Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

On a Friday night, do you prefer going to the movies or participating in biology labs? Last weekend, our students chose the labs. This past Friday after school, our student-run Medical Club did a dissection lab to reinforce their recent study of mouse and rat anatomy. Their club is designed to inspire and help students progress toward their goals of working in the field of medicine by doing projects to enhance their understanding of different components of the field. This event was great for them to learn more about dissections and get additional practice outside of the classroom. Thank you to our Biology teacher Mrs. Gam for serving as a faculty resource to these passionate students!

Join us for our upcoming Open Houses tomorrow 12/7 and Monday 12/9, both at 10:00am. Come take a tour, meet our teachers, and find out more about us. We can’t wait to meet you!

Happy Thanksgiving from LSAS! We hope everyone has a great holiday this week spending quality time with family and friends and enjoying a hearty Thanksgiving meal. As always, we were thankful to be able to celebrate our own annual LSAS Potluck Friendsgiving this year.

⚡️When LSAS meets Hogwarts⚡️ Yesterday our after school Harry Potter club participated in a HP/LSAS themed scavenger hunt. Clues were hidden all around the school and teams had to decipher riddle after riddle of Harry Potter knowledge to complete the challenge. It was an absolute blast! @ Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

After participating in Reston Town Center's Chalkfest earlier this year, our students were inspired to create their own Chalkfest at LSAS! Students created their own chalk drawings on the sidewalk out front of our building. Each square's design is centered around the theme of gratitude and what it means to each of us. We encourage you to take a further look and check out an Adobe Spark presentation about our Chalkfest created by our amazing art teacher Ms. Danielle. You can access the presentation in the comments below. A huge thank you to Ms. Danielle for organizing such a great event for our school community!

It is always a great day when we can take our learning outside the classroom! Today, our Race in Film in America class was invited to a presentation at the Library of Congress to hear Secretary Norman Mineta discuss his time as a child during World War II living in the Japanese-American Internment Camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. It was very timely as the students have been discussing this topic in their class. Students were able to meet with the Secretary and have him sign copies of his new book. After meeting with Secretary Mineta, Mr. Percoco led the students on a tour of the National Memorial to Japanese American Patriotism During World War II, the legislation which was crafted in part by then Congressman Mineta.

IGNITE your curiosity. Join us tomorrow morning for an Open House from 10-12. Meet our teachers and tour our new campus. @ Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

Screen Time Up as Reading Scores Drop. Is There a Link?

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/11/08/screen-time-up-as-reading-scores-drop.html

edweek.org The yearslong slide in reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress comes as students are spending more time in and out of class on digital devices.

🥜🎶Smoother than a fresh jar of Skippy🎶 🥜 Take a sneak peek into yesterday’s Philosophy Wars class, where they used philosophical views to defend their peanut butter of choice:

“Today we finished studying Hegel. We discussed the dialectic development of consciousness through history and how the State is the embodiment of morality which is chosen by rational free individuals. Hegel's ideas are both deeply conservative and very radical, providing the intellectual basis for both Fascism and Marxism. Finally, we played a humorous game where each student played the role of one of the Philosophers we've studied and then debated the merits of crunchy vs smooth peanut butter.” - Dr. Oliveau, Academic Director, Philosophy Wars teacher

We took advantage of the sunny weather today to have our second foreign language class competition! The French and Spanish classes competed in three rounds of bocce ball. The French team won 2-1, but both teams played great and the rest of the students were great cheerleaders!

JOIN US: Saturday 11/16 @ 10am or Monday 11/18 @10am. For more information call 703-956-5020 and register at https://www.loudounschool.org/open-house

PROVE IT: Join us for Elementary and Middle School Math Olympiads (MOEMS) once a month November thru March. For more info call 703-956-5020 or see our page at https://www.loudounschool.org/moems-registration

EARLY RISERS: 9am on Sunday morning these guys were getting ready for the upcoming AMC8 exam on November 12th. See our page for more info: https://www.loudounschool.org/amc8-registration

EXPLORATION: Precalculus students exploring transformations of exponential functions using a graphing utility.

Happy Halloween from LSAS students and faculty! 🎃👻 @ Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

ENGINEERING: constructing remote controlled blimps to learn about buoyancy!

