MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2026

Today, we started by practicing our School of Choice Dance in preparation of filming tomorrow.

Then, we did a Quill Grammar Practice period.

Later in the day, we practiced our spelling and critical thinking skills with some Scrabble Monopoly – a class favorite! Today, our critical thinking skills and strategy improvement lead us to our first even incorporation of a vocabulary word! Congratulations to Vasia for incorporating the word “bias” into her groups Scrabble board.

Then, our final class period of the day was spent answering some reflection questions relating to key themes for Truth & Treason in preparation for our viewing tomorrow. These were the questions students reflected upon:

1. Write about a time when telling the truth might be difficult or risky. Why do you think truth can feel threatening to people or governments in power?
2. Why do you think some people choose to stay silent when they see injustice happening? What might stop someone from speaking up or helping others?
3. Imagine living in a time when laws are unfair and harm certain groups of people. How do you think someone might decide whether to follow the rules or stand up for what is right?
4. Why is it important to learn about the Holocaust and stories like those in Truth & Treason? What lessons do you think people today can learn from the past?

TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2026

We started out with some fun today as the whole school danced to “Can’t Stop Us Now” by Pitbull and Zac Brown for our National School Choice Week dance recording.

When we returned to class, it was time for us to get a bit serious. Today was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a time for schools and families to pause, remember, and reflect. It honors the six million Jewish people and millions of others who were murdered during the Holocaust, and it marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

For students, learning about the Holocaust is not only about history—it’s about understanding the consequences of hatred, prejudice, and silence. This day encourages empathy, critical thinking, and a commitment to stand up against discrimination in all its forms. By remembering the past, we help equip young people to build a more just, respectful, and compassionate future.

To honor this day, we watched the film, Truth & Treason. Truth & Treason is a 2025 historical drama film based on the true story of Helmuth Hübener, a German teenager living under Nazi rule during World War II. When Helmuth realizes that his country’s leaders are spreading lies and enforcing injustice, especially after his close friend is taken away because of these laws, he makes a brave choice: he begins secretly listening to banned radio broadcasts and writing underground leaflets to expose the truth. As his resistance grows, so do the risks, and he must decide what it really means to stand up for what is right—even when it could cost him everything. The film explores themes of courage, conscience, and moral responsibility in the face of fear and oppression.

As we watched… we cried, we reflected, but most importantly, we grew determined to make sure something like this would never happen again. I’m incredibly proud of the empathy our class demonstrated and the maturity they showed in studying/discussing this difficult time in history.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2026

Today was all about community! After we did our intense film study, it made us appreciate the awesome classroom community we were a part of… so we took some time to celebrate that today. Our community day started with the introduction of: Secret Cupid!

Each student will draw a secret valentine since, sometimes, Valentine’s Day accidentally leaves students feeling left out due to individual friend group celebrations. Similarly to Secret Santa, today, they filled out a form that shares their interests and a favorite candy.

Secret Cupid gifts are budgeted at $5, as they should really only be getting a favorite (nut-free) snack and/or candy for their valentine.

Not only will students get to practice their pun writing abilities in coming up with a clever Valentine card saying (their cards should be hand-made and reflect effort of customizing it to the interests listed on their valentine’s questionnaire), but they have created clues as subtle hints for the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, so that they can practice their inference skills in trying to guess who their Secret Cupid is!

So, today, we filled out our questionnaires, wrote our clues, and drew names!

As part of our community day, we played some community building games of Sparkle and The Number Game during between activities.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 2026

Today, we played The Unfair Game. Think of jeopardy test review… but with an unfair twist – hidden points! Students competed in their table teams to discuss and pick out what they believed was the correct answer. If they got the question correct, they spun the mystery point wheel to determine if they won or lost any points!

We play this game, not only as a great test review, but it takes some of the pressure of getting a question wrong as getting it right could also lose you points. This activity allows students to practice important test taking skills, while also allowing us to have mini-review lessons on missed questions.

Team 3, unfortunately, was quite unlucky. Almost every spin they got… landed negative. However, they were able to end our game review with 40 points – which was a win as they were down to -90 at one point. Congratulations to Nefeli, Leo, Becky and Lily for their tenacity!

Team 2 had lots of ups and downs with their points. Kosta, Vasia, Gia and Jason. They ended in second place with 200 points! Congratulations to this group for keeping their cool despite some of the nail-biting scoring moments for their team.

