TA’s Notes:
The last day of school will be Tuesday, June 16th. This will be a half day.
8th Grade Graduation - Thursday, June 11th, 6:30 PM
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We put the finishing touches on a couple of units this week. Students completed their final LEAF on our Historical Fiction unit. Students had to use examples of the main character’s actions, thoughts, and feelings and make personal connections; hence, what is it like to walk in someone else’s shoes (our focus question for the session). I also announced the winners of the Stock Market Game. Many teams invested heavily in the tech industry, which had a rough ride during our 10 week game. Google and Apple certainly did not perform as many had hoped. Groups that had invested in entertainment (Disney) and the manufacturing industry (lower gas prices) did very well.
We used two class periods to prepare for the upcoming SBAC session. Students participated in a classroom activity which was background information for the performance writing task. Students used related text to read and respond to a variety of standard based questions.
We also spent some afternoon class time learning about the conflict between the New Hampshire Grants and the Yorkers. And we ended the week with a showing of Johnny Tremain, one of our book choices for historical fiction.
Note: Students that would like to submit writing (all genres) for the Scribe should send it to me on a word document as soon as possible.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: Students were exposed to two SBAC practice tests this week and this finalizes our work viewing the test prior to our actual testing dates on May 1. In the midst of this testing we began investigation of fraction x fraction visual models. We will continue to work on this after the break. Do some Moby! It’s good for you! One hour over the break!
Math 6: Sixth graders have been very focused on this algebra unit, building some foundation skills for understanding equations. The departure from the CMP 3 program was purposeful; to expose students to distributive property, which they will see in 7th grade and on the upcoming SBAC test. We also did work on how to use our looping to write equations from patterns in graphs and tables. More to come..One hour of Khan please!
Science ⅚: This was our week to look more deeply at how matter changes and how we can characterize those changes. So yes, we did do the baking soda and vinegar trick and others; watch your stashes of these things. I failed to tell students that I once had a colleague who warned her students about doing these kinds of experiments at home. The young man proceeded to fill a two liter bottle with baking soda, then poured in vinegar, and capped it. When the bottle gained enough pressure from the chemical reaction, he dropped it and then the bottle shot up and hit him in the orbital bone, breaking it! Large quantities of those two materials may result in a serious accident! Anyhow, the students had some investigations in order to push a little on their understanding of physical and chemical change. We will finish up this unit after the break.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
A glimpse into the last two weeks in Humanities...
During our AM classes we have been focusing on the power of images, what makes a great slogan, and what makes a great ad. We started this mini unit by looking at images that are associated with advertisements and trying to figure out the reasoning was behind the choices made by some companies. We played with images as well by students bringing in pictures of their choice from magazines and newspapers. They were challenged to come up with slogans (using figurative language) and hashtags to promote the product. This was a really fun activity and really pushed the students to think about the picture itself and the story it could possibly tell. It also pushed the class to think about the choices behind a company’s advertising campaign. For example why would a gasoline company, such as Shell, use an image of a young boy flying a kite on a beach on beautiful day? Our discussions brought us to believe that perhaps Shell was using the image to draw in the audience first with the image, which would then encourage them to read the full advertisement. After our work with pictures and looking at the top-rated print ads of the past year, we moved into the infamous “Pixar Challenge”. This activity is extremely popular as we use Pixar Shorts as our inspiration for creating advertisements for products showcased in the short film. For example, in the Pixar Short “Geri’s Game” the film features an elderly man playing chess against himself. Students were challenged to create an advertisement about chess using “Geri’s Game” as the potential commercial or image for the print ad. The slogans that were created were great and students had a lot of fun coming up with hilarious slogans, hashtags, and some... jingles! As we brought our Pixar Challenge to a close, we moved onto studying commercials. This week students were asked to analyze television commercials by looking for the different persuasive techniques that we learned last week. We watched and analyzed a variety of commercials looking at/for the following persuasive or advertising techniques: lighting effects, sound effects, music choice, filters used for images, celebrity endorsements, slogans, social media, figurative language, and more!! We also spoke about target audiences and what made commercials work or not work. Our final conclusions were: 1.) Commercials need to hit some kind of emotional chord: happy, sad, inspirational, funny. 2.) Commercials that work are between 30 seconds and 2 minutes in length. 3.) Not everyone will think some types of humor are funny, so be careful when using humor! Our commercial viewing day was super fun as students took on the role of commercial critics, ate popcorn, and gave commercials a 0-5 star rating and explained their reasoning. The end of our week was focused around students finalizing their business plans for the business convention and storyboarding their commercials! Students had to finalize their business name, product and product name, slogan, logo, and write a product description. With the finalizing of their business plans, we are now officially ready to go!!
