Word for Wednesday: Semester

blog home

It’s back-to-school season! To celebrate, we’ve chosen school as our Word for Wednesday theme for September. 

The word school comes from the Old English ‘scol’ meaning ‘place of instruction’, from the Latin ‘schola’ meaning ‘intermission of work’ and ‘leisure for learning’. The idea of children attending a school is from around 1300 and the idea of a school building is from the 1590s.

Our first word of the month is semester. 

A semester is one of two divisions of a school year. The word is common in North American schools where the academic year is usually split into two eighteen-week semesters. Here in England, the academic year is usually split into three terms.

The word dates to 1827 and comes from the German ‘Semester’, which comes from the Latin ‘cursus semestris’ meaning ‘course of six months’. ‘Semestris’ comes from ‘sex’ meaning ‘six’ and ‘mensis’ meaning ‘month’.
 


01 Sep 2021
blog home

One of the students has put in a huge amount of effort in completing Spellzone at least 3 times a week since his arrival with us in January. Looking at his scores after the latest GL testing, his standardised score has risen from 99 to 131. This is a truly phenomenal result. I just wanted to share the best result I have ever seen.

Terrie Penrose-Toms, Casterton College

read more...