It’s our last full Friday of the school year in Middle School. The students have been incredibly busy and are ready for a well-deserved summer break. As we wrap up the year, students have immersed themselves with projects in many of their subject areas.
8th Grade Expert Presentations
A highlight this week has been the 8th grade Expert Presentations. These were the culmination of 4+ months of inquiry, research, organization, writing, and creativity. They wrote 5-10 page papers and gave 10-20 minute presentations to support their theses. A standout for this project is the interviewing of experts in the field of their research to give first-hand information. This year’s group was especially impressive for taking leaps of faith and reaching out to fantastic individuals. They ranged from chiefs of police to psychologists, jet engineers, therapists, professors, trainers, coaches, marketers, and medical professionals.
It is easy to forget that these scholars are only 14 years old; their quality of work and work ethic are beyond their years. They should be proud of their accomplishment! Now it’s on to graduation!
Math
In math class this week all students are working on their end of the year projects. Each course has a different project to highlight their year’s learning.
The Pre-Transition class is creating a slideshow presentation to “Re-Teach” their favorite concepts learned this year. These students will re-teach these concepts to the class and have a corresponding lesson master worksheet to go along with their lesson.
The Transition class is building a Geometry City with linear equations for roads and 3D shapes for building. Students are learning the key concepts from chapter 11 and applying the formulas for surface area and volume to create nets for their Geomcity.
The Algebra class is using their learning from chapter 1-11 and creating a themed escape room that will be solved by their fellow peers. Students are asked to create a 5-room challenge that will utilize concepts such as slope, function notation, quadratics and polynomials.
The Geometry class is concluding their learning for chapter 9 and will soon begin to build real kites with the perfect dimensions and angles to demonstrate their understanding of congruency. We will then fly the kites in the field with the hopes of them being able to soar to new heights!
Science
In Science, both the 6th and 7th year students completed their design and construction of their rockets as part of their respective units, Formation of the Solar System and Newton’s Laws. Students were able to observe how the difference in design of each rocket resulted in a different flight path/pattern. Some rockets deployed a parachute while others had a simple streamer when descending. All flights were successful in the sense of their launch, but not so much in regards to recovery due to weather conditions (wind). 8th year Life Science students performed an activity that modeled the use and application of the Peterson technique of mark and recapture in order to estimate population density of a given species. Students conducted this practice using marked and unmarked beans, calculating those marked from unmarked to represent an estimation of their initial population. Such techniques are widely used by wildlife biologists to estimate an animal’s population size for a large area.
