Math (April 19-23)

These are the missing assignments from the week after SBA's that I apparently forgot to post.
Due Monday Ace 4 (4-8, 17-21, 34)
Due Tuesday Ace 4 (10-16 even, 22,24,27,28,33-37 odd)
Due Wednesday Ace 5 (2-5, 13)

Math (April 26)

I am sorry that I have been a little behind on the connect page, but the SBA's made the homework that I assigned a bit different than planned.
Due
Monday Ace 5 (6,11,14)
Tuesday Ace 5 (1,7-10, 12)
Wednesday (Soon to come)

Science

We have started our Physics unit. We will be spending a lot of time outside for the next few weeks conducting experiments. We started looking at mass on Monday. Mass is measured with a scale, and the units are kilograms, which is a weight, but mass is not the same thing as weight. Your weight on the moon would be less than on earth, but your mass does not change. So what is mass? Ask your students what they are learning in the next few weeks. It should be fun.

Math (April 12-16)

Monday Ace 4 (1-3, 26, 29, 32)
SBAs are on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so we will pick up here the following week.

Math (April 5-9)

Due Monday
ACE 3 (21-24, 33, 39, 40)
I am setting some time aside on Tuesday and Wednesday to go over the practice SBA that the students took last Thursday. I am not sure how long this will take, but I anticipate that it will take more than one day. If not, I will add the homework for Wednesday to the blog when we get there.

Math for Monday March 29

Ace 2 (8, 9, 11, 12, 14-26 even, 32, 34)
Ace 3 (11-14, 34)

Tree of Life

I have been working on making the poster boards templates for the Tree-of-Life poster boards. I have drawn lines for the students to write their text on. They should write in pencil first, then follow with a thin tip permanent marker. I bought some for the classroom, and they are more than welcome to trace their writing here. I was initially going to cut the poster to a smaller size, but some students were concerned that they would not have enough room, so I am giving the students the ability to trim their poster if they need to, or to leave it in its original size.

I have also given the students the opportunity to take paper home for working on their torn paper art. There is a template for the art as well, and it is cut to the correct size. They can work on these over break if that will help them to feel more prepared. The art that I have seen so far is beautiful, and is giving a good idea of the habitats where the animals live. The students should be making two pictures for each animal (8 background in total).

I also included a more detailed checklist for what information I expect to find in the divergent trait portion of the project.

Tree of Life

I thought it might be helpful for parents and students to see what the final outcome should look like. Because they are researching two different sets of animals, they will be making two posters, both with the same elements.

I will be providing templates for this project made out of poster board. I have templates for the torn paper art in the classroom as well. Hopefully this will make the assembly easy for all.






This is where the information about the relationship between your animals will be.









There will also be a picture of the animal, but I thought it was nice to see examples of the torn paper art that they will be making.







The pink highlighted areas are new vocabulary that the students may encounter in their research. This element really enhances what they have learned, and allows the audience to share in the learning. For instance in this case I defined the color causing cells in the octopus called chromatophores.




Here is a link to the checklist of requirements for the project.

Science

Parents/Guardians/Family,

This semester your students have been learning about comparative anatomy. They have examined the similarities and differences between different organisms. They have done this by examining skulls, skeletons, hunting and foraging techniques, heredity, and DNA. Now it is time for them to do their own study, comparing organisms of their choice. They have all chosen animals to compare, four in all. One pair has a common ancestor more than 500 million years ago (MYA) and the other has a more recent common ancestor (100-200MYA).

So far, over the last two weeks, your students have chosen their animals, found the most recent common ancestor for each pair, and are now researching the traits that make their animals what they are. These traits should be specific, for example I could say that a bald eagle has feathers, and that is true. But for this project I would want to say that a bald eagle has long feathers for soaring. I would also want to describe the color of the feathers. I would also add that in the juvenile stage, their feathers are a mottled brown, mixed with gold. These are the specific details that will make their presentations really interesting for the audience, and for the researcher.

