December 28, 2021
Dock In-house Christmas Parade
Last week ended in a wonderful way as we kicked off our Christmas break with a special parade at our EC-8 campus. Our middle school teachers and students deserve a lot of the credit for planning and organizing a wonderful experience for our younger classes! The weather was just perfect for all to watch along the route as well.'
Our campus parade on the day before Christmas break is in its second year and we hope it becomes a new tradition in years to come! The parade brings excitement to all involved with participants disbursing small gifts to onlookers, the Pioneer giving high fives to fans, and our new Color Guard providing a great performance along the route. There was even a manger scene on wheels which proved to be a fan favorite. Great job to our middle school team!
High School Christmas Chapels
The high school campus has some traditions of its own, both new and old. If you came to school this past week still struggling to capture the Christmas spirit, it's pretty likely you caught it before break. The school Senate sponsored our spirit week with daily themes for attire, including Dock Color Competition (by grade), Christmas Character Day, Ugly Christmas Sweater Day, Anything But a Backpack Friday, and Christmas Pajama Day.
We had campus-wide Christmas caroling by members of the Dock Chorale followed by our Senior Christmas chapel, featuring singing, the Christmas story from Luke 2, and a good old-fashioned Family Feud between the freshmen, sophomore, juniors and seniors. And if you weren't merry and bright after all that—well, then, there were our twin Rudolphs to get us in gear. What a wonderful week leading up to Christmas break!
December 21, 2021
12 Days of Christmas Food Drive
The Service Learning Christmas Group created the idea of "12 Days of Christmas Food Drive" for our EC-8 campus during the month of December. With each day having a theme, the pile of donated food grew by the day beginning on December 1 with cans of vegetables and continued on with packages of pasta, pasta sauce, mac and cheese, chicken noodle soup, cereal, peanut butter and jelly, canned meat, granola bars and cans of fruit, tuna and beans.
Our 7th & 8th grade students helped pack up the donations in our lobby and delivered over 1,692 pounds of food items collected for Keystone Opportunity Center. Mrs. Claire Wanamaker is already thinking about next year and is setting the goal to be a ton!
A special thanks to Keystone Food pantry manager Mrs. Cindy Dembrosky for her encouragement of our students' efforts!
Pennridge FISH Supply Drive
This past month, our 9-12 campus students supported a School Supply Drive for Pennridge FISH, a local non-profit organization that has been providing food, clothing and other forms of assistance for the last forty years. This drive was sponsored by our National Honor Society, led by Seniors Kolson Hunsberger and Clara Benner (pictured below).
Although this was not the typical time of year to collect school supplies, it was greatly appreciated in order to help replenish student's school needs. Our students and families came through in a BIG way and collected hundreds of school items, including paper, pencils, pens, glue sticks and erasers of all kinds!
December 14, 2021
Our Dock Cooks are Soup-er!
Soup was the perfect theme for this year's Dock Cooks culinary competition, and our student chefs "Rose" to Mrs. Lambright's challenge and created some fantastically mouthwatering soups that any restaurant would be proud to serve on their menu. After a half hour of careful but difficult discernment, our judges unanimously selected a winner—the Bacon Corn Chowder made by Sophia Messina and Cole Smeland. Their delicious soup—served in a bread bowl, no less—even garnered one perfect score. That's not easy to do!
Congratulations to our co-2nd place winners, who finished in a tie, Emma Kratz and Melissa Moyer (Smoky Sausage, Potato and Kale) and Maggie Dowell (Heavenly Peppermint Chocolate Soup), and our 3rd place finishers, Aiden Lee and Kirsten Fleming (Broccoli Cheddar), made it a clean senior sweep for this year's Dock Cooks awards. Congratulations to all of our student chefs!
Chopped! Cookie Competition
Mrs. Claire Wanamaker's middle school Exploratory students went head-to head in a "Chopped" Christmas Cookie Baking Competition. Our three esteemed judges had a difficult time choosing winners because all the Christmas cookies were both beautifully presented and delicious! The BEST prize of all for the students was sampling their creations once finished!
Congratulations to Overall winners, Ben O’Rourke and Josh Frederick for their Peanut Butter Blossoms. Our Runners-up were Sophia Veltre and Addison Landis for Best Presentation and Matthew Mast, William Wang and Caden Interrante for Most Creative Recipe and Best Story.
December 7, 2021
Students Helping Students Appreciate Math
Math can be a difficult subject for young students to appreciate, especially when they don’t see how it is connected to their everyday lives. Helping younger students make that connection was the focus of a group of high school students from Mr. Zach Bower’s Foundations of Geometry class when they visited their counterparts in Mrs. Claire Wanamaker’s Middle School math class on the EC-8 campus.
The curriculum for Foundations of Geometry is based on the project-based learning (PBL) model, and for their first project students were tasked with creating a presentation aimed at teens that combines geometric information and historical facts about geometry to explain the significance of geometry to their lives. Each of these students used their own unique gifts and talents to create a presentation and video from scratch. They also made a fun idea a reality by creating a Geometry Dash game for 8th grade students to play, The goal of the game was to provide a “peak moment” experience to help 8th graders remember the presentation better. “Research shows that peak moment experiences can happen in different ways,” Mr. Bower said, “but one way is to incorporate an ‘elevation’ experience—a ‘moment of happiness that transcends the normal course of events through fun and surprise.’”
Thanks to Mr. Bower and to some of our Dock juniors for helping to make math more fun for our Middle School students!
Project-Based Learning at its Finest!
Our 1st grade students listened to a story called "Balloons Over Broadway". Did you ever wonder where those "upside-down puppets" came from in our traditional holiday parades? Enter Tony Sarg, puppeteer extraordinaire! He helped make the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade special with his new creation with balloons. After reading about these balloons, students worked at a STEM project together designing & creating their own balloons. The day culminated with a parade of their own through the elementary wing of campus!
Dock Discover students finished the first quarter strong with their EXPO night! This year, they are studying physical science. They applied what they learned about potential, kinetic and mechanical energy, as well as velocity and the law of conservation of energy and created roller coasters with unique themes. Families and friends came to see and hear what these 7th and 8th grade students learned, created and collaborated on since the beginning of the school year. Terrific job by all!
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November 30, 2021: Happy Giving Tuesday!
We are excited to bring you the first edition of Typical Tuesdays at Dock where we give you a little peek into the classroom happenings of our campuses! May these stories give you a little slice of joy this holiday season!
It's Almost Parade Time!
Dock middle school Service Learning students have been planning, strategizing and creating for months tweaking our Dock float for the Souderton Holiday Parade this Saturday, December 4 at 11 am. In addition to designing the float itself and giveaways for families along the route, a separate group of Color Guard students have been marching through our parking lot practicing for the BIG day—You won’t want to miss them!
Still another group has been creating Christmas celebration packs with socks and bracelets for students and families in our Dock community. Another group of students are creating banners and signs for display at both the Souderton parade and our school parade here later in December on campus. It is amazing to see all their efforts coming together—Please join us along the parade route and support them this weekend!
Sign Language & Worship
Over the past weeks, Mrs. Rachael Grim’s “Sign Language for Worship” students have been working hard to learn sign language to perform along with music during school chapels. On this particular day, these Dock students took what they learned and shared it with their Ealy Childhood friends. It was great to see middle school students leading our youngest learners in a special time of worship together. They all enjoyed signing and singing together--What an awesome way to build community!
