Friday, March 31, 2017

Fusion Communication: March 31

Hi all,
As Mr. Keblin says, “Winter still has it’s claws in us - and is not letting go!” Other than a happy April Fools, Fusion keeps on keeping on.

8th Grade Only: Career Unit
Career unit is in full swing - about 100% of 8th grade students have completed their career shadows.  Please check in with Mr. Pless if you feel your child will need support for the career unit. Students will begin assembling their posters and building their presentations on Monday, April 3.

Reminder from Nurse’s Office:
Please know that if your child texts, emails or calls you from school due to illness or injury,  it should be from the Health Office. The protocol is that if a child is not feeling well or is injured, he/she is sent to the Health Office. We, with your student,  will decide  if a call home to a parent/guardian is warranted. Please ask your student  if she/he has been to see the nurse first if there is a request to be picked up. Thank-you for your help on this important matter.

Calendar
April 11 - 8th Grade Career Presentations during school hours
April 12 - Delayed Start
April 13 - 8th Grade Career Fair 5:30-6:30pm in Vivace Team Area (all team students are welcome): 8th graders are not required to attend but receive extra credit for doing so.  All posters, artifacts and interactives should be present for fair.
April 24 - 28: April Break - no school
May 16 - Delayed Start


Curriculum Updates

LA
Independent Reading -- All students should return to 30 minutes of independent reading each day now that we have completed our class novels. The goal for all students is to read 2 books in the month of April -- there is no genre requirement this month.

7th - This week we began our information writing unit. Students listened to a mentor text to practice methods for writing about reading. We spent time exploring the note taking methods and discussing our reactions to the story. Next week students will dig into their choice books and begin to planning for their Companion Books.

8th - This week we finished reading our class novel Chains. Students are currently working on a poster project to demonstrate their thoughts on the book. Next week we will start reading articles to get background information for the next writing assignment: Position Papers. Articles are linked below.


Science:

7th:  Students worked very hard this week writing a paper on the human body’s interacting organ systems.  They completed research notes from a variety of sources, evaluated these sources, wrote thoughtful lead and conclusion paragraphs highlighting their human condition they researched, and wrote at least 3 body paragraphs describing the relevant body systems and their interactions.  Their 2nd draft was due today.  Next week, we focus on the endocrine and nervous systems while looking at our body’s response to stress.

8th:   The focus this week was on the properties of a gas.  Students experimented with syringes, bubble wrap and foam cubes to demonstrate the results of compressing and expanding air.  Today they created visual notes of the basic properties and behaviors of gases.  We will have a short quiz on Monday.  Later next week, we explore expansion and contraction of matter that occurs as a result of temperature changes.

Math:
7th: We finished up the Comparing and Scaling unit this week with a unit test on Thursday. We are now beginning our next unit, Moving Straight ahead. This book is the foundation of linear algebra linking stories, tables, graphs, and equations. We will also do some basic solving of one-step, two-step, and multi-step linear equations.

8th CMP: This week, we worked towards developing rules for congruencey for triangles. We will spend some time next week finalizing these and applying them.

Algebra: This week, we developed rules for congruencey for triangles. We had some healthy debate over these and found some caveats with the Side-Side-Angle congruency. Next week will focus on analyzing and performing transformations on a coordinate plane.



SS
7th: This week students continued to develop their entrepreneurial inventions and created advertisements to “sell” their products.  We began to investigate what trade looks like in our discussions about globalization and trade barriers, and we put our knowledge into action in our Sovereign State Game where students traded their inventions, natural resources, and even economic “cards” with one another.  We ended the week looking at the relationship between the economy and geography, a theme we will continue to look at next week.
8th: This week we continued our conversation of the impact that the Industrial Revolution had on culture, especially in the time period known as the “Gilded Age”.  Students investigated multiple aspects of culture - including living conditions, fashion, leisure, and transportation - and were asked to focus on one of any these themes to demonstrate how they perceived the Industrial Revolution changed this part of society, through a mode of representation of their choice.  We  ended the week with a labor union simulation to learn about this process of negotiation born out of the Industrial Revolution.