ENGINEERING: What better way to study about buoyancy than to construct your own remote-controlled blimp! Engineering Principles students constructed their own blimps using light-weight balsa wood for the gondola. A miniature toy tank was also disassembled to adapt the tank's tread motors to drive the blimp's propellers for forward thrust. Hand construction in the shop was coupled with the mathematical buoyancy calculations needed to determine the correct inflation diameter of the balloon with helium. Too light and the blimp would rise to the ceiling; too heavy would cause the blimp to sink to the floor. Successful completion of the project resulted in blimps flying throughout the main Piazza area!

Our foreign language teachers have started a new activity this year - a friendly tournament between the French and Spanish classes! Each competition is centered around an aspect of French and Spanish culture. This first one was about dessert. Students in each class prepared traditional desserts that were reviewed by a panel of student and faculty judges. The rest of the student body also got to try all the desserts while the results were being tallied. It was very close! The French classes won this time, but the Spanish classes have the opportunity to take the trophy back at the next competition. Stay tuned!

ANALYSIS: AP Biology students synthesize a portion of the hemoglobin gene and then discuss potential strategies for replication, based on their understanding of DNA structure.

And YES...we have fun too!

While you were sleeping, your friends showed up early to join a mock AMC 8 exam and review session. We will host the official AMC 8 exam on November 12th at 10am. For more info, https://www.loudounschool.org/amc8-registration

PREPARATION: Students showed up early today to join a mock AMC 8 exam and review session. We will host the official AMC 8 exam on November 12th at 10am. For more details, https://www.loudounschool.org/amc8-registration

DETERMINATION: A determined BC Calculus student explores alternative methods to solving an integration by parts problem.

YOU BELONG HERE: Join us tomorrow at 10am for an Open House. See why our students think you belong here. https://www.loudounschool.org/

DISCUSSION: Today in our Race in Film class Dr Clinton and Mr Percoco held a seminar discussion of The Searchers, a classic western that raises difficult questions about the role of racial prejudice in the myth of the American West.

DISCUSSION: Today in our Race in Film class we held a seminar discussion of The Searchers, a classic western that raises difficult questions about the role of racial prejudice in the myth of the American West.

OLIVEAU: Naming our resident ground hog! Dr Oliveau wins.

Join us on Saturday 10/19 or Wednesday 10/23 at 10am.

Please join us on Saturday October 19th or Wednesday October 23rd at 10am for our first Open House at our new campus location.
https://www.loudounschool.org/open-house

ACHIEVEMENT: Our very own Hall of Fame teacher, Jim Percoco's middle school history class has been studying the Space Race of the 1960s, one of America's greatest achievements. Students are reading Douglas Brinkley's book, American Moonshot: President John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race and enjoying class discussions of all political, economic, scientific, and engineering aspects of America's space program.

STRATEGY: We designed a Game Theory course to introduce students to strategic thinking. Asymmetric information, evolutionary stability, bargaining, dominance, credibility, and Nash Equilibrium are topics that are discussed and applied in class to politics, economics and board gaming.

EXPERIMENT: AP Biology students break in the new lab by making sodium alginate yeast spheres to investigate enzyme activity.

CYBER: Our after-school programs are off to a great start. Today’s Cyber Club activities focused on computer and software configurations and the differences between Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu Linux. Stay tuned for a spot light on retired Lieutenant Colonel Ed Skees who leads our CyberPatriot program.

TEAM BUILDING: Loudoun School for Advanced Studies is the home of a FIRST Lego League Jr team. It’s never too early to DO GREAT THINGS!

CAMARADERIE: We value facilitating opportunities for students to have fun with one another outside of the classroom. This year, we have a large number of middle schoolers who, like our staff member Ms. Ellen, are huge Harry Potter fans. They have started their own after-school Harry Potter club where they play trivia games, recreate events from the Harry Potter books and movies, and even make Butterbeer (for our non Harry Potter fans, this is the butterscotch flavored drink the Hogwarts kids drink in Harry Potter) like they did this week. It's such a fun way to get the week started and it definitely makes Mondays a lot more magical! ⚡️

INSPIRATION: Students find inspiration in the works of Ernest Haeckel and other scientists to employ the use of scientific sketches in their lab notebooks.

