Weekly Team Email - 1/13/17

Greetings Team Falcon Families:

Here’s a look at your child’s experience this past week on Team Falcon.

Humanities: We launched our instruction around primary and secondary sources. Students had several opportunities to closely examine primary sources to better understand the topic/time period of focus. Students will now apply those skills to examining primary sources from the Civil War era. We also used some historic maps and some secondary sources to understand what life was like in the antebellum United States. Speaking of ante- bellum, students practiced identifying and using prefixes, suffixes, and root words to both construct new vocabulary and deconstruct unfamiliar words to make meaning. Additionally, students had the chance to engage with one another around their recent independent reads. Hopefully this has given your child a host of new book titles to explore. Thank you for continuing to support his/her nightly and weekly reading expectations.  

Science: Students have continued with their Science and Engineering Fair (SEF) projects this week with a goal of gathering all their data by next Friday, 1/20. On a case by case basis some students will need to be collecting data beyond that deadline and some students have already spoken with me about this. Students were given a preview of the next step of graphing and analyzing their data by looking at a graph, identifying key evidence from it, and reading a data analysis of the graph. Aside from the SEF, we are raising brook trout in the classroom from eggs to fry! Last week 100 eggs were delivered by Trout Unlimited and we are monitoring the water quality and egg development until we release them in mid-May. We will do some of this work in class and students can sign up to be in the Trout Club. Trout Club will meet some days after school to do additional testing and observations-- more information about Trout Club coming soon.

Grade 6

Math: Students are continuing their exploration of ratios.  Students have  been working on finding percent of a number; they have begun to explore problems like “20 % of 75 is what number?” This week students reviewed the process of  fraction addition and subtraction with mixed numbers. We will also be working on calculating discounts, sales prices and mark-ups.

You can encourage your child to use their ratio skills when shopping by asking them to calculate the unit rate if you are buying things in bulk and after next week you can also ask them to calculate discounts and sales cost.

Grade 7

Math:  Students have begun their unit on positive and negative numbers.  They are currently working on adding integers with like signs and unlike signs.  We are also reviewing fraction addition and subtraction with mixed numbers.

You can encourage your child to use these skills by engaging them in conversations around debt, profit, temperature, football, golf and anywhere else you might encounter positive and negative numbers.

Grade 8

Math:  Students have spent the week working on congruence and how you can use ideas of congruence to find missing angle measures when lines are parallel.  Students have also used what they  know about the measure of the sum of angles in straight lines/ straight angle

(180°) and triangles to find missing angle measures. We will soon begin to look at similarity and the Pythagorean Theorem.  Students will have a summative assessment on Wednesday.

Personalized Learning: We wrapped up our Transferable Skills presentations last Monday. Now that students have some introductory knowledge of the skills, we will launch our personalized learning projects.

Bright ideas:The visuals below are examples of how we are supporting students in regards to planning out their Science and Engineering Fair projects, along with everyday work in general.