A Glimpse Inside the Classroom

Keeping our girls safe during the pandemic is a priority, so we do not have many visitors these days. Here is a little glimpse of how our teachers are making a challenging year more normal and what our girls are learning inside and outside the classroom.

Early Childhood

Making Birthdays Special

One of the most special days for our early childhood girls is their birthday. In previous years, the girls would get birthday crowns to wear on the big day, but this year, they receive a birthday mask! Their teacher, Missy Prewitt, is making each pre-k girl her own bee mask, hand embroidered with her name. The girls also make a birthday board with the first letter of their name and the age they are turning. The birthday girl’s parents join in on the fun through Google Meet where they read a book to the class. Even during these unprecedented times, pre-k teachers are keeping the whimsy alive for our girls.

Learning Math Through Fairytales?

Junior kindergarten girls in Allyse Holcomb’s class are learning about the number 2, creating AB patterns, measuring Rapunzel’s hair using nonstandard measurement, and counting by 10s. One of the girls even stopped to ask, “Wait! Are we doing math?” We love to see the girls enjoying themselves so much they don’t even realize they are learning!

Discovering the World Outside

One safe way to learn this year is to be outside. Our littlest learners enjoy taking nature walks as they explore our school grounds and discover more about the world around them. Junior kindergarten entomologists in Tanya Crump’s class learn how gall wasps live in oak galls and inspect wasp larva inside the galls. When learning about the life cycle of cicadas (two to five years), they compare that to the life cycle of a pumpkin (only around 100 days). To continue their studies back in the classroom, they collect specimens like cicada shells and write poems about oak tree inhabitants.

Lower School

Finding Geometric Shapes Everywhere

Fourth-grade teachers Nancy Fields, Loraine Galbreath ’67, and Jane Maxwell devised a clever way to teach geometry. They took their classes to visit the farm for a quadrilateral hunt. Girls brought their notebooks out to sketch and identify any geometric shapes they could find. They spotted everything from parallel lines on the greenhouse, to right angles on the fence, to a rhombus on the tree house, to obtuse and acute angles on the lookout tower. One girl even noticed a line of symmetry on a kale leaf. Using real-life situations to learn math vocabulary and identify geometric shapes helps girls understand abstract math concepts and improves retention of those concepts.

Releasing the Butterflies!

Each year, Ann Alise Hayden, Linda Winchester, and Shannon Manzi lead our first-grade girls in a study of the life cycle of a caterpillar and how it becomes a butterfly. This tradition remains a favorite part of the curriculum because of the magical transformation the girls witness. The project starts when girls get habitats with caterpillars and food. The habitats are kept in the classroom, so the girls can observe them every day and watch as the caterpillars form chrysalises. Each girl creates a butterfly life cycle diagram using recycled materials and learns Spanish vocabulary for the different body parts of the butterfly. As a culmination of the project, when the butterflies emerge, the girls visit the school’s on-campus farm to release the butterflies.

Blooming with Good Ideas

After learning about plants in science class with Molly Bond and Melissa Berthelson and the Colombian tradition of the silletas in Kenna Chelsoi’s Spanish class, second-grade girls create their own silletas in the innovation lab. Silletas are elaborate flower displays made for Colombia’s annual Parade of Flowers (Desfile de Silleteros) that celebrate the flowers, flower growers, and flower vendors of Colombia, the second largest exporter of flowers in the world. Using various materials, the girls come up with designs and then figure out the best way to construct their silletas so they aren’t too heavy and fall over. Once their designs are finalized, the girls visit the farm to put flowers on their silletas. They finish up the project by writing simple sentences in Spanish describing them.

Expressing Yourself!

First-grade girls in Ann Alise Hayden, Linda Winchester, and Shannon Manzi’s classes are creating self-portraits. They begin the lesson by talking about how they are all different and discussing the special qualities that make each one of them unique. After creating the self-portraits to express what they look like on the outside, the girls read the book Be You! by Peter H. Reynolds and talk about what it looks like to be a kind person. They also practice writing complete sentences to explain what they feel they look like on the inside. This fun project gives the girls an opportunity to practice writing skills and grow in self-awareness and empathy, while also exploring sides of themselves they may not have been aware of.

Middle School

Becoming Math Superheroes

Seventh-graders in Joe Koelsch’s class are finding a broader perspective on math this year. Sharing stories of individuals like NASA’s Katherine Johnson, Koelsch shows how women have made unique contributions to the world through mathematics. One of the girls’ first assignments is to explain what they believed to be true about math. Ellie Palmer ’26 put her graphic design skills to work to create a squad of math superheroes. Her creation shows a new comfort level with math. “Every time I make a mistake, I study my mistake and learn from it,” Palmer said. “I learned that math is for everyone, and mistakes help the brain, not hurt it. I feel like a math person more than ever now,” she added. According to Koelsch, learning math often means taking extra time to think deeply about something that we might only ever view from a surface level to see the logic that lies beneath it.

Brushing Up on Lab Basics

Middle school girls in Becky Deehr’s class learn how to use scientific equipment correctly. Multiple lab assignments help strengthen their skills, like measuring length, telling time on an analog clock, using spring and digital scales for mass measurement, taking temperatures of air and liquids, reading volumes of liquids, and completing scientific drawings. One girl in the class is the designated “digital escort” who logs in to their Google Meet class and carries her computer around to show the virtual learners what is going on and to walk them through the steps they are taking in the labs.

Sharing the Study of Seasons with Remote Learners

Sixth-grade girls study seasons in Donna Budynas’ earth science class. Starting with summer, the girls use models of the earth to show its position during each of the four seasons. With a little ingenuity, everyone gets to participate. For instance, the on-campus girls realized if they logged in to their Google Meet class, they could put their computers in all different spots around the tables. As the earth was going around the sun, the remote girls could see it from all different angles, making it feel like they were in the classroom with their friends.

¡Creando Invenciones en Español!

Girls in Cathy Adams’ Advanced Honors V Spanish are proving they are talented and thoughtful inventors. To expand upon their knowledge of the Spanish language and culture, the girls are creating and presenting new, original inventions that could help make life easier. Some of the inventions include a “magic” pen that will write down your thoughts, a satellite to translate messages from other planets, rocket shoes to decrease traffic and get places faster, a wheelchair with built-in GPS, and an app that college students can use to find free textbooks and academic journals and articles.

Making Sense of the Zoo Out There

Students in Robert Lofton’s upper school class visit our school farm to capture local insects. They catch dragonflies, ladybugs, wasps, and butterflies. As part of this semester-long project, the girls will capture and identify 24 insects from nine different taxonomic orders. When they are learning about fish, the girls go fishing at the school’s lake. Back in the classroom, students will dissect specimens from each animal field they study. A wildlife expert from the Memphis Zoo will meet with the girls virtually to discuss different animals and even present some live animals.

Getting Entrepreneurial With Alumnae

Girls in Laura Wichman’s entrepreneurship class are learning the ins and outs of how you come up with ideas, and plan, start, and run your own business venture. Even though the girls can’t make site visits with entrepreneurs in the Mid-South community, they’re hosting Hutchison alumnae for a Virtual Entrepreneurship Speaker series. So far, they’ve heard from Alessandra Corona ’09, an industrial designer who started a new sleepwear brand called River Left; Sara Fay Peters Egan ’00 who runs Sara Fay Egan Events, a wedding and event-planning business; Perry Pidgeon Hooks ’75, owner of Hooks Book Events, which produces events with acclaimed authors; and Kendall Morgan Rhodes ’90, founder of Paraluman Media, a boutique management, development, and production company.