The Wellington School will kick off the new school year, which starts Aug. 22, with a "Back to School Sundae" for students this weekend.

The back to school event is set from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 19, at 3650 Reed Road.

The event welcomes all students back to school and includes making ice cream sundaes, Upper School Head Jeff Terwin said.

"Students in all grades come to the Back to School Sundae," he said. "We always have about 80 percent of our school community at that event.

"Our teachers will be available and students can visit classrooms and ponder their locker positions, then we all get together in the school dining room to make ice cream sundaes," he said.

Terwin said the event is followed by a new-student orientation at the Upper School, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, Aug. 20.

"All ninth-graders and students who are new to the Upper School attend," he said. "Our grade level deans and school counselors walk the kids through a scavenger hunt to explore the school, then through team-building activities.

"One of the team-building activities is 'two truths and a lie,' " he said. "Students come up with two things that are true about them and one that is not and the other students have to guess which is true and which is not."

He said administrators connect the new students with older student mentors, who take over the orientation to "walk students through life at Wellington."

"We find that students listen to other students more than they listen to adults," Terwin said. "If senior students encourage ninth-graders to get involved in the arts or theater at the school, they are more likely to listen."

He said the orientation process helps new students become "more at ease" at the Upper School.

Terwin said the school will have 192 Upper School students this year, a few more than last year.

The orientation process continues through the week of Aug. 20.

"Our first day of school is Aug. 22, where Upper School students go through a modified schedule and meet with advisers," he said. "Then on Thursday and Friday of that week, the ninth-graders go off to Camp Wilson in Bellefontaine. We have faculty chaperones at camp and they all have a good time getting to know each other at camp and around the campfires."

Terwin said each grade of the Upper School will have some camp time Aug. 16-17, although juniors go to a camp in Philadelphia and seniors stay at Wellington for resume-building workshops and college application workshops.

"Our goal with all of our orientation pieces are to help students put aside the worry of meeting peers or going through their class schedules, so that they can be focused on academics by the time they return to school full-time on Monday, Aug. 27," he said.