Greetings Team Falcon Families:
Happy National Carrot Cake Day! With the Science and Engineering Fair less than a week away, we are full steam ahead. Here’s a look at your child’s experience last week on Team Falcon.
Science: This week students were introduced to the two final writing steps of their Science and Engineering Fair projects: the data analysis and conclusion sections. These sections communicate the results of the experiments and design tests, what the results mean, and why it matters. Students should have submitted their data analysis assignment via Google Classroom Step 12 by Friday, 2/3, and their conclusions via Step 13 on Google Classroom by the end of the weekend if it isn’t done already. When Step 13 is complete, students should be editing and revising Steps 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, and 13 because these have components that will be presented on the final poster. If there is time to do some work on this at home that is strongly encouraged.
After editing is complete, students will take their final versions and prepare them in a document for printing and assembling on the poster. Students will get their posters in class on Monday and can bring them home to work on assembly if they wish. Students have been working very hard! It is essential that they keep being persistent through this final week.
Your child should have brought home a letter with information about the fair and their time slot for presenting. You only need to return the bottom portion if you have a conflict that cannot be worked around. Please let me know if you didn’t receive the letter (gkrembs@mymtsd-vt.org).
Humanities: Students had a significant amount of instruction and time in humanities this week to complete the writing of the background information, data analyses, and conclusions for their science/engineering projects. We’ve used model texts to teach students the elements that need to be included in this type of informational writing. It’s been wonderful to see the students’ writing develop throughout the course of this project.
Additionally, students worked to understand some of the major events that led to the U.S. Civil War by creating a timeline of those events and analyzing their significance (this timeline was due on Thursday.) Next week, we will resume our work with the Civil War and will use the historical fiction novel Bull Run to more closely examine the many voices and perspectives of people whose lives were directly impacted by the Civil War. In preparation for Bull Run, we examined Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” as an example of applying close reading concepts to a different kind of text. We will also use primary and secondary sources related to the abolitionist, John Brown, to further examine how perspectives are shaped through text. This will lead us to an assessment in which the students will show us their ability to pull main ideas from both primary and secondary sources and examine bias within those sources to determine the author’s perspective.
Grade 6
Math: Students just wrapped up their ratio unit and took their assessments this week. We will be starting a new unit on dividing fractions and all operations with decimals.
We will also begin the Stock Market Game which is an opportunity for students to do a simulation of investing in stocks. For more information on this game please see attached link.
Grade 7
Math: Students are continuing to work on the signed number unit. Students have been practicing addition and subtraction of positive and negative numbers using horizontal and vertical number lines. Next week students will begin learning to multiply and divide signed numbers.
We will also begin the Stock Market Game which is an opportunity for students to do a simulation of investing in stocks. For more information on this game please see attached link.
Grade 8
Math: Students continued their exploration of the Pythagorean Theorem. Students practiced applying the Pythagorean Theorem to various types of problems. We will begin an exploration of similarity next week.
We will also begin the Stock Market Game which is an opportunity for students to do a simulation of investing in stocks. For more information on this game please see attached link.
Personalized Learning: Students viewed some sample personalized learning projects to better understand their end goal. They then continued to research their topics of interest and refined their possible inquiry questions based on those topics. Stay tuned for more information on personalized learning early next week.
Bright ideas: Team Falcon uses the term “Whole Body Listening” to explicitly teach our students what listening looks and feels like.
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