During our PM time together students began to think critically about “stuff”. We started off by viewing “The Story of Stuff”, which is a film about U.S. consumption: where we buy things, where they come from, and where they go. It also teaches about the impacts of marketing and advertising and how it can impact a person’s happiness level! Students learned a lot of interesting facts such as, if everyone in the world consumed as much as the US we would need 4 more planets!! We also learned that America’s happiness peaked in the 1950’s!! These facts challenged our class and brought up great discussion. After watching this short film, students were asked to take a look in their own closets to find out where their own “stuff” came from. Each student made a list of 15 items and found out where they were made. We then tallied up our totals and discovered that most of our items came from countries in Asia or Central America. This data brought us to our next mini unit around the question of: How do we get our stuff? We decided to focus on t-shirts, as this is the most common item we all have, so we started to look at the life of a t-shirt to fully understand the process of how it gets into our hands from start to finish. Students started out by predicting the life cycle of a t-shirt and created skits to illustrate their thoughts. These of course were creative and funny! After watching the class skits, we used “NPR’s Planet Money: Life of a T-Shirt” documentary to learn more about the process. Through this short documentary we met two women who worked in factories in Bangladesh and Colombia. By being introduced to these women we began to learn more about the labor behind a t-shirt. We used multiple articles from Jr. Scholastic to help us learn about the different environments that people work in, and we also learned why our products are made in other countries. We discussed the pros/cons of what would happen if more of our products started being made in the U.S., and we also discussed the benefits to having factories built in countries in Africa which is becoming more and more popular. Students took part in really great discussions, challenged each other, and interacted with a number of texts to help in developing a global understanding. These topics certainly opened our eyes and also provided students with inspiration to develop and create change! Many were inspired by the videos, articles, and discussions, so they are applying new environmentally sustainable, humane, and ethical practices to their businesses for our upcoming Business Convention in June!! It has been busy, but certainly fun!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week we dove into our new book called "It's in the System." For the first time students began to explore algebraic equations with two unknown variables on the same side of the equation.
(Ax +By = C) We looked at situations where two variables such as the profit from hat sales and the profit from shirt sales needed to equal a specific profit. There are a multitude of hat and shirt combinations that will allow you to get at that profit and we explored how to create tables and graphs to illustrate the situation. In the following investigations we investigated two related linear functions or systems to find the common solution or intersection between these two systems. These problems asked students to recall all of their skill with balancing equations. When we return we will learn more strategies for solving systems of equations.
CMP7
The 7th graders are at the end of "Moving Straight Ahead" and we are developing strategies for finding the linear equations in multiple ways. Students will need to be fluent with moving from graphs, tables and sets of points to writing equations. They also need to understand what parts of the equation such as the slope, y-intercept represent in the context of the equation. Checking your solutions by plugging coordinate points back into the equation and finding the y-intercept when you have the slope and a point are other skills we are fine tuning. When we return we will review for our MSA Unit Test.
Science7th/8th
How can we conserve and learn how to use less of our natural resources? How much waste do we create and where does our garbage go when we throw it in the can? These and many other questions were explored this week. As part of the Business Convention project, Science class has looked closed at defining what natural resources are, how each of us has an ecological footprint of resources we use and lots of waste we produce. We explored, talked about our sanitary landfill, the importance of reusing, recycling and reducing waste,and we went out into the community to pick up and classify the waste that get thrown around our community. As expected, plastic trash was the biggest portion of what was picked up. When we return, science will be integrated into humanities as students begin to design and build their "product" prototype with special emphasis on the use of natural resources.
