Students Dress Up to Recite Shakespeare
The grade 7 students in Patricia Lai Burrows’ English classes had a chance to get into character to perform speeches from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”
Category: Middle School
Flour Sack Babies Provide Insight on Parenting
During the week of Feb. 28, flour sack babies were distributed to grade 8 students to give them a glimpse of the experience of parenthood. The students earned points for science and physical education for participating in the project, and were expected to look after their would-be children with the utmost care. Any neglect or abuse resulted in lost points. Daycare centers were set up so that students who had after-school activities could leave their flour sacks to be supervised. Students made the activity fun by accessorizing their flour sacks with sunglasses, hats, blankets and other items.
MathCounts Team Named State Champs; Seventh Grader Qualifies for Nationals
Harker’s MathCounts team, Celine Liang, grade 7 and eighth graders Matthew Huang, Cindy Liu and Andrew Zhang, placed first at the State MathCounts competition held at Stanford in mid-March. The Harker team was declared California State Champion, beating even the Cupertino Middle School team, the Santa Clara Chapter champion at the competition held on Feb. 12. David Lin, grade 8, participated as an independent qualifier and also did a fine job, said Vandana Kadam, MathCounts coach and middle school mathematics department chair.
Liang placed third following the countdown round of the competition, missing first place by a single point. There are only four students from the entire state who make the team which represents California at the national competition to be held May 5-8 in Washington, D.C., and Liang is one of the four students on this prestigious team. Three of the four top finishers came from the same chapter as Harker (Santa Clara Chapter).
Out of 155 students participating, Liang was third, Huang placed sixth, Liu placed 11th, Lin placed 12th and Zhang placed 28th. Kennedy, Redwood and Miller schools fielded extremely strong teams and Harker beat defending state champion William Hopkins School from Fremont, and also past champions Miller and Redwood, to clinch the number one spot.
Fourteen different chapters from Northern California participated and a similar number of students from 12 Southern California chapters participated in the same contest held simultaneously at University of California, Irvine. The top 10 students were recognized at each of these venues.
After the main event, two students each tied with 46 points (perfect score) and 45 points, so runoffs were held for each of the top four slots. Liang had to go head to head with her competitor to gain the number three spot; her competitor dropped to fourth place. Harker’s Huang barely missed making the team with his sixth place finish. The top four finishers will go to nationals, held in May. Kadam will be there, too, as California State Coach.
“The title of California State Champions is well deserved for each one of them. This is an incredible achievement for the students and for the school,” said Tim McCarthy, coordinator of the Santa Clara Chapter and the Northern California competition.
Tags: Featured Story, Mathematics, topacademicsGrade 6 Students Assist Overseas Entrepreneurs
History teacher Cyrus Merrill’s grade 6 advisory recently made a series of loans to help fund entrepreneurs in poor countries. Utilizing a service offered by the Kiva organization, Merrill and the students provided money to help a beekeeping business in Kyrgyzstan, a maize farming operation in Mali, a grocery store and a general store in Peru, a clothing vendor in the Philippines and a teacher in Israel.
More information is available at the “Mr. Merrill and Harker” Kiva site.
Kiva is a service that allows users to connect with and financially assist entrepreneurs to combat poverty in various parts of the world through the use of microloans. Matt Flannery, Kiva’s co-founder and CEO, spoke as a guest of the Harker Speaker Series in May of last year.
Tags: OutreachHarker Team Takes Second at Regional Science Bowl
Grade 8 students Matthew Huang, Neil Movva and Andrew Zhang; grade 7 student Jonathan Ma; and Aneesh Samineni, grade 6, placed second in the regional Science Bowl competition, held March 12 at the NASA Ames Research Center. The Science Bowl is a national competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and features teams of middle school students answering very difficult questions about a variety of sciences in a quiz bowl environment. The team was well coached by Joseph Chu, an alumnus of Lynbrook High School, who trained the students on Fridays after school.
