Ms. Q’s Corner
CMP8
We completed our It’s In The System Review and began our unit test. Due to Science NECAP we had abridged classes this week. Next week we will begin our end-of-year review to brush up and reacquaint ourselves with all the math work we have done this year to prepare for the algebra final and to review areas where the class needs bolstering.
Algebra Final Exam Review!!
Thursday, May 29th 6-8pm OR Sunday, June 1st 3-5pm in WCS Dining Room
Students need to sign-up at: http://tinyurl.com/FinalStudySessionSignUp
CMP7
Finding the surface area and volume of cylinders was the order of business this week. This multi-step mathematical process called all of us to be precise in our calculations. We began comparing the volume of different three dimensional figures and also compared their surface area and volume to see if we could observe a relationship between the two. Next week we will explore cones and spheres.
Science 7th/8th
Kudos to our 8th graders for their excellent effort and focus during our Science NECAP testing.
Our continued study of climate change began with articles about the IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report that came out in March. The article highlighted that the world is not ready for the impact of climate change. We took part in an albedo experiment to test the relationship between the surface reflectivity of solar radiation and its relationship to the temperature change in the atmosphere. We will continue our unit next week with a focus on ways we can help lower CO2 emissions and explore plans for a changing climate. A unit test will most likely follow in the next week.
The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room
7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities we have continued on our global geography adventure through myths, legends, latitude and longitude, and atlas use! We’ve spent our morning time together continuing with our Myths and Legends Unit. Students have created a large graphic organizer on one of our classroom walls in order to compare all elements of the stories we read aloud. Students have heard, watched, and read a variety of myths and legends. After every story students take part in great class discussions about whether the story we’ve read is a myth or legend. We compare these stories to the definitions of “myth” and “legend” we created. Our classes are starting to find that myths and legends have a lot of things in common such as characters (gods, goddesses, spirits, kings), settings, and the overall plot line. We also discuss the cultural aspects of myths and legends, which are great reminders that when we start to create and write our own myths we need to keep in mind the country that our myth or legend will take place in. The countries we set our stories in will be important in making decisions around characters, names, and color choice. Our time together in the afternoon has been spent combining our atlas skills with finding places around the world using latitude and longitude coordinates. This week students used their skills to locate the World Wildlife Fund’s 18 Endangered Places. Locating these places was the launch to our small research project titled: The Endangered Places Project. Students will be studying an endangered place of their choice, and writing a persuasive paragraph about why this habitat needs to be conserved and protected. Students are focusing on the idea that one place can be home to many diverse living things: plants, animals, and people. Students are also being asked to create an educational poster to hang up in the school. the poster will include a hand-drawn map, facts, and ways to help. This poster will hopefully encourage others in our school to donate to the World Wildlife Fund via the donation jar in Wesnak Core. We are hoping to raise enough money to make a donation and adopt an animal to act as our classroom pet. If you’re at all interested in donating, please talk to your child about the project and learn a little bit about the environment they have chosen to research!
The Global Connections Project: Connecting students through learning from VT - NZ!
Weekly Update: This week we had another great Skype session with Blockhouse Bay Intermediate! We had a fantastic group of students after school to participate in the Skype, and they came up with some great pop culture related questions. Here are some highlights from our Skype time together:
Top 3 Sports: Rugby, Rugby League, and Netball
Popular Athletes: Winston Reid (soccer), Nick Willis (long distance runner), Valerie Adams (shot put), Lydia Ko (16 year old gold champion)
Music:
- Lorde is very popular
- Pharrell William’s “Happy” also quite popular
- Sam Smith is at the top of the NZ iTunes chart
Popular Books: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries
Popular Foods: Fish&Chips
Accent Exchange: Students participated in an accent exchange. New Zealand students tried to use an American accent and our students tried their hand at a New Zealand accent. It was very funny, and they were quite impressed with our Kiwi accents.
The next Skype session will be Wednesday, May 21st at 4:00 and it will also be our first time using our Google Map to mark places around the globe!
Mr. Merrill’s Humanities ⅚ Wrap Up
A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
After looking at a Norman Rockwell image, students brainstormed about possible events and characters the image illustrated. Students then started writing a first draft for their story, writing from the point of view of one character. Students could choose to describe the events that led up to the event, or the events that followed.
The use of artwork is a powerful source for inspiration and was a great way to start this writing unit.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/picture-worth-thousand-words-116.html
Next week we will be reviewing narrative writing strategies and techniques. Students will critique their own first draft, identifying and editing their hook, setting, events etc. in their writing piece.
The last week for spelling, No Red Ink, and Reading Response/Writer’s Notebook assignments will be the final week of May. Students will be self assessing and reflecting on work from the 3rd trimester, as well as documenting any final requirements for these learning tools.
The Week in Ms. O
Math 5: We have finished Unit 6 and are moving into an extension of this unit to address multiplication of fractions. Again, at the beginning of any new skill, we dig deeply into the conceptual foundation or framework, specifically asking the question, what does it mean to take a part of a part? So if we have the problem, Mara wants a snack and arrives in the kitchen to find the brownie pan is only ⅔ full. She decides to eat ½ of what is left, specifically, she eats ½ of the brownie pan that is ⅔ full. Modeling this is actually really cool (for all you math geeks) and lends itself to good math justification. Today, we looked specifically at finding a fraction of a whole like what is ½ of 3? Students again use modeling to do this and then look at the class generated generalization to see if our model matches it!
Math 6: We are in full blown equation writing! We have bumped from analyzing tables and graphs to matching the patterns we see in them, in order to write an equation. And moving from equations to building a table of data and then graphing it. The key to all of this is to encourage students to see patterns in tables, how that same pattern then shows up in a graph, and then generalize that pattern be writing an equation, that allows you to predict future data points. This is really important foundational work for next year’s focus on linear equations. Students are slowly getting the hang of it!
Science ⅚: This week we have been completing a final unit project on bottled water. Students are building a public art installation that includes the water bottles we collected for a week (from over 30 classrooms and offices) and mathematical statistics that are designed to teach others about bottled water. It will on display next week, on the interior walls of the ABC hallway, Kaleidoscope hallway, and the World Language hallway. It should be cool, so check it out!
Field Trip next week...don't forget the field trip form!
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