News

From Equations To Imagination!

When the imagination and math collide, it results in some pretty amazing pieces of art. Rachel Tisdale’s Honors Precalculus class was busy last week learning how to turn trigonomic functions into creative pictures. The instructions were as follows, “Create a picture or design by using trigonometric functions with restricted domains. You may also add other functions (linear, quadratic, cubic, exponential, logarithmic, rational, etc) to add details to the picture. You may draw your picture by hand or use Desmos to create your picture.”

Students took these words and went to work using various functions that included sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant, to create graphs that would eventually form the pictures that they wanted to create.

Students created everything from marsh scenes, to snowmen, to funny faces.

“Students are able to use different parts of their brain,” explained Tisdale. “Projects, by nature, involve synthesizing and analyzing information in a way that does not always happen in a standard instructional setting.  What really makes my teacher's heart happy is seeing the students who may not excel in a traditional math setting step up to really surprise you when given the opportunity to complete a challenge creatively.” 

The students loved the opportunity to get creative as well. “I liked this project,” said 11th grader Evan Seay. “It was a fun way to apply trig functions in the real world.”

“It was a fun way to see God’s creativity through math,” said Ana Tyler.

We enjoyed seeing the incredible innovation of our students as they demonstrated both mathematical understanding and imagination.

Promoting Literacy With Read Across America Week

Lower School students recently participated in the nationwide “Read Across America Week”. This annual event is celebrated the week surrounding March 2nd, the birthday of Dr. Seuss, and was created by the National Education Association in hopes of encouraging elementary students and teenagers to read!

This year Lower School participated in its very own spirit week, with each day focusing on the joy of reading while dressing in costume. Students came to school in Crazy Socks, 30th Anniversary shirts, matching outfits on Twin Day, crazy and fun hats for Hat Day, and they rounded off the week by dressing up as their favorite book character.

The activities in the classrooms were just as colorful and exciting as the outfitsl Several Kindergarten and 1st grade classes had older students come read with them, while Mrs. Shockley's kindergarten class read the Cat in the Hat and did a story map/retell before creating their own Dr. Seuss hats!

Mrs. Snook had guest readers come to her classroom every day including ECBC Pastor Buster Brown, Seacoast Pastor Greg Surratt, and PCA Art Teacher and author Nicole Seitz.

At the end of the week, the kindergarten classes hosted a Literacy on the Lawn, an event that was special for all involved. “Each child brought in a book or two that they could read to their parents,” explained kindergarten teacher Alex Alford. “What the students didn’t know was that their parents were bringing a surprise book wrapped for the students that they could read together over lunch!”

The goal of the week was to celebrate and encourage a life of literacy. Through the mentorship of our older students, the commitment of parents to emphasize reading, and the thoughtful, creative lessons of our faculty, PCA's desire to foster a love of learning was evident each day of the week.