After qualifying in the initial round robin faceoffs, the Harker team headed on to the elimination rounds, where they lost a very close and intense game in the 11th round against San Ramon’s Gale Ranch, who defeated Harker in the round robins and also took second place nationally in last year’s Science Bowl. “Even the moderator, judges and scorekeepers were spellbound at the end of round 11,” said Vandana Kadam, faculty coordinator at the Science Bowl event and middle school Mathematics Department chair.
Tags: Science, topscienceHarker Excels in Feb. and March Math Contests
During a flurry of math contests in February and March, Harker students have been performing admirably. On Feb. 12, Harker participated in the Santa Clara chapter of the MathCounts competition, said to be the most competitive chapter in the country, a notion supported by the 13-way tie for first place. Cindy Liu and Matthew Huang, both grade 8, both scored 45 out of a possible 46 points and finished 15th and 16th, respectively. David Lin, grade 8, received a score of 44 and placed 20th in a four-way tie. Andrew Zhang, grade 8 and Allison Wang, grade 7, had 43 points and placed 24th and 27th, respectively.
In the team competition, Harker’s team, made up of Huang, Liu, Zhang and Celine Liang, grade 7, took third place in the competition, earning a spot in the state competition on March 19 at Stanford University. Lin will participate in the individual competition because of his performance at the Santa Clara chapter.
On Feb. 14, middle school students took either the American Mathematics Competition’s AMC 10 A or AMC 12 A tests, and took the AMC 10 A or AMC 12 B tests on Feb. 24. In this contest, meant for high school sophomores and seniors, abovementioned students Huang, Liang, Lin, Liu and Wang, as well as Suzy Lou and Sriram Somasundaram, both grade 8; David Zhu, grade 6; and Jessica Zhu, grade 7, performed well enough to compete in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME).
Several students scored high in the California Math League (CAML) contest, which was administered Feb. 22. Out of a possible 35 points, David Zhu earned a perfect score, while classmates Peter Wu and Kai-Siang Ang scored 34 and 33, respectively. Grade 6 students James He, Neymika Jain and Steven Cao all scored 29.
Seventh graders Wang and Michael Zhao had perfect scores, and classmates Jessica Zhu, Anthony Luo and Jonathan Dai had 34. Jonathan Ma, Celine Liang and Vineet Kosaraju earned 33 points and Rishabh Chandra finished with 32 points.
In grade 8, Cindy Liu and Andrew Jin had 35 points. Andrew Zhang and Aadyot Bhatnagar both earned 34. Scoring 33 points were David Lin, Steven Wang, Suzy Lou and Pranav Reddy. Nikhil Kishore, Helen Wu and Samyukta Yagati all had 32 points.
Harker hosted the 10th annual Diana Nichols Harker Math Invitational in which Harker students also excelled. This was the first contest to also feature international competitors from the World Foreign Language Middle School in China and Viveka School of Excellence in India. Results are contained in the full report of the event.
Tags: Mathematics, topscience10th Diana Nichols Math Invitational Features Overseas Competitors
The tenth annual Diana Nichols Harker Math Invitational for grades 6 to 8, held March 5, was a highly successful event with 21 local schools participating and about 350 contestants taking part in the individual and team contests. There were 56 competing and five non-competing teams for the team contest. This contest was also the first to include overseas schools, with competitors from the World Foreign Language Middle School in Shanghai, China, and Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement’s Viveka School of Excellence in Saragur, India.
Harker placed well in the individual events in every grade level. Grade 6 competitors David Zhu and Kai-Siang An took first and second, respectively, in their category. At the grade 7 level, Allison Wang took first place, as did Menghua Wu at the grade 8 level.
In the team contests, Harker’s grade 6 team of An, Soham Khan, Angela Kim, Aneesh Samineni, Manah Shah, Peter Wu and David Zhu earned second place. Grade 7 students Grace Guan, Vineet Kosaraju, Anthony Luo, Jonathan Ma, Allison Wang, Michael Zhao and Jessica Zhu also finished second.
