Week of March 14, 2016

Purple Curriculum Updates

Pre-Algebra I with Bina:

On Monday, we began chapter 10 and completed the unit on Friday. Chapter 10 was only five lessons long. Each student was given a study packet on Friday. We will review together on Monday and take the chapter 10 test on Tuesday, March 22^nd. After the test we will begin chapter 11 on integers, coordinate planes, and graphing.

Pre-Algebra II with Jared:

In Pre-Algebra II, we began the week with a celebration of Pi Day. Students competed amongst themselves in an attempt to find the value of pi to the greatest accuracy. They measured all sorts of circles (some as big as hola-hoops), and students got as close as 3.135 for the ratio between the circumference and diameter. We then ate pie. Students then continued exploring number sequences and patterns, before discussing functions. On Friday we had our chapter quiz, and introduced graphing on the coordinate plane with a dot-to-dot puzzle.

Pre-Algebra III with Emily:

We began the week after spring break with Pi Day activities, including reading a Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi, drawing two circles of different sizes and measuring each circumference and diameter and then dividing to see how close everyone could get to the ratio that is pi, and we ate home-made, gluten free cherry pie (thanks, Jared!). Then we started Chapter 10: Using Graphs to Analyze Data. We are skipping geometry chapters eight and nine for now. Students made frequency tables, line plots, stem-and-leaf plots, and box-and-whisker plots. Students used intervals to display data and read graphs critically.  

Algebra I with Molly:

We returned from Spring Break with a celebration of Pi Day (yes, we ate pie!). Students turned in their pie recipes complete with equations for the ingredient amounts. We learned about exponential functions. We applied these to exponential growth and decay equations. We will review the chapter on Monday and take a test on Tuesday.

Geometry with Holly:

We started off our return from Sprint Break by celebrating Pi Day on Monday.  Our activities included an exploration of many things we could do with a paper circle, a game of Mono-PI-ly, where the students reviewed many aspects and uses of pi, and the always favorite pie eating.  On Tuesday we began Chapter 10 and the study Area.  So far we have discussed how to develop the area of parallelograms, triangles, trapezoids, kites, rhombuses, and regular polygons.  We finished the week by discussing the areas and perimeters of similar figures.

Language Arts with Jared:

This week students worked on reviewing the vocabulary words from their past three quizzes, and whittled down the 60 words into a small stack that they need to review for next week's Vocabulary test. Students also took their individualized spelling quiz, focusing on words that they had misspelled in their writing over the past few months. We're also reaching the end of our grammar unit on verbs, and will begin review for Tuesday's grammar test. In our literature unit, we took advantage of the nice weather and read from our novels out loud in the sun outside.

World Studies with Emily:

All classes watched a final movie on ancient Greece and completed a packet of activities including video questions, reading vocabulary and doing a cross word puzzle, studying a timeline and answering questions, completing true or false statements, and reading interesting facts about ancient Greece. 7th and 8th graders read a couple-page handout about Athenian democracy and compared it with the US democracy. Students did some follow-up exercises – multiple choice, flow charts and Venn diagrams. 6th graders watched two performances – a Greek myth and Elise and Mason's NHD project. Everyone discussed annotated bibliographies and process papers as we looked at examples online. Students ended the week by reading about Alexander the Great, writing responses in their journals, and debating whether he was a hero or a villain in teams of two against two.

Life Science with Molly:

This week we began observing and candling our fertile eggs in the incubator. Students learned about chicken anatomy and how an egg is formed in the chicken every 24 hours. We’ve had our last two Luna moth cocoons hatch out and can see that we have one male and one female by comparing their antennae. Hopefully, we will have fertile eggs! This week we began studying heredity with a focus on Mendel’s pea plants.

Spanish with Olga & Corinne:

Morning Spanish
We reviewed the chapter we were working on before Spring Break. We worked with stem changing verbs and the vocabulary to talk about clothes and going shopping.

Spanish B

We reviewed the chapter we were working on before Spring break.  We reviewed the past tense of all regular verbs and the irregular verb "ir" (to go).  We had  test on Friday on these forms and the vocabulary.  We also watched another episode of the miniseries "¿Eres Tú, María?" and the students have started making some interesting guesses about the ending.

Spanish C

We continue working with two past tenses (preterite and imperfect) and when to use each.  I reminded the students to be patient when learning these forms because they can be challenging.  We spent the week reviewing them.  We also learned vocabulary to talk about natural disasters (hurricanes, tornados, storms, etc).  We will have a unit test next Wednesday.

Spanish D/D+

We took a step back to review the preterite tense, which we had not seen for a while. We revisited regular and irregular verbs. I am know confident that the students have a good grasp of that tense.  Then we went back to the past subjunctive.  We will have a quiz on these forms next Wednesday. We finished the week by listening to music.

Art with Patti:

This week we are beginning class with an art warm up, where students are creating layers for an expressive painting. They did a responsive color background and a translucent glaze so far. They are also continuing to work on their current projects. Most of them are working on either artist inspired project, and some have started an art project responding to the element of art “space”.

Computer Lab with Holly:

This week on Monday/Tuesday, the students submitted their final guesses for the Landmark Game, and on Friday found out the results.  All three of our teams placed in the top five schools for their age group.  Congratulations to all! They worked hard researching clues to try and determine  all of the landmarks.  On Thursday/Friday the students learned how to create and use styles in MS Word, and used these styles to begin creating documents to describe their favorite landmarks from the Game.

Life Skills / Sex Ed with Molly:

This week students browsed magazines looking for ads in magazines critically. They were asked to find ads that seemed to be trying to sell something more than their product. They cut out these ads and tried to explain what the implied or promised benefits of purchasing the product were. These posters can be found in the science room. We will discuss these ads this week and write reflections. Next time, we will expand out media influence to popular music before moving on to pornography in print and on the internet, specifically on apps like Instagram. 

Thank you from, The Purple Team