Happy Friday, Everyone! If you plan on sending your child, please register for the FWM 2020 Middle School trip to Acadia National Park in Maine. Visit the school trip webpage at www.grandclassroom.com, click “Find My Trip / Register” and search “Fraser Woods Montessori School”. There are different payment options available.

Electives

Second trimester electives are running well, and it is a period that MS students and their teachers look forward to in their rotating schedule. It is fun to have teachers facilitating classes separate from their usual roles.

Ms. Sutherland is running Dance again for the second trimester. There are six dancers participating in this trimester’s elective. Students will learn a new dance style each week including Ballter, Jazz, Hip Hop, and Contemporary. Dancers will have the opportunity to perform a short student-created dance during our last class all together. Dancers will also get to lead a warm up activity of their choice to help everyone get stretched and ready for a fun class.

Mr. Brown is running a Strength Training elective this term. The goal of this elective is to introduce students to a variety of exercises, promoting fitness and well being. Mr. Brown has turned a portion of the school’s back area behind the gym into a separate gym facility. It currently includes medicine balls, wall balls, free weights, box jumps, tension bands, a curl bar, a bench press, and jump ropes. Students will be partnered up each class, rotating through different exercise stations at 5 minute intervals after proper warm ups and stretching have been achieved. If anyone would like to donate unwanted gym equipment, please reach out to Mr. Brown. It would be greatly appreciated.

Mrs. Lamb is running Playwriting, specifically working on this year’s Middle School play. It has been decided that a play surrounding a heist will be the theme this year. A rough plot line with some details about important characters have been created. Because this is completely student-led, any big decisions made to the play in the elective have to be presented and voted upon by the rest of the students in middle school. We had a vote this week for the play’s antagonist. This involved presenting the character development and how it would fit into the plot. This decision effects the entire plot, so it was important to have the students in the elective present their ideas. It’s looking like an interesting play!

Opportunity for MS students regarding the Snow Ball hosted by our Parents Association:

Students are welcome to attend the Snow Ball on Saturday, Feb. 1st with an accompanying adult (tickets can be purchased online or at door); however, if they would prefer to participate in the event by volunteering, there are plenty of jobs available, including set up the day before, working at the event, and clean up afterwards. The Sign Up Sheet is posted on the Humanities classroom door.

6th & 7th year Humanities classes continue to work on their research projects. They are looking at reliable sources, reviewing inquiry-based research, and organizing information. Students are learning/reviewing the importance of finding relevant information and keeping track of resources to later give credit in their papers through in-text citations. The 7th years also continue to plan their essay using the novel A Long Walk to Water to support the quotation from the main character, “Quitting leads to much happiness in life than perseverance and hope.” 8th year Humanities students will finish the novel, If I Ever Get Out of Here, over the weekend. We have covered many themes from friendship and loyalty to bullying and racism in this novel, and it helps students have insight into reservation life. All classes also completed another unit of vocabulary this week.

Happy New Year, Middle School families! Mr. Brown, Ms. Sutherland, and I would like to express our utmost gratitude for your generous class holiday gifts. We hope you were able to have a peaceful time with family and friends over the past few weeks.

This week, students began their new Community Service rotation for the second trimester. We considered students’ input before placing them, and I think we are off to a great few months.

In Humanities, we are on to new projects! The 6th and 7th years have embarked on their research projects surrounding the theme, A Moment in History, which they will present on the evening of February 6th. The historical events that students have selected are incredibly interesting. Here is a preview of a few topics: Hurricane Katrina, D-Day, and the ratification of the 19th amendment (Women’s voting rights). Students have already developed thesis statements and questions to guide their research, and they are ready to go! 8th years are just about done selecting their topics for their Expert Project. More about those topics to come. 8th years are also finishing up the novel, If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth, and should be complete in the next week. Finally, it was a current events week for all!

6th year Earth Science students are working on their Earthquake Safe Building project. Students have a limited budget of supplies to create a 4-story building that will be able to withstand excessive shaking. 7th year Physical Science students have begun their unit on Molecules. Currently, they are learning about the similarities and differences between covalent and ionic bonding. Following this concept, we will dive deeper into the electron configuration present for each atom. 8th year Life Science students are on the unit Meiosis. We have discussed the process of cell division and genetic variation. Students have been able to discuss this in depth following a video about Dolly, the sheep which was cloned in 1996.