Tags: MathematicsMiddle School’s Dance Jamz Wows Audience
The Harker School’s yearly middle school dance performance, Dance Jamz, won over an excited audience for two weekend nights in early March at the Blackford Theater. Under the direction of middle school dance teacher Gail Palmer, along with co-directors Amalia Vasconi and Karl Kuehn, a collection of approximately 150 dancers from grade 6-8 performed an eclectic mix of dance styles in front of a vocal and visibly thrilled crowd of family, faculty and friends.
For one fast-paced hour, dancers moved through seventeen musical numbers, leading off with a heart-pumping, vibrant rendition of ACDC’s “Thunderstruck,” eliciting cheers from the first minute of their performance as sharp, in sync moves sent ponytails flying in front of a wall of color and light.
As the performances continued, the speakers cycled through early rock and breezy boogies, past contemporary hip-hop and club mixes, into soulful serenades and pop ballads. In one memorable sequence, set to songwriter and vocalist Sara Bareilles’ “Gravity,” dancers took turns performing delicate, graceful solos, extending across a central chair, as their collaborators moved around and behind them.
A few numbers later, a routine of contemporary pop artist Mike Posner’s “Cooler Than Me” began with a silhouetted tableau, in which the dark figures of eight dancers were isolated against a bright orange backdrop of light.
Dance Jamz is the culmination of many months of work for the dancers, who have taken classes in either jazz, modern, lyrical, ballet, tap or hip-hop, and then built on their foundation with weeks of rehearsal. Nearly one quarter of the performers were boys, who had three numbers of their own, including a contemporary hip-hop performance to Maroon 5’s “If I Never See Your Face Again,” and a heavily-costumed, flashy performance of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll.”
The dances also showcased some of the performers’ hidden talents: one number featured acrobatic cartwheels, and another saw the dancers take turns channeling pop stars as they lip synced. As the production came to a close, the student-performers were greeted with an echoing round of cheers, a fitting finale after sixty minutes of hooting and hollering.
Tags: Featured Story, Performing ArtsMS Students Discuss Online Safety with Fifth Graders
During a special March 3 assembly, grade 5 students were treated to an entertaining and thought-provoking presentation on Internet safety by six middle school students: grade 6 students Alexis Gauba and Zahra Budhwani, grade 7 students Logan Drazovich and Chandler Nelson and grade 8 students Jonathan Armer and Jai Ahuja. The presentation, titled “Pause Before You Post,” warned students to take precautions before posting content online. “This is a difficult message for adults to get across to children, yet it is crucial because whether they are using e-mail, IM, a blog or a social networking site, their actions have enormous ramifications,” said Angela Neff, middle school assistant director of technology.
The students spoke about difficult topics such as cyber-bullying in a mature, yet light-hearted, manner that captivated the fifth grade audience. “They were at once sincere, articulate, intelligent and funny,” Neff said.
The presentations were the culmination of a monthlong collaborative advisory-based digital poster and video project led by Neff. The goal of this project was to get students to think before they post online content that could be hurtful to themselves or others. Each advisory’s poster answered a question that students should ask themselves before posting, such who will see their posts, who might be hurt or embarrassed by them and what their family or teachers might think upon seeing them.
Presenters also covered real-life examples of the consequences of hurtful online posts, discussed how the project made them think differently about what they post online and urged students to tell parents or teachers about online harassment.
In addition to the presentation, laminate posters illustrating the lessons learned at the assembly were posted around the lower school campus to keep the lessons fresh in the minds of the young students.
Sixth Graders Bag 100 Toiletry Kits for Women and Children’s Shelter
Pat White’s grade 6 advisory did a bang-up job collecting toiletries for the Georgia Travis Center for Women and Children. The students sorted and bagged two boxes of donated travel toiletries including shampoo, toothpaste and soap, and came up with 112 mini collections to be handed out to those who need them at the center. “We have been collecting hotel and sample toiletries since the beginning of the school year,” said White. “We will have another sorting and bagging later in the spring. The Georgia Travis Center has been very busy because of the general economy and its impact on families, so we hope our contribution will be helpful.”