Team Update: Week of January 28th

Team Update: 

Grades close Wednesday, January 31st!  Progress reports will go home the following week.

Class Updates:

Social Studies: Students researched Roman inventions this past week and ultimately continued their journey learning how Ancient Rome has influenced our world today. This week we will start our in-class research project. This is a 100% student centered project. Students will choose what standards they want to be graded on, pick a topic, create a project that aligns to the standards that they've selected, and finally on Friday they will assess their project and justify why they graded themselves the way that they did. Have a great weekend!

Science:  On Friday we had an assessment, completing our investigations around the question:  How does matter and energy move through an ecosystem?  We figured out that the trout in Lake Michigan do have enough food but there is an organism called the sea lamprey that we have a lot of questions about.  Click HERE to see more about what we are doing in class.  Next week we will start answering our questions about the sea lamprey.

Literacy:  We finally had the opportunity to watch The Children's March, a documentary heralding the thousands of children who became the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Cotton Balls - don't forget your essays!  Friday was the first benchmark date for the Omnictionary.  The plan is to present a few slides from each show to offer constructive comments for each student.  We've also begun Latin Unit 8!  

English:  This week in English class students began to work on their argument essays. The students were working diligently on brainstorming their evidence and fine-tuning their thesis statements. January independent reading projects were due this week, and the project for February will be introduced next week. Students will continue to outline and plan their essays next week, and towards the end of the week the students will begin to write their essays.

Math: The end of the month is fast approaching!  January's Go Figure is due Wednesday, January 31st. Make sure to explain and show your work to get the maximum amount of points. This week we will continue to work on two-step equations, be ready there will be a test on solving equations next week!  

Team Update: Week of January 9, 2018

Team Update: 

Our team will administer the iReady test in both Reading and Mathematics next week, Thursday and Friday.  We will not assign any homework on those days, and encourage you to have your students turn their phones off and get to bed early!  Well rested students perform much better on these computerized tests! We want so much for each one of them to show growth on both tests, as they've worked hard this year.  We appreciate your help!

Class Updates:

Social Studies: We officially wrapped up the Roman Republic this week and started to research the Roman Empire on Friday. Ask your child who claimed to have turned the city of Rome from being built with bricks to being built with marble! Have a great weekend!

Science: What happened to the trout in Lake Michigan?  Students continue to investigate our anchoring phenomenon.  Click HERE to see more about what we are doing in class.  This week we figured out what the trout eats and how food webs work.

Literacy:  Students are settling in to their new groups quite well, and we're really proud of them! We have been working around our snow days, so completing the seventh unit of Latin roots has been a bit of a challenge, but the kids were very logical in wanting to keep the test date at Wednesday, January 17th!  We've also begun our unit on Tolerance.  They entertained one another by listing the the things they can't tolerate!  Open mouth chewing was at the top of the list!  We'll continue with this unit after iReady testing next week, by examining some primary source materials chronicling intolerance in history.  There are some fantastic, short documentaries for kids, and some powerful print articles.    

English:  This week in English we wrapped up our unit on A Christmas Carol. We watched the film version of this classic tale and we discussed our final conclusions about the meaning of this story. We spent some time checking in on the status of our January independent projects, and on Thursday the students took a summative quiz on A Christmas Carol. We ended the week by beginning our unit on persuasive writing. Next week we will continue with our notes on persuasive writing and engage in some fun activities like speed debating to enhance our persuasive skills. Students should be working diligently on their independent reading projects. Two weeks may seem like a long time, but the time will zip by quicker than we think!

Math: Friday we quizzed on expressions, student had a combine like terms and use the distributive property.  Make sure you understand these two skills, as we are going to continue using these skills to solve equations.  Next week we will be starting our solving equations unit, we finally will be finding the value of a variable.