Getting out of the classroom and heading into our city or beyond is a hallmark of our Speyer curriculum, and lately, it seems our students are everywhere! We gathered details on just a few of the latest field trips Speyer students have embarked upon — read on to find out about all of the fun!
Read MoreTalk of advertising claims, the impact of geopolitical issues on the economy, and wage estimates floated through the Boulevard as the Middle Schoolers welcomed professionals from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) during the first of their three visits to Speyer, as part of our financial literacy curriculum. This year the instructor teams included Speyer Parents and Staff to assist in the program as the PwC team has not yet returned to full in-person work. Taking a break from their usual morning schedule, each grade explored various financial topics.
Read MoreCheck out just a few highlights of what’s been happening at Speyer!
Read MoreSpotted on the Boulevard: Speyer fifth graders sharing their passions with the world as they filmed their Ted-Ed talks! Some of the topics they tackled: promoting quality education, LGBTQ+ acceptance, the climate crisis, sustainable energy, the water crisis, and more — and now you can watch them on the TED-Ed YouTube Channel!
Read MoreWe ended January and kicked off February with a winning weekend! Our Speyer Chess Team rocked the New York City Chess Championships and brought home the K-1 Championship! Yes, our K-1 team was awarded first place in the city! And we weren’t done there: our K-6 team came in 2nd, our K-9 team was 6th, and our K-3 team came in 8th! Our amazing chess players went head to head against opponents from Hunter, Dalton, Avenues, Lower Lab, Collegiate, and more!
Read MoreSpotted on and off the Boulevard: our younger female Speyer students tinkering, building, and exploring their love of design and math! Yes, guided by some of our fearless Lower School faculty, our students kicked off two new groups: Girls&Math and Girls Design Squad!
Read MoreSpotted on Zoom: That's best-selling author Veera Hiranandani visiting with Speyer fifth graders to talk about the summer book they read: The Night Diary. The Night Diary received many awards including the 2019 Newbery Honor Award, the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, and the 2018 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature.
Read MoreThe Speyer Legacy School is thrilled to share that we have hired our next Head of Lower School, Dr. Heather Pinedo-Burns! In the words of Head of School Larry Donovan: “Heather’s experience and expertise and her many positive personal qualities make her the best fit for Speyer.” Dr. Pinedo-Burns is currently the Director of the Hollingworth Preschool at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Read MoreWords are powerful tools, but right now, they’ve been more difficult to utilize. Sometimes we just don’t have the words to convey what we are feeling, how we are doing, or just the world at this moment. However, something pretty amazing happened (virtually) at Speyer on Friday that gave us a restored hope in finding words to help us cope with what was happening. Speyer’s eighth graders held (perhaps the first-ever) 8th Grade Zoom Poetry Recitals During COVID-19 Social Distancing. They were the culmination of their Distance Learning poetry unit, during which they tackled three key questions: Is it a poem? Why did she write it? and, Is it any good?.
Read MoreDid you know Dragons are excellent at math – at least Speyer Dragon Math-letes are! Case in point: the recent victories at MATHCOUNTS Manhattan! Yes, Speyer’s Math Team competed against a huge field of public and independent schools and came in third overall, first among all independent schools and is headed to states!
Read MoreSlide aside the salad bar, it is time for “The Scottish Play”! Yes, for the third year, Speyer’s Dining Hall became the stage for our eighth graders to present their own unique take on the Bard's famous tragedy. The third annual performance was a direct result of their exploration of the themes in the play as they immersed in the study of Mac**** aka “The Scottish Play”. (There is, as you may know, a theatrical tradition of bad luck associated with saying the name out loud and… well, read on to see if it’s true.)
Read MoreIt was once again time to kick off Speyer’s Financial Literacy Program, with members of the eighth grade officially “handing off” the responsibility for management of Speyer’s Financial Literacy Fund Portfolio to a very eager seventh grade. Watching the events of the morning, one could say the seventh graders are very invested in this aspect of their curriculum...c’mon, we had to go there!
Read MoreWith mere days left in the school year, it’s been only what can be called a Culminating Event-a-palooza, with concerts, presentations, and more as many of our students welcomed their families, our faculty, and other guests as they shared months and months of work, learning, and creating! We’ve got the full round-up for you!
Read MoreIt’s one of our favorite annual end-of-year happenings! This week, the gym transformed into a performance space as our K-4 students celebrated the theme "Voices of Change" in their "Event of the Year" with National Dance Institute. This event is a culmination of their year-long learning about activism, social justice, innovation, and togetherness.
Read More"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." Thomas Jefferson. Knowing the power of words is one of the many skills Speyer students learn…you could even call them WordMasters. That nickname would be quite appropriate, as Speyer students placed FIRST in the nation in the latest WordMasters Challenge and THIRD nationally in the culmulative year-long competition!
Read MoreThis year's Middle School Financial Literacy curriculum recently wrapped for the year with some pretty nifty events: the final visit by professionals from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC); a seventh grade field trip to Goldman Sachs; and the upcoming eighth grade vote on their class gift to Speyer!
Read MoreUsing our amazing city and all it has to offer as an extension of the classroom, Speyer fifth graders went to the theater last week, taking in a performance of the hit Broadway show Hadestown in connection to their unit of study on ancient Greece.
Read MoreJust call them Ishmael! Our sixth graders had an amazing experience as they embarked on their three-day trek to Cape Cod! It was a fabulous adventure to explore whaling — the unit of study they have been exploring in Humanities and Science — in a hands-on, tangible way.
Read MoreMargaret Atwood noted, “A word after a word after a word is power.” Some Speyer eighth graders were honored for their power on the page, earning top recognition at the 2019 NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards!
Read MoreSpotted on the Boulevard: lockers covered with Post-it notes. A curious sight, for sure...so what’s the story here? We think it had something to do with our sixth grade’s latest literary studies of the YA novel Posted and the classic To Kill a Mockingbird. To find out the scoop, we went to Middle School Learning Specialist Ms. Goldstein!
Read More