Team 1 was quite lucky with their wheel spins, almost never losing their points. Congratulations to our winning team, Maggie, Teddy, Marina and Adrian, ending with 500 points!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2026

Today, we started our day by visiting Ms. Lisa’s class to watch some presentations on some of the great Greek myths.

Then, we did our quick write, where Leo reclaimed his title as this week’s Quick Write Champion!

After our quick write, we joined Ms. Demetra’s class for some Math! Ms. Demetra’s class has been going around the school and collecting data for how many colors of each Plato Uniform shirt students wear each day. Our class joined Ms. Demetra’s today to teach and help her students graph their findings so far. In total, Ms. Demetra’s students will collect 10 days of data, however, we are helping them graph it every few days to minimize the work load. It was awesome to see my class turn into some patient leaders by guiding her class through the steps and helping them complete neatly organized bar graphs. As our groups finished their graphs, we played some games together in celebration of our hard work!

In our afternoon class, students took their vocabulary test and created their own Greece flag in preparation for next week’s Plato Academy Winter Olympics winter ceremony! Each class held a vote to pick which country they were representing, and our class chose Greece!

Science with Ms. Pam!

Students have officially begun working on their independent research projects. So, for the next few weeks, Science photos will be limited as many are taking notes on videos and reading articles rather than performing experiments.

Math with Mr. Zafeiris!

This week in Geometry, we worked on a perpendicular bisector project. Students created equations by solving geometry problems involving unknown angles and side lengths, and then checked their solutions. They did an excellent job! We will continue our hard work in both Algebra and Geometry, with the goal of helping students confidently and efficiently solve problems by combining these skills.

I look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week! (:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2026

Today, we started our deep dive into White Bird by reading chapters 3 through 8.

With class novel studies, it’s hard to get tons of amazing photos as there’s not much physical action happening… but there is bucket loads of brain action happening! So, I want to highlight a couple of our deeper class discussions for you as a photo replacement.

Discussion Highlight 1: Foreshadowing

In panel 6 of page 42, Leo noticed there was a third character colored in behind our main character Sara, and her seat partner, Tourteau. As a class, we have previously discussed the importance of color and the intention behind the art styles. Our main character is Sara, telling her childhood story to her grandson (Julian) over a video call… and the panels are like what she visualizes in her memories as she retells this story to him. Essentially, we are seeing her memories as we read the story!

We talked about how more detailed and crisp images tell us they were important or core memories for Sara, and images with less detail aren’t seen as important to her. We also talked about how that crisp focus could be symbolizing intense and traumatic situations within the plot of her story, and talked about how the more crisp images told us what she focused on in that specific moment.

Through some discussion, we came to the conclusion that this light use of color was a tool used to foreshadow the Nazi soldiers coming to the school for a round-up of all Jewish students as the Nazi party promoted the idea of a superior “Aryan race,” idealizing Nordic traits like fair skin, light hair, and blue eyes for physical perfection. The character behind her had been colored in with blonde hair and fair skin. While there isn’t tons of other detail given to this background character, the fact that there is any, show that Sara’s fairy tale life was coming to an end… and that Sara was beginning to become aware of that reality, though often still trying to deny it.

Discussion Highlight 2: Hidden Message

On page 50, panel 3, the maquisard was caught by the Nazi soldiers trying to help the Jewish kids escape through the forest. When he was found, the Nazi soldiers made him go to his knees before shooting him dead. We talked about how this was a common tactic used by Nazi soldiers, where they would weaken their opponents (either by weakening them physically through malnourishment in camps, or by placing their bodies in physical positions where they are unable to fight back). Before he was shot, Antoine, said the quote, “Vive L’humanité,” which means, “Long Live Humanity.” I posed the question: Why were these his last words? What was the importance or reason behind him shouting this words before he was killed? A few students guessed it was so he would seem brave, or that it was to make the kids less scared… but Marina was our shining start in analyzing this moment! Marina explained to the class that it was a message to the Nazi officers reminding them that though they may physically kill him, they would never be able to kill their humanity; and eventually, their actions would catch up to them and justice would be served. That was a hard one to figure out, bravo Marina!

After all our discussions and reading of the chapters, students got to work on their written responses, where they practiced restating the questions in their responses, and pulling relevant textual evidence with clear citations. These chapter worksheets will double as a study guide for any tests or quizzes as we continue our reading.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2026

Today was all about improving Plato Academy! First, students presented their School Improvement Plan Pitches to the class.

