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

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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

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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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J. David JllIanuir'l Mrs. William Pierce dtlzlen'c Director Ari -. vV-v -EII-MLA M-uu. ,