It finally reached brisk seasonal temperatures this week. We ate inside the later part of the week but still enjoyed both outdoor recess times daily.
In addition to our weekly schedule, we were able to attend a celebration of Diwali. Parents, students, and Mrs. Dutt led the presentation with a brief history, a book, a traditional dance, and delicious Indian food.
Here is what went on in classes this week:
Humanities
6th-grade Humanities continued to work on their descriptive writing unit and began a new class novel. They are finishing writing conferences for their leaf writing and composing their “Shark Attack!” piece. Their new class novel, Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper, has been an exciting read so far. It is written from the perspective of the protagonist, Melody, who lives with cerebral palsy and cannot speak. The classes focus on empathy and compassion in both their work and discussions. Students have also been identifying elements of descriptive writing in Draper’s novel, which is plentiful in the pages.
7th-grade Humanities classes completed the novel A Long Walk to Water this week. With it, the class watched a TedTalk given by the novel’s protagonist, Salva Dut. He talks about Water for South Sudan, the nonprofit he began in the US to build well systems for villages in South Sudan. The class also looked at the personal experiences of the Lost Boys from Sudan coming to the United States. This gave them a unique perspective of what it is like to come to the United States and experience a culture that is completely different from the one they know.
8th grade continues to read their class novel, If I Ever Get Out of Here, and relate what they read about life and challenges on a reservation to the experiences of Native Americans in the 1800s. This week, they read about the legislation passed, treaties signed, and court cases that were ignored concerning the relocation and movement of tribal nations, particularly the Cherokee. Next week, they will study the Flight of the Nez Perce in 1877.
Math
Pre-Transition: This was an exciting week for pre-transition! Students continued their learning in Chapter 3. They learned how to name and measure angles by using protractors, applied the properties of angle addition, and explored how to add fractions and mixed numbers. The class will wrap up Chapter 3 next week with their unit test on Friday, November 22nd.
Transition: This week, the class continued exploring Chapter 3 concepts by practicing rounding numbers up, down, or to the nearest value of a fraction or decimal place, ordering and comparing decimals and fractions by converting and applying the Substitution Principle. They will conclude Chapter 3 next week with their unit test on Friday, November 22nd.
Algebra: This week, Algebra dove into Chapter 4, titled “More Linear Equations and Inequalities.” They started off by learning to solve percent problems, continued with graphing horizontal and vertical lines, and ended the week by solving and checking compound inequalities of the form ax + b < cx + d. The class will finish Chapter 4 next week with their unit test on Friday, November 22nd.
Geometry: This week, Geometry launched their learning of Chapter 4, titled “Congruence Transformations.” They began by drawing figures and applying the definition of a reflection image. The class continued their week by finding coordinates of reflection and translation images of points over the coordinate axes. To end the week, students learned how to compose reflections over both parallel and intersecting lines. They will wrap up Chapter 4 next week with their unit test on Friday, November 22nd.
Science
6th grade:
This week students worked diligently on their final graphing assessment. Students worked at their own pace and level within the topic of graphing, and each and every student worked to their full potential. Ms. Pickard was really proud of this entire group this week, but would be remiss if she did not acknowledge those students who chose to challenge themselves by trying high school level work graphing multiple data and variables on the same graph. It was great to see those students work together and problem-solve as a team to push through this difficult work.
7th grade:
Students worked to design and create their own labs this week to measure solubility vs temperature. This week, students worked in partner lab groups to develop a hypothesis for the problem: does temperature influence solubility? Once a hypothesis was written, students wrote procedures for their own investigations, also identifying independent and dependent variables and controls. Students then conducted their experiments, compiled data, analyzed their data, and wrote conclusions. Ms. Pickard was very impressed by how seriously students took their work this week.
8th grade:
This week began with a review of cell structure and function. Once it was clear the group had mastered this topic, they moved on to talking about characteristics of life. Students started with a walk around lab in which they looked at six specimen (a flower, plant, egg, water, rock, and dirt) to see if these specimen carried out each characteristic of life needed to be considered living. (That was a fun debate!) The class ended the week reviewing all they had learned.