Then, we narrowed all of our amazing plans and ideas to our top two choices to present at our upcoming Leadership Day. We started with a group debate to discuss and defend which pitch was the stronger choice.

Then, we learned about an extended paragraph structure that allowed us to thoroughly defend our pitch choice. Students went on to write their own extended persuasive paragraph defending their chosen pitch. The student with the best persuasive pitch will determine which idea we pitch as a group at our leadership day event.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026

Today, we had a Ketchup, Mustard, Pickle day to finish up any lingering assignments. It was so much fun to see students discover the supplies they were “never given,” or had “mysteriously disappeared” as they got some organizing time in. 😉

FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2026

Today, we did not have school due to severe weather. Students were assigned an article to read, Searching for the Lost Ship, where they practiced identifying Nonfiction text elements, and completed a reading comprehension quiz. They also watched a video to learn our dance for next week’s observance/celebration of National School Choice Week to allow for some physical activity despite the frigid weather. They were also given a bonus activity where they could research and create a Kahoot or Blooket with 15 Fun Facts about the upcoming Winter Olympics. Students who completed this bonus activity received 5 Dojo Points!

Their vocabulary tests they were supposed to have today will just be moved to next Friday, allowing them some extra studying time on their current vocabulary sets.

Science with Ms. Pam

Students have continued to observe their seeds, and learn all about different types of plant veins through various experiments.

I look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week! (:

MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 2026

Today, we did another teacher swap for Mr. Joe to continue preparing our class for the Quiz Bowl on Wednesday! In our later class, we had some vocabulary study time in preparation for their tests this Friday. Then, students were given time to work on their Pitch Presentations with their partners before their presentations next Wednesday.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2026

Today was their last day with Mr. Joe to prepare for Quiz Bowl tomorrow. Afterwards, they had some more Pitch Presentation work time.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2026

Today was the day we have all been waiting for: Quiz Bowl Day! Due to the insane weather, the competition schedule was a bit chaotic from arrival delays, but we still had a blast! Many schools have been studying and preparing since August, and most (if not all) of the other teams competing in the Quiz Bowl are specially picked students from a large pool – the energy was very similar to our class’s passion when The Bears prepare to play, almost like this was their school’s Superbowl. Despite our small amount of preparation in comparison to other teams, we won a round! Nobody was a weak-link in our team. Every person had a valuable knowledge specialty that allowed each student to bring strength to our class’s team as they competed, and kept our competing panel very well-rounded. Many of the questions in this round were actually from our regular class studies, it was incredible to watch them answer our classroom content with confidence and pride.

While I wish I was able to take photos during the competition, due to the weather delay, it was very fast paced with no breaks or down time. During the physical rounds, I was busy score keeping, which made me unable to snap a couple images. We ended with a score of 300 points! While we didn’t earn a podium placement in the competition, we learned a lot of fun facts, got to do some team building as we practiced good sportsmanship, and encouraged our peers (rather than judged) when an answer was missed, and we had pride in how well we were able to keep up with these amazing teams from other schools.

When we returned to school, students had a mini-party and late lunch with their Greek teachers where we celebrated our success while eating some food, and listening and dancing to some music. In our later class period, students continued riding the teamwork wave and got back to work on their Pitch Presentations.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2026

Today, we returned to our beloved Geometrocity Projects that we had to take a break from due to rehearsal schedules for the holiday show. Every student was given a goal today, and that goal was to finish Phase 1 by the end of class. Most students had finished, but we had some absent students who were behind, and some students who were taking some extra time to make sure their drawn examples for their building permits were incredibly detailed. I’m thrilled to share that all students rose to the challenge and reached Phase 2 by the end of the class period – meaning they were all starting to map out their Geometrocities in preparation of making them 3-D in Phase 3!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026

We started with our Word of the Day Quick Write, where we had a showdown between Leo and Maggie! Our Quick Write Rules state that you must include all of this week’s words (5 new words) before previous vocabulary can count for points. Originally, Leo had the most words… but he made a fatal mistake: he missed one of our new words this week. However, we cheered on his efforts as he used a lot of interesting vocabulary and plot choices that showed a lot of intentionality in his craftsmanship of his story. Maggie was our runner up for most words included in her story, and she used all of our new words correctly, as well as, created a story with a clear plot! Congratulations to this week’s Quick Write Champion: Maggie!

