the emcee portion of the show that we will be doing, and students started to rehearse the introductions for all of our schools’ acts.
Friday we finished up making our props for the stage, which was a great opportunity for our class community to spend some time together doing something a bit more relaxing before we have to start another hectic week of practicing next Monday. After we finished making props, we did some more practicing, and later in the afternoon we all worked together as a class and did a much needed deep cleaning of the classroom and the breakout rooms. We now have a great uncluttered space, which will hopefully lead to an unclutter-ing of our minds before we start to get back into the swing of a higher level of academic rigor after we return from winter break. After the cleaning, we did a bit more rehearsal and got all of our stage assignments for our performances next week!
Math With Mr. Zafeiris: This week we began to study parabolic slope formula and learned how to solve equations to find parabolic slope as compared to linear slope. For Geometry we had a class discussion about theorems and started with the Pythagorean theorem to introduce trigonometry and trigonometric concepts.
Science With Ms. Pam: This week in science students learned about single celled organisms, taking notes and creating presentations about different types of single-celled organisms and how they move, how they obtain energy, how they reproduce and how they survive. Students also completed a bonus activity related to natural selection.,
I hope everyone has a great weekend, and I can’t wait to see everyone Monday to begin our final preparations for our Holiday Show! It’ll be a great way to kick off break and celebrate the holidays with our Plato community!
We had a very busy first week back after taking a bit of time off to be with friends and family for the thanksgiving holiday. I hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful break, and was able to enjoy their time off to rest and recover! We have a lot to prepare for, and not very much time to prepare, so every moment felt very valuable this week as we prepare for HSPT testing this weekend for many of our students, as well as the Christmas show for all of our students!
On Monday we started practicing singing the two songs that were selected for the Christmas show, “Last Christmas” by Wham! is our class’ song, and we also practiced for the 2nd floor multiple classroom group song. We had a good start to our practice, and the students showed a great attitude as they learned the lyrics and music for our song choice which is a bit challenging! After we concluded our song practice and got a strong feel for our music, we moved on to doing some work on the Geometrocity projects, and most students finished up the 2D portion of phase 2 to move on to the 3D model portion in phase 3. Everyone’s cities are looking great and coming together nicely!
Tuesday we continued to practice our songs as a class, and also continued doing some test preparation that the students worked on for Monday’s math class. We also started to incorporate some ELA test preparation for the verbal, reading comprehension, and language skills portions of the HSPT test. This was highly valuable even for the students who are not testing this week, as standardized formal testing is a reality for all students as they move through high school and will most likely take the PSAT, PACT, ACT, or SAT to move on to the college admissions process. Engaging with these types of test prep materials will build confidence while also allowing students to develop their testing skills and strategies to help them put in the best performance they can when test day finally arrives!
On Wednesday we welcomed Ms. Mary and her class into the classroom as we prepared for the large-group song for the 2nd floor at the Christmas show! Ms. Mary’s experience in choir singing was a tremendous asset as we learned a lot about how to approach group singing, how to get everyone on the same page in terms of tempo and melody, and volume. This was a great chance to work on our preparation for the show while building our community in the Jr. High classrooms of Plato Academy! After we finished up with our neighbors, we went on to do some more test preparation to get ready for the HSPT ELA verbal portion.
Thursday was a special yearly tradition for Plato Academy: the holiday shop. The students got a chance to get some thoughtful gifts for everyone on their wish lists while working with a predetermined budget, and they had a great time shopping and putting a lot of thought into all of their choices. After they picked out what they wanted that fit their budgets, they got a small taste of what their parent’s go through while wrapping all the gifts they bought by wrapping and tagging all of their purchases. It was a lovely chance to keep building our school community and students also got the chance to learn a thing or two about budgeting, gift giving, and gift wrapping that they can take with them for the rest of their lives. The holiday shop took up most of our class time, but we were still able to do some review of that prep materials and get some Christmas show song practice in with what little time we had left.
Friday was the last chance for many of our students to practice for the HSPT, so we dedicated most of our time to prepping for the two areas we did not spend as much time on while prepping earlier in the week: reading comprehension and language skills. Students took a practice test under real testing conditions including time limits and limits on things like talking or utilizing any notes or assistive technology. We went over some test-taking strategies and mindsets to use to help maximize their test scores and help them if they feel stuck while taking a standardized test.
Next week we will continue to prepare for the Christmas show performance and work on some of our long-term projects! I hope everyone has a great weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday.
Science with Ms. Pam: This week in science students worked on finishing make-up work and their genetics review games. On Thursday students learned about adaptations that animal species make for survival and did an activity where they identified and described aspects of natural selection and different adaptations that specialized animals make to help them survive in extreme environments.
Math with Mr. Zafeiris: This week we practiced quantitative and math skills and continued our preparation for the High School Placement Test. Starting next week, we will return to factoring and begin working on quadratic equations. The students show a strong interest in mathematics, and their progress is outstanding.
