On Thursday, January 26 Linden held the annual Science and Technology Fair. Our budding scientists had been working hard in the months leading up to the event and the time had finally come for them to share their discoveries with the Linden community!
This year, for the first time, grade 11 and 12 students did not complete a project. Instead, they were paired with grades 1 and 2 students and took on the role of mentor. The pairs worked side by side through every step of the process. It was great to see the senior student taking on leadership roles and sharing their years of science fair experience with the younger students.
After sharing their findings with their peers and teachers, students invited the Linden community to join us in the evening. As well as presenting their finished projects with their parents and friends, the girls also presented to three willing listeners. These volunteer members of the Linden community listen to presentations and provide constructive feedback on their work, allowing the girls to discuss their findings with people outside of their immediate family circle.
The gym was filled with excitement over the robotics competition. Using the robots they constructed, students battled it out in a progressive competition until one robot reigned supreme. The air was crackling with excitement as friends and families cheered from the sidelines.
The Science and technology Fair is one of the largest and most exciting Linden events. Thanks to all the Linden friends and families who volunteered. This wonderful event would not be possible without you!
On January 17 the grade eight drama class took to the stage with their rendition of Romeo and Juliet. It is a Linden tradition for the grade eights to perform Romeo and Juliet and each year they bring their own unique personality to the story and characters. This year, the students had the opportunity to participate in a stage combat workshop. Using the skills they learned in this workshop, they were able to perform many thrilling battle scenes. It was an exciting performance that had the audience on the edge of their seats! Check out the following album to see photos from the stage combat workshop and Grade Eight Drama night.
On Tuesday, December 13th, The Linden School hosted the annual Festival of Lights celebration. This event marks the end of the fall term and the beginning of the holiday season ahead. Over the course of the evening, we were treated to a number of performances from Linden's many music groups, including the junior and senior choirs, grades 5, 6, 7 and 8 strings, guitar club, the band and the steel pans group. We heard a wide selection of music ranging from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to Vivaldi's Spring. In addition to the musical performances, each class had prepared a skit about a cultural holiday tradition including Chinese New Year, Diwali, Kwaanza, Solstice, Bodhi Day, Eid, Nowruz and Hanukah. The students spent the weeks leading up to the Festival of Lights working in small groups to write and prepare their skits for the big night. It was wonderful to see their hard work come to life on stage!
Click on the image below to see some photos from the night!
The Senior vs. Junior basketball game took place last Wednesday after a successful season for both teams. This is always a competitive match up as both teams play their hardest to win bragging rights. The gym was filled with students cheering for both sides and there was excitement in the air! Both teams played with a lot of heart and enthusiasm, but it was the senior team that came out on top.
After their victory over the junior team, the senior team moved onto the Faculty vs. Student game in All School on Friday. The cheering in the gym was deafening and it was an incredibly exciting game! The faculty played hard and they entered half time with a 14 point lead, but after a slow start, the senior team hit their stride and evened up the score to 26 - 26. The game went into overtime and the Seniors scored the final basket, winning the game 28-26!
This year, the annual Science Olympics began with the junior students participating in a cooking with science workshop while the senior students attended an interactive presentation about digital animation and graphic design. Afterwards, the junior grades divided into smaller groups and visited a number of stations throughout the school. Each station was organized and led by senior students and featured a science experiment. Activities included the Boat Float, Frozen Sock and Bridge Building. The junior students worked together to solve each of the experiments and collected points at each station based on their achievements. It was wonderful to see junior students cooperating and communicating in order to work through the experiments and to see senior students taking on leadership roles by running the individual stations and assisting the younger students. Thanks to the hard work of the senior students in planning the activities and faculty who supervised the organization of the event we all had a great afternoon!
On October 28, the grade 7 football unit culminated in an explosive Superbowl. It was a rainy Friday, but our determined players were not going to be stopped by a little mud. The four teams, Vicious Vipers, Wild Mustangs, Raging Rhinos and Lightening Lizards, faced off against each other in a fierce tournament. All the teams played to the best of their abilities and after a tense final match against the Raging Rhinos, the Lightening Lizards reigned supreme. Fun was had by everyone involved and when it was all said and done, the players couldn`t resist having a mud sliding competition! It was an exciting afternoon and a great way to end the football unit. Thanks to Elizabeth and Deidre for making the tournament possible!
Looking at their smiling (and exhausted!) faces you can get a sense of how the girls felt about themselves, their team, their school, their support communities (coaches, parents, teachers and friends who support their athletic adventures). The girls discovered a lot about themselves today.
We came home with 3 banners (the most of any school there today) out of the 4 divisions we were entered in. THREE!!!! And one was the VERY difficult U14 (grade 7-8 race) a race that boasts over 100 runners. Also of note, the U16 race went to a tie breaker situation where we won based on our higher scoring 4th runner! We also had many top 10 ribbon finishes including 4 medals (top 3), and most importantly big personal bests in breakthrough performances for all athletes. There was great celebration each time Linden was announced at the awards presentation.
The girls left everything they had on the race course and as coaches we couldn't be any more proud of them. This group of girls (almost 1/4 of our entire school population) was the most hard working bunch of runners we have ever had at practices and it was thrilling for us to witness them realizing the product of their hard work with such confidence and heart. It was SUCH an exciting day!!! Such an accomplishment for our girls and our program!
It was also great to hear teachers and parents from other schools commenting to our girls about what great supports they were to their teammates by encouraging them along the course and finish line, and even helping out by running along beside them when they needed a little extra support.