Then, students were given their final class block to work on their Pitch Presentations. While I have tried to give them as much time as humanly possible this week to work on them, we will not be having any other class time for them to finish their presentations before they present in Wednesday’s class. Most students are close to done with their projects, so this shouldn’t be a heavy homework addition. However, if they are far behind in completing their projects, hopefully they came up with a game plan with their partner(s) to finish it by Wednesday and be presentation ready!

In our afternoon class, students were given their vocabulary tests. When they finished, they were able to continue working on their Geometrocity mapping.

Science with Ms. Pam

This week, students have been learning all about different plants and root types. They have a seed experiment happening, where they prepared a seed and placed them in various habitats to see how their environment and impact their plant’s growth and success. Many students placed them against the window, however, some got creative and placed them in hidden corners, and against the wall near the window. We look forward to seeing which seeds have better sprouting results! Each day, we check and record them to track their progress over time.

Mr. Joe’s Quiz Bowl Lessons

Monday and Tuesday we had two more great practice sessions to help us prepare for the NAQT quiz bowl on Wednesday! This helped to get the students familiarized with the format of the competition as the rules can be a bit complicated at times, as well as to build student confidence in their ability to perform within the format of the competition. These practices also helped students to familiarize themselves with the kind of content they will be expected to know prior to the competition, including topic areas from history and literature to sports and pop culture. Our practices also helped us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our various team members, so that we could begin to formulate a strategy for the day of the competition. I would like to thank all of the students and Ms. Mary for giving me the opportunity to share such a great experience with them, and I would be remiss not to mention how much fun it was getting to know everyone better! I look forward to future competitions and to getting to see the 6th and 7th grade students in my class every day in future school years!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a fantastic winter break. Today, we jumped right into our next unit: WWII and The Holocaust. We will be using the graphic novel, White Bird, to guide and deepen our learning about The Holocaust. What’s awesome about this novel is it is related to their novel study last year, Wonder! We have already learned about graphic novel terminology to help in our literary discussions, so it was time for our introduction activity in preparation of reading the book tomorrow.

I started by presenting students moral thematic statements in an activity called: Where do you stand?

I would display the statement on the board, and students would walk to one side of the room if they agreed with it, and the other if they disagreed. We then had a brief discussion where students were given an opportunity to share their thinking behind their decision. Here are the statements we discussed:

1. It takes courage to be kind.
2. It is sometimes okay to break the law.
3. There are some choices that are choice-less.
4. Being a “good person” is more about what you believe rather than what you do when things get difficult.
5. Silence is a form of acceptance.
6. The right thing to do is legally obligated by the government through the laws they pass.
7. Small acts of kindness do not matter in situations of great harm.
8. Helping strangers is less important than helping people you know.

As we discussed these thematic statements, we started broad, and through discussion, honed our thinking in with the context of The Holocaust. It was awesome to see some students switching their sides as their peers presented arguments as it showed they were thinking very intentionally about their questions. As the activity progress, students involved focused and deeper thinking approaches to their answers naturally, rather than needing as much prompting to do so.

After we went through our statements, we talked in a bit more detail about what happened during The Holocaust. How it took place, why it took so long to end, how it ended, who all was involved, etc. Our discussion was deep, and heavy, but it was also impactful.

To guide our learning of The Holocaust, we analyzed and annotated the opening poem to White Bird. The stanza below is an excerpt from the poem, Fifth Elegy: The Acrobats by Muriel Rukeyser.

They are the children. They have their games.

They made a circle on a map of time,

skipping they entered it, laughing lifted the agate.

I will get you an orange cat, and a pig called Tangerine.

The gladness-bird beats wings against an opaque glass.

There is a white bird in the top of the tree.

They leave their games, and pass.

This allowed them to practice learning history through creative literature, just like we were going to be doing as we read, interpreted, and discussed the rest of White Bird.

We ended on an essential question: Why do we learn about The Holocaust if it was so terrible?

At the end of the day, learning about this stuff is hard. It’s sad, it’s heavy, it doesn’t make us feel good to talk about – but it is still extremely important! We learn how it happened, so we can make sure we never allow it to happen again. We talked about how knowledge is power, and the more things we learn about it, the easier it will be to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself. We talked about how learning about The Holocaust pays respect to those affected by it, and ensures their pain is learned, from rather than forgotten. Students left our class with their hearts heavy, but also with pride in knowing that what they were learning was essential to making sure such a tragedy never happens again.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2026

Our morning class period was spent with Quill for some grammar practice time. This is becuase in our later class periods, today was the day we got to begin reading White Bird! Yay! However, part of our novel study would be written literary responses. We did a Quill period to make sure that our brains were fully awake and ready to write high quality responses with proper grammar.