I was hoping that the presentation of this project would happen before spring break, but it will now be happening the week after. Your students are showing such dedication to the project, and paying close detail to all that they are learning (and are also so excited to tell each other each detail about the organism that they are studying) that the research is taking more time than I thought. Your students are learning about science, and I am learning about how to give the necessary time for a well-studied project. This project will be finished the week after spring break, and I would like to invite all of you to attend the Tree-of-Life. I have to work out the scheduling with Jon. Please be prepared to help encourage your student to work on their research and rough drafts over this weekend, and over break.

Thank you for your support and encouragement,
Renee

Math (March 15-19)

This week we started a new unit: Accentuate the Negative. Your students will be working with both positive and negative numbers. They will use models that help them examine addition, subtraction, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers.

Due Monday
Ace 1 pg. 12-16 (1-4, 9-17)

Due Tuesday
Ace 1 pg. 12-16 (8, 18-20, 22, 23, 25, 26)

Due Wednesday
Ace 2 pg. 26-32 (1-7, 29)

Math (Mar 1-Mar5)

Due Monday March 1
Old Book Pg. 59-63
(1,2,13 and 14)
I am also going to be assigning some problems from CORE for Tuesday and Wednesday, but I am in the process of going through it to see what we need to work on, or review most.

Due Tuesday March 2
Old Book Pg. 59-62
(5,7, and 8)

Due Wednesday
Old Book Pg. 59-63
(9 and 11)

Math (Feb 22-Feb 26)

Because I want your students to be able to be in some control of their schedule, and I know that their lives are busy, I am going to give out the homework for the week on Monday. This is not set in stone, but is a good idea of what we are going to be looking at in class. This way, even if they are having problems with parts of the work, they can come ready for class with questions, and can do homework on the nights that work for them. Hopefully this is helpful to parents and students alike.

Due Monday Feb 22
New Book pg. 55-61 (3-13, 23-25)
pg. 54 (complete investigation 4.3, part C and D)

Due Tuesday Feb 23
Old Book pg. 20-24 (1-8 and 17-22)

Due Wednesday Feb 24
Old Book pg. 59-63 (3 and 10)
CORE packet pg. 10-15

Science

We started off this comparative anatomy unit by examining the physical features of different animals. We are now getting a chance to compare animals in a new way. This is by examining their embryonic development, and coming up this week, comparing them on a molecular level. This will allow me to include some basics of chemistry into this unit, and will give me a chance to make connections back to the unit on cells. Wow! There is so much we can learn by looking at the differences between organisms, but even more by comparing their similarities.

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling- It has been four weeks, and we are about ready to start taking and loading photos into the iMovie program. It is amazing how much preliminary work it takes to create a stop action animation movie. Your students have benen working hard to get just the right pictures to represent the stories and poems that they chose to animate. We created a tentative schedule for finishing the project, and it is time to buckle down. I would appreciate any help you can give your students in getting pictures ready at home if possible.

Book Groups

Book Groups- I am excited to have started working with the 6/7 class book groups. We are starting a project where the students get to read a book, on their own, of their choice. The catch is that it must be one that fewer than two others in class have read. They are doing well choosing books that fit this criterion. We will continue meeting together twice a week to discuss different writing styles used by the various authors, and discuss qualities that make a story interesting.
This project will add new books to the student’s possible book group selection in the future, and peak interest in different types of books than there may have been before. I am making efforts to find copies of the books that were chosen. I am grateful for any efforts to help with this process.

Students who were only a couple of weeks shy of finishing their books in their group will be finishing them as usual, then starting the project. This will stagger them and make presentations easier.

7th grade Math

This last week has been a learning process for me. One thing that I learned is that it is really easy to leave class without having written down the assignment. I thought that a blog might be a good tool to make it easier for your students (and you) to keep track of the work we do in class. I will be careful not to mention any names or personal information. This tool is just to keep you aware of what the work is that we do in class. I am going to be making posts for science, book groups, and digital storytelling as well. I will also start to add some to the Newsletter to make sure that parents and students are all aware of what is going on in class.

This week's homework
Due today (Tuesday 2/16)
New book pg. 42-46 (11,27-31, 33)
pg. 55-58 (1,2,15-17)

Due Wednesday 2/17
New book
Pg. 55-58 (3-5, 25, 26 and CORE packet pg. 5-9)

Thank you for all of your support, and feel free to e-mail or call if that is a better way of communicating with me.
Renee
(Please call the school if you need my number or e-mail address)