My Week Without Walls - September 30, 2011 Emma, Grade 6
Week Without Walls was an amazing adventure! I loved spending time with all my friends. The places we went to were the ROM, botanical gardens, Variety Vil-lage and Puck's Farm.
My favourite part of the ROM was going into the section that had amazing rocks and other cool, beautiful gems! There were some rocks that glowed in the dark. I enjoyed seeing them immensely.
The botanical gardens were also a lot of fun! I enjoyed a scavenger hunt that my teacher Beth had made for us! I also enjoyed looking at the amazing flowers. At the end we played hide and go seek tag and that was also really fun.
Now Variety Village! Where do I start? I loved every part of that day! Trying out those wheel chairs was the most fun part for me. It was a bit tough ast first, then it got easier. I think I would love to go there again. It made me realize how lucky I am. We had to use a wheel chair for an hour and I thought it was hard. Some people will need them for the rest of their lives.
The last field trip we went on was to Puck's Farm. It was my favourite field trip of them all. I loved the pony rides! There were 3 ponies named Spot, Buckaroo and White Socks. I only went on Spot because I thought Buckaroo would buck me right off of him! White socks was just too tall. If I fell off Spot I would not be too far from the ground. The last thing we did that day was to look for a pumpkin to bring home. I loved my pumpkin! It was perfectly orange and exactly the right size!
Week Without Walls was great! What I loved most of all was spending time with my friends!
The Ultimate Ultimate Team - September 28, 2011 Emma and Sarah, Grade 9
On Wednesday, Sept 28th the U20 Ultimate Frisbee Team travelled to Bayview Reservoir Park for Linden's first tournament of the year. As many Lindenites now know, we are the only all girls team who participates in this co-ed tournament. With nine teams entered it was a day filled with long pulls, short laser-like throws and some amazing Michael Jordan-esque catches!
Our team was very young (almost half were grade nine students) and it was the first time for many other new players on our team, but we had an incredible experience.
We played three games: Toronto Prep, TCMPHS and Toronto New School. Each game we played our absolute hardest on both offence and defence; running, jumping and diving all over the place (Deidre and Forbes were very happy about this)! You did not want to get in our way during the play, we were fit, focused and overall a fierce team!
Our point scorers were: Emma, Kia, Alison (grade 9), Katie H, Jamie, (grade 10) and Danielle (grade 11). We later learned that the first two teams we played ended up being the first and second place teams at the tournament, so we definitely played some of our best to score against them.
Overall it was a fantastic day filled with laughter, hard competition and cookies!!!!
Linden Alumna receives Nancy Ruth Award - June 17, 2011
The Nancy Ruth Award was created to recognize one of Linden’s founding supporters, a woman who herself has made enormous difference to the lives of so many girls and women in Canada. This award is presented to a woman in the greater community who has demonstrated, in her life and in her work, a real commitment to girls and women.
At this year's Celebration to Greet the Summer, we presented this award to Emma Ruby Sachs, Linden graduate from the class of 1999, for her contribution to the lives of girls and women.
Emma is a writer, a lawyer, and an activist. She currently writes political commentary for The Huffington Post and has written a novel entitled, The Water Man's Daughter. As a lawyer, she follows the footsteps of her mother Harriet Sachs, Justice of the Superior Court of Ontario, and father, prominent civil rights attorney, Clayton Ruby. In the Linden fashion of wearing many hats and of taking her commitment to global citizenship to heart, she is also the campaign coordinator of Avaaz, an 8-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decision-making. “Avaaz” means “voice” or “song” in many languages. As part of her work there, she is working to have corrective rape classified as a hate crime in South Africa.
Emma Ruby Sachs came to Linden in Grade 7 and graduated from Grade 12. A true Linden girl, she is quoted in a recent article about the effect of being valued as a young person. “From the age of 5, I was expected to show up at every dinner party and participate in the conversation and have opinions, and I did. I loved it. My opinions were respected.” We celebrate her accomplishments as she embodies our mission of excellence and is making a difference in the world.
Though she was unable to attend Celebration to receive her award in person, Emma sent us this lovely video acceptance, which was aired for the Celebration audience:
On Thursday, June 16, Linden's 14 senior students became our graduating class of 2011.
Our graduates were accepted to 74 programmes at 24 post-secondary institutions for their studies next year. They were also offered scholarships totalling almost $200,000! Thanks to their hard work and dedication throughout their years at Linden, they were able to select from the following schools:
Bishop's University
Brock University
Carleton University
Concordia University
Dalhousie University
McGill University
McMaster University
Neuchâtel Switzerland
OCAD University
Queen's University
Sarah Lawrence College
Trent University
University of Alberta
University of British Columbia
University of Chicago
University of Guelph
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
University of Ottawa
University of Toronto
University of Victoria
University of Waterloo
University of Western Ontario
University of Windsor
York University
Congratulations, girls!
Our grade 12 graduation ceremony is steeped in tradition, and one of these traditions is giving every graduating student the opportunity to make a valedictory speech. This ties in to their first day at Linden, where each student speaks in front of the school at our annual Linden Birthday Party.
Unfortunately, it's not possible to show you every one of the wonderful speeches our grads made at Celebration. However, here is one of the many wonderful speeches we heard, delivered by graduate Ayesha. Ayesha will attend Huron University College at the University of Western Ontario next year to take economics and global development.
