Literature Groups: Slavery and the Holocaust have been topics of conversation in all literature groups this week. There have been very meaningful conversations happening with students around these topics. We have appreciated the interest and care with which students have been talking about these tragic historical events. Please ask your child about what they are reading and learning during lit group time.
Advisory: Many advisory groups have been focusing on character strength and we are moving toward a project where students will identify someone in the world (past, present, and maybe even you!) who they admire because of his/her strength of character. Ask about advisory time.
Mr. Merrill’s Humanities ⅚ Wrap Up
This week students focused on completing their informative writing papers. Students completed a first draft, self and peer edited, received teacher feedback, and revised their papers. We also started to prepare for our next unit - The Road to Disunion and the Civil War. We will start with the issue of slavery. Students participated in a number of activities that focused on cause and effect and the concept of resistance. We looked at both real life examples and historical events to better understand these concepts. We will be using the Mission US - Flight to Freedom multimedia interactive game to put students in the shoes of a 14 year old slave, when choosing to resist will have both individual and history making consequences.
The Week with Ms. O
Math 5: This week we wrapped up Unit 3 with some revisions to our assessment and have moved on to estimation and division. Our focus questions for the week were ‘how do we estimate and then compare that estimate to the actual solution to a problem?” We spent many days estimating for simpler division problems like 26 divided by 4 and then moved into multiplication menus, designed to help us problem solve division problems that are more sophisticated like 108 divided by 15.
Math 6: We spent this week making sense of fraction of fraction problems and then searching for generalizations that might always be true. For example with the problem ½ of ½, we stated a conjecture that this problem has a solution that is smaller than both original fractions. This may not always be true, like in the case 1 ⅓ of ⅘. We also conjectured that “groups of” might indicate multiplication and that maybe even the word “of” might mean multiplication. We did not skip right to the algorithm for multiplying fractions but have arrived at that ourselves, through multiple solutions to a problem, searching for regularity (using 3 groups of 12 an example where multiplication is the operation to use to solve), and focusing on mathematical models to explain thinking. These topics and others we are discussing this year, are designed to build deep conceptual understanding for use in upper level math. Don’t be afraid to drop a fraction multiplication problem on the table and see what your son or daughter can do!
Science ⅚: We worked hard on our Interactive Word Maps, a way to make associations with words in science rather than just getting a list and defining it. They are great! Amazing what those kiddos learn! We have also taken a science assessment this week on Electromagnetism and will move on to microscopes/cells/human body concepts next!
Special Request: I need helpers to come in and work with the UVM Project Micro team. They are scheduled for February 6 from 9:30-11:30 and 1:10-2:50. If you would be willing to staff a station, we could use your help! Email me!
Ms Q's Corner
CMP8
What ways can we ascertain the "x" intercept, "y" intercept, line of symmetry and maximum or minimum point of a parabola. We looked for strategies to seamlessly move about the landscape of quadratics. We created a public record of our work and explored a pattern of triangular number which is an example of a quadratic function.
CMP7
This week our class explored unit rates and how they can be interpreted. For example, we can determine the gas mileage of a car by finding the unit rate of miles per gallon. However, we could also interpret the unit rate of a gallons per mile. We rounded out the week with a check-up and began looking at the cost of cars related to mark-ups and commissions.
Science 7/8th
This week we delved into how materials pass in and out of cells and the concepts of diffusion and osmosis. Students performed a series of experiments using plant and animal cells placed in different media. (saline or sugar solutions) Using the microscopic evidences we were able to see what happens to cells when the external environment is changed and how osmosis works to try to reach equilibrium inside and outside of the cell. After the series of experiments, students created a claim and evidence statement and had a “scientist meeting” to discuss their findings.
The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room
7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities we started our work around stories/narratives and looking at 20th Century history through the lens of The Cold War. In the afternoon classes we started off by having students walk through our “20th Century Timeline Gallery”. Students were able to actually see how long some wars went on for, noticing that some spanned decades. Students took notice of not only wars and conflicts, but of inventions and natural disasters spanning from 1900 - present day. Once our gallery walk was complete we started to dig into our study on The Cold War. Students all viewed a documentary while taking notes, and read an article from Junior Scholastic. In class we discussed should it really have been called a “war”? What other name would work for this major time period and all of the events that it consisted of? Students have also started to realize that The Cold War was the common denominator for a lot of other events and conflicts from our history. In the morning classes our studies have been focused around stories, and how stories can be told in a variety of ways. For our narrative unit we are focusing on how stories are told through plays and musicals. We are using the PBS series “Broadway: The American Musical” as the backbone of our studies. We started by listening to songs from “Oklahoma!” and “The Sound of Music” focusing on how songs can explain the characters and setting of a story. We also learned that plays can also teach some lessons from our own history, and can be used to help showcase the times. Students took a stab at creating their own Broadway show in the challenge titled “Insta-Broadway”. In this challenge table groups were asked to create a musical based on a historical event from a decade that they picked from our “Bowl of Fate”. Students were guided in their work to build this musical by creating the staples that are included in any story: the Plot (beginning, middle, end), the characters, the setting, and the lesson or moral. The 8th Graders even got to the final step, which was to write a song to go with their Insta-Broadway production! Yes, some of them even performed!
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