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.