Happy Friday! We are going to backtrack to last week when we had our fun Halloween celebration. We enjoyed everyone’s costumes and had a great time together!
Also, thank you for your time meeting with us for conferences. The conversations were great, and we enjoy being on the same page with both students and parents. Please continue the conversations with us anytime!
Now, onto this week. It’s been a full and busy week in the Middle School.
Science
6th year Earth Science students finished creating their tectonic plate stop motion video. Each group of students was, asked to represent what exactly tectonic plates are, how convection currents cause plate movement, and what land formations are a result of these. This week, students are working on representing how tectonic plate movement is responsible for the rock cycle as it relates to the formation of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks.
7th year Physical Science students began their unit, States of Matter. Students spent time observing and illustrating the physical changes of a candle, recording notes as it relates to a change in state of matter from solid – liquid – gas. From this unit, students will identify what similarities and differences are present in each state’s definitive shape, volume, spatial arrangement, and kinetic energy (temperature). Concluding this unit, students will create a stop motion video representing these phase changes.
8th year Life Science students are currently learning about Cellular Respiration. This past week, students conducted experiments revealing the amount of stored energy in food by burning it. In order to obtain this data, students ignited several types of food (marshmallow, popcorn, and Pringles) while heating a known volume of water. Students recorded the initial and final mass of food before and after the burning and the beginning and final temperature of water. Students took the change in food’s mass and temperature change of water to determine the amount of energy released (kilojoules). Students have been able to model the chemical reaction that is cellular respiration by using a variety of manipulatives within class. This provided students an opportunity to see how within a chemical reaction, matter is neither created nor destroyed, only rearranged.
Math
In Transition class, students are comparing decimals and fractions, they are understanding repeated decimal notation, and they are converting numbers between decimals, fractions, and percents. This class is practicing their skills with calculating the percent of a quantity, as well as using square roots in real world problems. They will be concluding Chapter 3 next week, and Ms. Sutherland encourages students to start long term studying in order to help prepare.
In Algebra class, students can use distributive property to simplify expressions, solve for linear inequalities, as well as graph linear equations on a coordinate grid without using technology. This class has been working hard to be more comfortable with algebraic statements and can now confidently collect like terms correctly.
In Geometry class, students are able to apply size transformations to a given figure as well as determine the measures of angles formed by parallel lines, perpendicular lines, and transversals. Students are able to identify the slope of parallel or perpendicular lines and are beginning to understand the purpose of a proof statement. This class concluded their learning of Chapter 3 this week and will begin studying Chapter 4 next week.
Math Joke: Why was the equal sign so humble?……………………..Because they knew they weren’t greater than or less than anyone else.
Humanities
Grade 6 Humanities students continue to work on descriptive writing. They wrote descriptive narration to a nature video of a shark leaping out of the water, eating a seal. They had to use figurative language including imagery, simile, metaphor, personification, and specific words. The end products were fun to read and had the students exploring the thesaurus. 6th grade students also continued to read their class novel, Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper, and complete accompanying work. Finally, students completed their monthly current events presentations.
Grade 7 Humanities students learned about the events leading up to China’s cultural revolution of the early 20th century. More specifically, they learned about the Opium Wars, Taiping Rebellion, and the Boxer Rebellion. They also discussed aspects of a culture, such as language, clothing, food, and roles of men and women. In particular they learned about Chinese Foot Binding, which was outlawed in 1912. They also finished learning about the political economic systems of capitalism, socialism, and communism. Finally, students completed monthly current events presentations.
8th grade Humanities students completed assessments on their sentence structure unit that focused on clauses as well as compound and complex sentences. They also began their history book, A Different Mirror for Young People: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki. Particularly, he begins the book by defining what it means to be American and what being American “looks” like. His main idea and the students’ discussion centered around that fact that there is no American “look” since we are a blend of cultures and people from all over the globe, each with different experiences. To echo what it means to be American, we analyzed two perspectives through poetry: Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” and Langston Hughes’s “I, Too”. Students answered written questions then had a group discussion. Next, we moved on to the movement patterns of humans from the start of homo sapiens and theories of human migration over time. We also learned about Pre-Contact America and the people that spread across the Americas. Finally, students completed monthly current events presentations.
Have a great weekend!
