Important Dates:
July 14: Activity day
5th Ropes
course BOCES Rush Campus | Ropes Photos
6th – 8th
Indoor climbing at Rock Ventures | Rock
Photos
Class Summaries: Week 2
| Class
Photos
5th Library: Candice
Lucas, Stacey Ehrig
Middle school is a friendly place.
We learned how to be a good friend, where to go if we need a
friend or if we are having trouble with a friend.
We found out what friendship meant by using the thesaurus,
dictionary and synonym dictionary.
We even know where the word "friendship" came from! (We
used an etymological dictionary!!)
We then brainstormed important qualities of friends.
Organizing our list was easy and fun on Mrs. Ehrig's chart.
We have friends in our community too.
We talked about diversity. We
read The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida and illustrated by Joanna Yardley. It's about a Japanese-American girl named Emi during World
War II. If you liked this
book, try:
Have you ever heard of a web quest?
We're doing one called "What
will I be when I get big?"
We picked three heroes and we are doing research about them.
We are learning how to plan a large project and how to budget our
time. The library has
computers, books and magazines to help us find our heroes.
When we are finished we will have a poster to show off.
5th English: Judy
Adair, Stephanie Perlet
When you mix stories about black widow spiders and
hundreds of brown, wriggling snakes with fifth graders, you get a high
level of interest! After
the students read these “scary” stories, they completed story maps
that highlighted the basic story elements of character, setting, and
plot. In small groups, the
students compared and contrasted these stories using a Venn Diagram.
The Venn Diagram served as the prewriting stage in the writing
process. The second stage
of the writing process, drafting a four-paragraph essay, began after
discussing the “cheeseburger” format of essay construction.
Next week the students will continue to draft, revise, edit, and
publish their essays dealing with the similarities and differences in
the two stories read in class. Ask
your children about the snakes and the spiders, and please encourage
them to read, read, read!!!
5th Learning Skills:
Andy Morrow, Jennifer Soloman
Whew! The
time is flying by and we continue to be impressed by the work and
dedication of this group! Our mighty band of students started this week by finishing up
the map of the school and reviewing the personal responsibilities of a 6th
grader. We then worked with
the student handbook to learn how to use its resources.
To finish up the week, we spent time reviewing the purpose of the
student planner and how it ties to our goal of being organized for the
school year. We then
tackled a sample planner and practiced filling in a variety of
assignments. Finally, we reflected on this week’s work by completing a
learning log. Next Week: We
become test taking “STARS”!
5th Math: Raina
Debboli, Heather Kitchen
Each morning students
are given a problem of the day to solve. They then present the different
strategies that they use to solve it.
We began this week by discussing how fractions that look
different can actually be equal, called equivalent fractions. The
students were each given fractions and had to find the student that had
an equivalent fraction. Following this activity, they played a game of
fraction bingo. The next skill we worked on was how to compare
fractions. We worked on strategies to find the smallest common
denominator and then played a game. The next day the students were each
given a different fraction and made a human number line. Later, they had
to place numbers on their own individual number lines. The students
finished the week by rotating through game stations to practice their
fraction skills. We were very impressed with the student’s enthusiasm
and teamwork this week.
6 – 8 Upper School
English: Pamina Abkowitz, Jill
Wahl
Monday morning we got in gear by sharing the story
chains from last week. After that creative jolt, students identified
parts of speech in a passage about classy cartoon character Lisa
Simpson. These skills will continue to be reinforced throughout our
future classes this summer.
A hands-on origami activity awakened the listening
capacities of our students. They had to follow oral directions in order to complete the
task. Following this, we read an article on the benefits and risks of
exercise to evaluate listening comprehension skills and note taking. The
process mirrored the 8th grade English/ Language Arts
assessment.
Our intern, Crystal introduced our song review
writing assignment with a little meringue number by Ricky Martin. She
demonstrated the proper way to follow written directions and pointed out
how she developed her model paragraph to include details and completely
answer the questions. The class helped her revise and edit her draft.
