Science: Mr. Mahoney, [email protected]
Students will wrap up their study of chemistry in the unit Can I Make New Stuff From Old Stuff? We finalize student understanding of conservation of matter by conducting a number of chemical reactions and measuring their mass before and after. They recognize that no matter is lost during a chemical reaction and learn the language of chemical equations for the first time. Students also build models to represent these chemical reactions as well as conduct research into some of the elements on the Periodic Table of Elements. Students will also begin the mentoring process as we start the NetPals program at the end of November. In this program students are paired with a working professional in a local STEM industry business and have a mentor relationship as students learn what it takes to be a working professional in the real world. Students share the work they do and mentors share back the work they do at the various businesses. Should be a great experience for our students.
Social Studies: Ms. Motto, [email protected]
Students will be engaging in the amazing world of ancient West Africa! Throughout the unit students will be grappling with the essential question:
What do we believe and why? At the end of the unit, students will create a pitch project directed at the Epcot Center in Disney World. Students will be tasked with convincing Epcot to add another exhibit in their park about an African country of the student’s choice. Ask your student how their project is going. In particular, ask them what important information about their country are they including in the exhibit and why!
ELA: Ms. Gonzalez, [email protected] and Mr. Mitchell
In ELA, scholars are finishing up the first whole class novel of the year,
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. They have studied the
juxtaposition (
to put two things side by side, to compare) of the two main characters, Nya and Salva, by taking notes on their stories. Both points of view show how people can survive hardships in remarkable ways. Scholars will continue to think about the essential question:
What factors make survival possible? through participating in small group book clubs reading memoirs about other refugee and immigrant experiences.
Scholars will have class time to read their book club books, as well as reading homework.They will discuss what they read in their groups weekly and participate in a few whole class Socratic Circles around the topic of survival. To prepare for their discussions and longer
pieces of writing, scholars will collect evidence from the text to back up their thinking.
When your child gets their book club book, a great thing to do at home is to grab a copy of the same book from your local library or you can contact me to see if I have any extra copies you can borrow. Reading the same book will allow you to enter in an authentic conversation about it. Also, in the spirit of gratitude and “giving back” this month, ask your child about their “water footprint” and ways to conserve water. I also invite you to take the quiz yourself here:
https://www.watercalculator.org/
Math: Ms. Damiani, [email protected]
Students are beginning their third unit - Measuring Circles. In this unit, students learn to understand and use the term “circle” to mean the set of points that are equally distant from a point called the “center.” They gain an understanding of why the circumference of a circle is proportional to its diameter, with constant of proportionality. They see informal derivations of the fact that the area of a circle is equal to times the square of its radius. Students use the relationships of circumference, radius, diameter, and area of a circle to find lengths and areas, expressing these in terms of or using appropriate approximations of to express them numerically. Check out the topics yourself by visiting
https://im.openupresources.org/7/teachers/3/family_materials.html. Ask your student about where comes from and how they helped to find it with an activity involving some images of circular objects, string, and a ruler!