Saturday, February 17, 2018

Weekly Update (Week of 2/12)

Greetings Team Equinox Families:
  • Final Reminder: If you have a skill or trade you’d like to talk about to our PLP groups, we’d like to host a couple of career panels as students work to explore their possible careers as part of their Personalized Learning Plan. If you are interested, drop an email to jmoore@mymtsd-vt.org.

Here’s what your child has been up to this week on Team Equinox~


Science:
Students have been working on their self-assessment from the science fair- this is homework for students who still need to work on it. The assignment can be found on Google Classroom and handed in as such.   We have started our unit on healthy streams and watersheds! Students will soon start a project engineering solutions for Lake Champlain’s cyanobacteria problem.

Humanities:
In Social Studies, students began a mini unit on American presidents.  Each student selected a president and created a Facebook profile for their president to learn about their background.  Then, students created a comic strip describing one event of their president’s term.  We also continued working on our geography skills with our weekly Map Quiz.  

Homework - Students should have completed their Presidential Profile and their Presidential Comic Strip.  For directions, please refer to Google Classroom.  Check for any missing work in PowerSchool.

In ELA, we have been working on a grammar and writing intensive unit. Students learned about formatting dialogue, and then put those skills to use in our weekly Caught Ya. We also participated in Vermont Writes Day on the 15th, where students from all across the state were encouraged to write for seven minutes and share their writing anonymously on the Vermont Writes website (http://vermontwritesday.org/). Many students took up this challenge and posted their writing. We ended the week by creating a study guide for the elements of a narrative. This can be used to prepare students for their on-demand assessment, to be given after the break.

Homework: Independent reading for 30 minutes each night (for 5 of 7 days per week).



Grade 7
Math:
Students have continued to explore positive and negative numbers. Students practiced adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing positive and negative whole numbers, fractions and decimals this week. They also worked on these topics through word problems.  Students took their quiz on Friday.

Next week math and science will be joining forces to do a design challenge that will involve teamwork and an application of three dimensional geometry involving surface area and volume.

If students would like additional practice on the current topic they have assignments in Tenmarks.  Students should already have their username and password.  Students also have assignments in Khan Academy.

Grade 8
Math:
Students continued to explore systems of equations. They spent their time this week finding solutions to systems algebraically using the elimination method and reviewing for their summative assessment.  The assessment has been moved to Monday due to interruptions in our schedule this week. The assessment will include writing equations from points and graphs, solving equations, solving systems of equations and deciding if a system has one solution, no solution or infinite solutions.

Students could prepare for their assessment by practicing on Khan Academy.  Khan Academy has organized materials so that it connects to the topics in  Eureka Math which is the program the middle school is using.  They can find a direct link on the Math Google Classroom page.

For more information and parent tips for the current topic of systems of equations click on the link.

Next week math and science will be joining forces to do a design challenge that will involve teamwork and an application of three dimensional geometry involving surface area and volume.

Friday, February 9, 2018

Weekly Update - 2/9

We send this update out via email, but we'll post it here for you as well.

Greetings Team Equinox Families:
  • Our Science Fair was a success! Thank you all for attending!
  • Reminder: If you have a skill or trade you’d like to talk about to our PLP groups, we’d like to host a couple of career panels as students work to explore their possible careers as part of their Personalized Learning Plan. If you are interested, drop an email to jmoore@mymtsd-vt.org.

Here’s what your child has been up to this week on Team Equinox~


Science:
Thank you all for participating in Milton’s Fifth Annual Science Fair! The event was a success! Over 80 Equinox students (and 400 MMS students) exemplified their ability to hypothesize, observe, and collect data over the course of two months. Thank you all for your support!
We will start next week by reflecting on our science fair projects and experience. Then, we will continue our stream study. Thanks to Trout in the Classroom we are raising 97 Brook Trout from eggs to release!  Students will study the healthfulness of a trout’s stream and how our aquarium replicates that.  

Humanities:
In Social Studies, students completed their Day of the Pelican Project, wrapping up the unit on immigration.  We continued working on our geography skills with our weekly Map Quiz.  We will soon begin a mini unit on American presidents to learn about the leaders of our country throughout history; this mini unit will take up the last couple of weeks until February break.

Homework - The Day of the Pelican Project was due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, February 6th, but some projects still have not been turned in.  Directions can be accessed on Google Classroom.

In ELA, we finished our immigration narratives, celebrating our writing skills (with illustrations of similes, metaphors, and onomatopoeia). I informed students that I will only be assessing narratives that are turned in on Google Classroom. We then shifted to a mini-unit to delve deeper into grammar and writing. We launched our Caught Ya program (learning grammar by identifying and fixing errors in an ongoing story). We also began our spelling program, where students are in charge of learning a list of spelling words centered around a common spelling hurdle. Regular assessments will track progress.

Homework: Independent reading for 30 minutes each night (for 5 of 7 days per week).



Grade 7 Math:
Students have continued to explore positive and negative numbers. Students practiced adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing positive and negative whole numbers, fractions and decimals this week.  Students will continue to practice this next week and in addition students will learn how to change fractions to decimals using long division.  Students will have quiz on this at the end of next week.

Please see the attached integer parent tips for more information on what your child is and will be learning.

If students would like additional practice on the current topic they have assignments in Tenmarks.  Students should already have their username and password.  Students also have assignments in Khan Academy.

Grade 8 Math:
Students have continued to explore systems of equations. They spent their time this week finding solutions to systems algebraically using the elimination method.  Next week students will wrap up their algebra unit and take a summative assessment on writing equations from points and graphs, solving equations, solving systems of equations and deciding if a system has one solution, no solution or infinite solutions.

In addition to the review we will be doing in class, students could prepare for their assessment by practicing on either Tenmarks or Khan Academy.  Khan Academy has organized materials so that it connects to the topics in  Eureka Math which is the program the middle school is using.  
Students could take the quizzes in Khan Academy and practice those items that they find challenging.

For more information and parent tips for the current topic of systems of equations click on the link.