Cincinnati Country Day School - Archive Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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Lmlie Gaskill Irwin Head of Modern Language Department Peter Mach! READING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE Few educators would deny that the ability to read With ease and understanding is extremely important in most school situations. Skill in read- ing does much to increase word power, and thereby to facilitate speech. From the ninth grade on, many classes are given two-weck tor longed reading assignments. It is the responsibility of each student to budget his time so that he may read a certain amount every day, and not postpone the entire assignment until a few hours before the hecheance. This long-range method is practiced in many colleges, but with a vastly greater amount 'of material involvedt Here, students are urged to take notes as they read, so that their answers during the oral tests may be as precise and concise as possible. During the second semester, however, students are required to give answers that are much more detailed, answers that show keener observation, answers that create clear word picturest One major benefit of this method is that it allows much more class time to be devoted to drill in grammar, in verbs, and in word combinations that are a part of one's daily conversation; Drill has long been recognized as a sine qua non of language learning, and may be used profitably at any year level as long as the study of language structure continues. Thomas Ripley Caates George Martin MtClarey, Jr. Administrative Assistant

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hu HISTORY The History Department is revising its two year American History program. This yeafs Junior class will be the guinea pigs. They Will finish the more or less chronological part of the course in- cluding their theses by the end of first semester Senior year. In the second semester the class will divide. Those who have demonstrated the ability to work indpendently will be excused from regular Classes. Theywill, as a group, choose two areas of study' the semester; for example immagration as one. Each student will read a short history of immigration as background, Then each will select a topic within this area; such as, Italian Immigration Into New York In Tlu'z 1880's, and do a short research paper of about 1500 words. He will make copies of this paper for all members of the group. Individually, they will take the paper home and tear it apart with written corrections and suggestions, to he followed by a full class period where the author is required to defend his paper orally from class criticism. He then, in the light of oral and written criticism, will rewrite the paper. The part of the class not involved in this proe cess will have regular classes doing in depth studies, spending six weeks on each of three selected topics. George Reid, Jr. Lee Stockwell Partisan Head of History Department Carl Albert Strauss, Jr.

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SCIENCE What is wood made of? To answer this question, forty-four eighth graders began to heat wood. They collected yellow smoke, white smoke, plenty of black, smelly geek and ended with a test tube full of black, charred material. So what is wood made of? Lot's of things, evidently, but we donlt know what they are. That was the clue to learn how to recognize characteristic properities of material: density, melt- ing point, boiling point, solubility, etc., etc. All this involves a tremendous amount of activity in meas- uring lengths, temperatures, muses, time. Finally, students were able to return to the problem of the composition of wood, and armed with this know- ledge, were able to recognize several substances in wood. This is the first yearls trial of the new I, P, S, llntroductory Physical Sciencel course. About two-thirds of the class time is spent in lab-recording, graphing, analyzing data. It is the realtistic and modern course. We ex- pect that all our data Will contain errors; all our conclusions are stated as probabilities.We will not be able to shake up some test tubes and see atoms; but we will be able to understand better why atoms are necessary and useful to scientists. David Em est Laird Gordon Ramsey Wright Head of Science Department Joseph Willa: Holliday