Week of May 21

NYC Information Meeting

⅞ students received their packing lists, expectation forms and reviewed the itinerary for the trip today at their meeting.  Please review the packing list and itinerary with your student and start preparing for the trip.

End of the Year Stuff...

• Please remind your student to return all library books before the end of the school year.
• Please settle all cafeteria accounts before the end of the school year.

Ms. Q’s Corner

7th Grade Math

Students created Stem/Leaf and Box and Whisker Plots  to explore a visual representation of how data is spread.  Students learned about five number summaries which include the mean, median, quartile 1, quartile 3, the maximum and minimum number. These data points are utilized to create box and whisker plots. We finished out our week with exploring what happens to our measures of center when data is added or moved around in our data set.  We completed the Data Distribution Unit Test and students were given a common assessment review packet in preparation for next Friday’s CSSU Math Common Assessment.

8th Grade Math

We moved our thinking from finding the area and side lengths of squares to  finding the area and side lengths of right triangles. Students found the missing legs and hypotenuse  of right triangles.  We practiced with radicals and learned how to simplify them by factoring out numbers that are perfect squares.  Next week there will be two math assessments.  On Tuesday we will have the Looking for Pythagoras Unit Test and on Friday we will have the Algebra Final or the 8th Grade CSSU Math Common Assessment.

Science 7th/8th

Our science class directed it energies toward building, designing and creating drawings, models and prototypes for the 7th/8th grade Economics project.  Students created step-by-step directions and  wrote environmental impact statements that will be placed with their models for their presentations.  Students will receive a separate science grade for this portion of their project.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Language Arts and Social Studies Wrap Up

In Language Arts we wrapped up our read aloud books.  Each class had a letter writing assignment that connected with the book.  In Number the Stars, students wrote a letter to Israeli Authorities, recommending Annemarie for a medal, based on her heroic acts.  For Tuck Everlasting, students took on the character of Winnie, writing to the Tucks about her life after meeting them, as she never saw them again after helping with the escape.  

Students started creating their own businesses in Social Studies this week.  We followed a brainstorming process to come up with ideas for products or services.  Students focused on trying to solve a problem and fixing it or combining favorite things to do this.  Students will be working on their business plans next week and will create an electronic poster to design and present their new business product or service.

The Week in Ms. O’s

5th Grade Math:  Working our way through decimals...we have discovered the key to understanding decimals!  It’s place value.  What is the value of a numeral in a number?  It is it’s location to other numbers.  The decimals becomes terribly important because it is yet another place value marker that sorts out our place values.  Students took a quick quiz on place value names and are working on addition and subtraction of decimals in addition to understanding magnitude when looking at a set of fractions, decimals, and percents.  End of Unit test is coming...

6th Grade:  We have completed our unit on operations with fractions.  Students received assessments back to correct, as fluency errors again were the cause of some shaky results.  Don’t forget to practice multiplication and division at home!  We have moved into operations with decimals which is once again practice in computation fluency.  Our last unit in algebra will begin next week!

⅚ Science:  We are still wrapping up podcasts but have moved on to our unit in ecology. We dissected an owl pellet this week and read about owls as a way to begin conversations about food chains, food webs and conservation of mass and energy.  We will move onto to a variety of simulations re: predator prey and then onto adaptations!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room:

7/8 Language Arts: With the 8th graders we continued our read aloud. Students seem to be really enjoying the story and are really engaged in our conversations and in-class discussions. The 7th graders finished their great review of punctuation and developed a list of punctuation rules/guidelines for writing success! Our 7th graders will be put to the ultimate punctuation challenge on Tuesday morning!

7/8 Social Studies: This week our Business Convention Project received a major boost by teaming up with Ms. Q in Science. Students are making some great prototypes and models and seem to be having a lot of fun with the construction portion of this project. It has been so fun to see their ideas come to life!