It’s been a wintry week, but we have been busy!

We missed the 8th years most of this week, but we were excited to have many of them back on Friday to deliver our community’s food donation to the Women Involved in Newtown!

In Earth Science, 6th year students have been working on their Elaborate with STEM portion of the unit, Plate Tectonics. Questions students have been tasked in researching are, “What makes the soil near a volcano special?” and, “Why does California have so many earthquakes?”  Students did a great job presenting their research to the class. In Physical Science, 7th year students have been gathering data to determine the kinetic energy (KE) a marble has based on inclination. Students built ramps with various degrees of inclination and determined the velocity of the marble, leading to their discovery of its kinetic energy (KE).  KE = 1/2MV^2.

In Humanities, 6th year students completed drafts of their empathy writing and met with peers for review. This process helps students provide positive feedback and items to consider when giving their peers feedback. Then, they had writing conferences with Mrs. Lamb to finalize their free verse pieces. Finally, they completed a vocabulary section. In 7th year Humanities, students had writing conferences with Mrs. Lamb for their folktales and are now revising those pieces. They also began to learn about the Lost Boys of Sudan in preparation for reading A Long Walk to Water. They also watched a video about the cultural shift for some of the Lost Boys who came to the US and completed some reflective writing about this. It also lead to further discussion of the positive and negative aspects of what the experience might be like for immigrants and refugees coming into the U.S. from such different cultures. They also completed a section of vocabulary.

6th year Earth Science students finished creating their stop-motion video illustrating the rock cycle. Students worked in pairs, creating the formation process of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. 7th year Physical Science students finished creating their States of Matter stop-motion videos. Students were required to illustrate the different states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), how different molecules act within each state, and their physical properties. 8th year Life Science students are exploring cellular respiration. We have discussed how our bodies rely on the intake of glucose for our cells to process into energy (ATP).

It’s been a few weeks since we had a full week, so it felt great to be back in a rhythm and having forward momentum with our classes!

Science classes were busy this week. In Earth Science, the 6th years continued exploring how tectonic plates help shape and form our landscape. Within this unit, students are researching how tectonic plates play a role in the rock cycle (igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary). In Physical Science, 7th year students finished their unit, Characteristic Properties of Matter. The next unit will consist of states of matter. We will explore how substances are able to change their state while explaining the structure, properties, and interactions of matter. The 8th year Life Science class has also finished their unit, Structure of Life. The next unit is Cellular Respiration. By the end of the unit, students will be able to describe the importance of the reactants and products of cellular respiration, while differentiating respiration (breathing) from cellular respiration.

In Humanities class, 6th years finished their class novel, Out of My Mind. After an excellent wrap-up in discussion, they watched a mini-documentary about a New Zealand teen who lives with cerebral palsy, like the protagonist of the class novel. Also, students began their work on a nature-inspired, creative piece in which they write using imagery and descriptive language. The 7th year students finished their class novel, A Gift From Childhood, and have compiled all of the proverbs and metaphors in the book. After analyzing, they have selected one that will serve as the moral to a story they will compose in the style of a Mali tale. Finally, 8th years have continued their work rewriting history with their essay drafts. Because these essays have substantial research, they are just now carefully drafting and citing their information to support their original theses. All three classes had current events presentations on Monday as well as a vocabulary unit this week.

Math class was fun this week as they learned new concepts, practiced what they already know, and worked together with their peers to solve challenging equations. Pre-Transition students finished up Chapter 3 and reviewed important concepts for this week’s assessment. The class has talked about adding simple fractions, finding sums of angles measured in polygons, and measuring acute, obtuse and right angles in triangles. Get ready, Chapter 4 will start soon! Transition students started a new unit this week called Representing Sets of Numbers. They are learning about always, sometimes, and maybe statements, properties of real numbers, and manipulating Venn diagrams to understand the union and intersection of sets. Algebra students are excited to be learning about solving linear equations (ax+b=cx+d). They are also working through mathematical situations that always or never happen and identifying equivalent formulas. Algebra will finish this unit before Internship Week starts and there will not be any assignments due for the grade 8 class during the November 18-22 school week. Math joke: Why did the 2 fours skip lunch?……Because they already ate!