Hi all,
What a crazy week - let’s NOT do that again! Hoping everyone is close to power being restored and recovering from the frenzy of Halloween; the bright side of the power outage was it cancelled out the effects of Halloween at school:)
School Dance
Thank you to all families that contributed to the dance concession stand - we had plenty of food. A final tally will be reported once the money is deposited.
Movember and Food Shelf
BRMS is starting the Movember campaign. Several staff members have joined the effort, developing personas to raise awareness around mental and physical health during the winter months. As part of this awareness campaign, students are asked to contribute a non-perishable food item; BRMS helped restock the Jericho/Underhill food shelf last year after their “Thanksgiving” food stock was handed out.
On Team Fusion, Ms. Barnier, Mr. Keblin and Mr. Pless are all participating in the Movember campaign - students “vote” for their favorite Movember persona by placing food items in boxes beside the front office bearing the name and likeness of the staff member.
All Laptops are at school over the weekend
No school issued laptops should be at home over the weekend. In the event a laptop does make its way home, please store it in a safe place for the weekend.
Calendar
November 8 - Two Hour Delay
December 1 - 7th grade field trip to Vermont International Festival ($5 fee - looking for a few chaperones)
December 13 - Two Hour Delay
December Break - December 25-29, January 1
Reading
Books should be brought to all study halls and LA class each day.
Curriculum Updates….
LA
*** Students were excused from completing Reading Journals this week. ***
7 - Students continue to learn about text structures and build up a series of starter paragraphs for their information writing pieces. Next week we will start combining all of this work into a more formal draft.
8 - Investigative Journalism writing pieces were due this week. We began reading Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. We will be focusing on use of figurative language, historical connections and the relationship between the main character Isabel and her younger sister Ruth. We will dig into some note taking strategies next week.
Science
7 - Our petri dishes and bread baggies had extra time over the long “weekend”. Students had plenty to look at on Wednesday! All bacteria and fungi growth samples are now properly disposed of! Ask your child which surfaces in the classroom showed the most bacterial growth! We continue to study cell organelles, and will hold another check-up quiz on Friday. Our final assessment for the cells and energy unit is right before the Thanksgiving break. Our final topics will be photosynthesis and cellular respiration.
8 - ,Using plastic tubing, binder clips, and bubble wrap, students explored the compression and expansion of air (a mixture of gases) by creating and exploring with closed systems. They established that air is matter, having both mass and volume. Students are beginning to visualize that gases are made of microscopic particles, and to experience the behavior of gas particles. We will have 2 more short check-up quizzes before the Thanksgiving break.
SS
7 - Students have begun the district assessment for the culture unit - they are creating slideshows, websites or Thinglinks! related to their view of their culture. Please check in with your child about the progress; they should be interviewing you next week and requesting help with picture taking.
8 - The students are starting the formal assessment for the American Revolution unit. They will be using structured notes they take from online reading to support Thinglinks! about major events leading to the American revolution. The Instagram and Facebook discussion experiences are off the ground and functioning. Mr. Pless encourages families to check in (or even follow) the Instagram accounts if your child has one.
Math
Wow, what a week. It has been up and down with the storm, Halloween, the drama production, no power, and on top of that, I am home today with my son who is sick. I hope everyone has made it to Friday intack.
While things were a little disjointed this week in class, the 8th grade studied correlation, outliers, standard deviation this week. We will wrap up the investigation portion of the unit next week by exploring bivariate data. We will finish the unit with an end of unit assessment the following week.
In 7th grade we continued to build our foundational knowledge for our new unit, Filling & Wrapping. We finished this week looking at how volume and surface area change when we scale up the dimensions of a rectangular prism. Also, we have moved to weekly homework assignments for the 7th grade. We did not have one this week due to the short week, but students recieved next weeks today in case they want to get a jump on it over the weekend.
Hoping for a very quiet weekend - to recharge (Sorry - low hanging fruit there). Seriously, hoping everyone returns to normalcy in the next few days.
The Fusion Team