COLLABORATION: AP Chemistry students working as a team to figure out values for lattice energy during the formation of ionic solids.

Piano lessons have begun at LSAS! It is so nice to walk down the hallway during the school day and hear music playing. 😊🎶🎹

OPPORTUNITY: This week Dennis Kellen from the Ashburn American Legion Post spoke to our students about the 2020 Boys and Girls State Program. Boys and Girls State provides an opportunity for students to learn leadership skills, the importance of civic engagement, and the workings of the democratic process. Our daily Advisory block allows teachers, students and guest speakers to share information designed to inspire the LSAS community.

JOLLIFICATION THURSDAY is underway & our year long competition of wits, courage & toughness is ON! Today, teams chose names & warmed up by sucking edamame with straws in a transport relay. Then things got REALLY fun as Patrick, John & Aryan competed in Family Feud style questions to choose blender ingredients - which ended up including Spaghettios, a lemon, Fruity Pebbles, juice, doughnut, and much more - to chug for the win! We have BRAVE competitors! Look for more fun on Thursdays to come!

Photos from Loudoun School for Advanced Studies's post

DESIGN THINKING: Proving that ordinary objects can be great design solutions 267 Post-Its blaze our logo outside & inside while providing a sun shade!

PERSPECTIVE: Creating unique & separate panels. AP Art students each have the challenge of visually representing their stance on 3 different social issues using mixed materials, research, design principles & their choice of transfer techniques for a self-portrait line drawing hidden in each. Some of the topics represented: poaching of endangered animals, mental health, access to affordable health care, Japanese internment camps, education concerns & global warming.

DISCOVERY: The best way to learn math.
Today in Algebra 1, our mathematicians turned into scientists and analyzed temperature changes to discover the concept of rate of change (or slope).

This past Saturday, LSAS had a team participate in Reston Town Center's annual chalk art event, Chalkfest. Led by our art teacher Danielle Ferrin, our students created a chalk drawing of our new campus for two reasons: to celebrate our move to our incredible new building and to pay homage to the history of the Ashburn Colored School that our new facility was modeled after, and which we are now lucky to be right next door to.

We welcome you to read the full description of the design that provides insight into the inspiration behind this tribute:

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The center of our design is a 600 square foot building in Old Ashburn: one of the few remaining one-room African American schoolhouses in Northern Virginia. Built in the late 1800s, it served the African American community of Ashburn for over 60 years. In the mid-50s, busing became available and the doors to the Ashburn Colored School were closed. Forty years ago, the Saville family purchased the property and maintained the Old School in the hope that someday it would be restored.

Past students remember the Old School with love. When asked what she would like for visitors to the restored school to take away from the experience, former Ashburn Colored student, Ms. Yvonne Neal, said: “...love and be loved, because everything was based on that.”

The story of the Ashburn Colored School is the story of ordinary people working together to create a more just and hopeful world for their children. It is the story of teachers endeavoring with insufficient resources and unequal pay to prepare their students for the future. It is the story of parents carrying their children through knee-deep mud and snow so they could complete the long walk to school safely. It is the story of young people who studied, memorized, wrote, laughed, played, hauled supplies, prepared food, and kept the fire burning in the cold months. It is the story of the African American community and the Greater Zion Baptist Church members who used what they had (and compensated for what they didn’t) to keep this school operating for six decades.

It is also the story of our county — and our nation. Although it’s easy to forget in this time of data centers, new construction homes, and town centers, this schoolhouse makes visible a rich and complex history that helps us understand where we are and the place from which we’ve come.

Just last week on Monday, September 9th, we moved into our new building which is modeled after and right next to this historic school house. It had been a long journey and wait. But now, this new building is alive and filled with curious minds working together through the gift of encouragement, learning and caring once again. Our students worked together to create our Chalkfest design; celebrating our new school opening and the "old" school being a foundation to the hard work and learning we strive to do to engage and change the world for the better! We think it will be a fantastic representation of our creative 6th - 12th grade community, and we are proud to share with the world our new start we've begun here! Thank you for reading!