They then started their own reviews. Ask your child which song they
chose to write about and why. Next
week we will continue this project and prepare the opinion pieces to be
proudly published on the website.
Learning Skills: MaryLynn
Gleason, Dave Providence, Brett Provenzano
The second week of study skills has focused on
activities to reinforce the skills we have been learning about
conceptually. On Tuesday, the 6th, 7th, and 8th
grades prepared skits for our mutual enjoyment. We worked on
understanding the importance of organization and effort and attention.
Everyone agreed that these three attributes create success. We
discovered that all three need to be present for success to happen. Here
was the task: each group had two of the three qualities that lead to
success while one was missing. The students had to act like they were in
a classroom and they had to demonstrate, for example, good effort and
attention but no organization. The
skits were hilarious! Each of the grade levels had Academy Award winning
performances. Ask Corey about his portrayal of lack of attention. Or,
Ask Phil and Andrew about their take on no organization!
Monica and Rebecca gave outstanding performances as “The
Teacher”.
By Wednesday the 7th and 8th
grades experienced some problem solving activities. Can a human knot be
untangled? Ask any of the 7th or 8th graders and
they will tell you it takes a lot of communication and cooperation. But,
the problem can be solved! What
was the moral of the story? Ross told us that “there is no ‘I’ in
the word team! Ask the 6th
graders about brain theory and they can tell you what it takes for
information to get into long-term memory. HINT:
Attention and Practice (elaboration, rehearsal) really count! Also, ask them how long it takes for information to be
forgotten and they can tell you.
By Thursday we had switched gears to context clues
in reading. We discovered how efficiently we could use bold letters,
titles, italicized words, pictures, graphs and punctuation to make
predictions about a given text. Through a variety of exercises we came
to the conclusion that context clues should be an essential strategy for
next year.
Next week we will continue context clues and we
will start to unravel the enigma of the document-based question. Several
documents are analyzed and they are the basis for a response in essay
form. These DBQ’s need to be rehearsed because they are an integral
piece of the new State Standards. Your child will learn basic strategies
evaluate and complete these activities.
Math: Kathy Curtis, Jeremy
Duntley, Kim Mrva
Link to: Sketchpad
samples
Math 6: This week 6th graders have been
exploring properties of triangles using the Geometer’s Sketchpad
software. The students constructed an equilateral triangle, measured all
angles and sides, and explained what connections exist between them.
Further exploration enabled them to discover the relationship
that exists between the sides and angles in other types of triangles.
In addition, students were able to classify triangles according
to the lengths of their sides and the measure of their angles.
Math 7 and Math 8: This week 7th and 8th
graders studied transformations in the coordinate plane.
Students practiced reflecting triangles and quadrilaterals over
both the x and y-axes using graph paper and derived rules based on their
end products. Students then tested their conjectures by performing the
reflections using Geometer’s Sketchpad. The cumulative project allowed
students to create their own figure, reflect it in both axes, and
explain how the coordinates changed. This software has allowed students
to reinforce several fundamental principles in geometry in a hands-on
manner
Technology: Brian
Holliday, Terry VanDerLinden
The
6th grade students are completing their water
rockets. The students have learned the principles of aerodynamics,
the effect of gravity and Newton’s laws of motion as they pertain to
the water rockets. Students will
see the results of these principles applied during the launch of their
water rockets.
The
7th grade students completed their model
rockets. Through making model rockets students apply the principles
of aerodynamics, Newton’s laws of motion and skills in measuring.
Students will see the results of these principles applied during
the launch of their model rockets. Student
will also be able to calculate the height of the rocket using the
Pythagorean theorem.
The
8th grade students are putting the finishing touches on their
own personal web page. These personal pages will be on the Summer Prep
2000 web page soon. The 8th
grade students have also been assigned to the various subjects and
activities that the Summer Prep program covers.
They will be using their English skill to report every week like
the teachers. The 8th
graders will interview other students in the various grades that are
represented in the Summer Prep program. Views
on what’s going on in the program and many pictures of activities will
be part of the students’ web page content.
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