IN Ross Township Winter 2016 | Page 37

North Hills Celebrates Homecoming 2016 C ongratulations to 2016 Homecoming Queen Hannah Brennfleck! Her court included Brianna Baumgartner (first runner-up; middle) and Heather Lewandowski (second runner-up; left).Thanks to Scott Studio for sharing this great shot. North Hills Seniors Recognized in National Merit Scholarship Program N orth Hills High School seniors Kristen Collins, Eric Crownover, Alec Duquette, Madeline Evans, William Huffmyer, Kaitlyn Kurz, Nathaniel Salopek and Hannah Schilpp have been named 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program Commended Students. They are among only 34,000 Commended Students throughout the nation to be recognized with this academic accolade for their exceptional academic promise. Commended Students scored in the top 5 percent of entrants of the 1.6 million students who entered the 2017 competition. The National Merit program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. High school students enter the National Merit Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test – a test which serves as an initial screening of approximately 1.6 million juniors in 22,000 high schools each year – and by meeting published program entry/participation requirements. Ross Township | Winter 2016 | icmags.com 35 N OR TH HI L L S SC HOOL DI STRI C T N E WS N orth Hills Middle School eighth-graders celebrated Constitution Day with a novel BreakoutEDU activity that combined popular escape rooms, iPads, American presidents and primary source historical documents. Students were told that a president wants to create their own version of American history by getting rid of all primary source documents. The secret to saving the nation and stopping the president from abusing their power was locked in a heavy, wooden box secured by five locks. Only they could save the nation by using their communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity skills to open the box and release its answer before time expired. Students worked together to decipher clues from various primary source documents used by teacher Joe Welch throughout the year from TeachingAmericanHistory.org/ Ashbrook’s 50 Core Documents, Our Documents, Library of Congress, National Archives, Gilder Lehrman, and the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Once they worked out solutions and unlocked each lock, the students found the answer they needed to save the nation from ruin – The Constitution. Nor th Hills School District BreakoutEDU Game Combines History with Popular Escape Room Concepts