In our next class period, we read the first two chapters. As we read, we paused to analyze symbolism within the writing and imagery, make inferences to deepen our understanding of the text, connect novel events to the true history being referenced, and reflect on what we had learned.

After our class discussions, students had a chance to practice their written response to literature skills. They were required to restate the question in their answer, and include concrete details from the text in their response. Many of the questions on their chapter worksheets were part of our class discussion, however, we discussed so many things that returning to key ideas was essential to making sure students maintained a deep understanding of the novel.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2026

Today, we had some fun with a teacher-swap! I went to work with Mr. Joe’s class, as Mr. Joe came in to do some trivia in preparation for next week’s Quiz Bowl! Quiz Bowl is an exciting competition where students compete in teams against other schools answering exciting trivia facts. It’s a fun way to learn lots of new things, and a great community team building activity. Since Mr. Joe’s class has competed in the Quiz Bowl earlier this year, he’s kind of an expert on knowing the best way to prepare for the bowl – and we are so excited to continue to work and learn from him in preparation for the competition next week! Here is a blurb from Mr. Joe about how that preparation went:

“This Thursday we began our preparation for the upcoming quiz bowl next Wednesday. First I explained how the competition will work, including the format of the teams, the rules, the scoring, and the expectations that the students can have for what to expect at St. Viator next week. For those interested, it is a 5v5 trivia event where there is a tossup question that is answered by whichever team buzzes in with the answer first, with the successful team getting first chance to answer 3 bonus questions, before the other team gets a chance to steal any questions that were answered incorrectly. Each correct question is worth 10 points, whichever team has the most points after 3 rounds is the winner! We also got to feel out what some of our strengths and weaknesses are in the competition, as we begin to decide what the lineups will look like when our team competes. Students also got to do some learning through exposure by playing trivia and both reviewing things that they already knew, as well as learning some new trivia knowledge in the process! Next week we will continue to prepare by practicing and immersing ourselves in some more questions, while also learning more about how we want our team to look, and getting used to the format of the competition to help quell any nerves that we might have on the day of the competition.”

When I returned to class, we did our word of the day, and talked a bit about Quiz Bowl. Many students said they were nervous… so we talked about the nerves. Some were nervous they’d say the wrong answer, others were nervous they’d be judged for not knowing the answer, some were anxious they’d accidentally press the buzzer prematurely, etc. When asked about if this anxiety was internally motivated out of fear of judging themselves, versus, externally motivated out of fear of their teammates judging them. Collectively, they agreed it was externally motivated. So, we did a team pinky promise! Where we promised to encourage each other, not blame anyone for getting a tough trivia question wrong, and ensure that every member of our team felt supported and valued.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9 , 2026

Today, there are unfortunately no pictures as I was out for a family emergency. However, students still got to compete in their weekly quick write, and began planning for their Student Leadership Day they will be attending later this year.

Student Leadership Day is a day for our student leaders to meet with student leaders in other schools. This leadership conference is held at the Holocaust Museum, where they get to listen to an incredible presentation by an artist for social justice, and present their own plans to improve Plato Academy. The best part, is that if their plan inspires those at the leadership conference, they will actually receive a grant toward their community project! It takes a lot of time and planning to prepare for, which is why we are starting with the first phase: the initial brainstorm.

Today, students were asked to come up with 3 things they believe they could improve at Plato Academy, and some kind of mock-up plan for how they believe they could improve Plato Academy using the earned grant money. Later on, students will pick what they believe is their strongest plan to make a presentation pitching it to the class for feedback and additional improvements. Then, as a class, we will decide what plan is the strongest, best uses the funding, and would benefit the school the most.

This is an awesome opportunity because it gives our students a chance to practice presentation skills (both in our classroom community, and at the conference), as well as, an opportunity for our students to step up as the incredible leaders they are to improve our school community.

If students finished their initial brainstorm document, they were given time to study for the upcoming Quiz Bowl, read their independent novel, and work on Quill until a small group of early finishers were ready to come together for some critical thinking and game play.

I look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week! (: