Weekly Update 9/20/19

Language Arts: Hello all. Students have been busy with Ms. Lara and I and digging deep into some Shakespeare. We started by learning about Shakespeare himself, reading a summary of Twelfth Night, and watching some videos about him. Students then learned about iambic pentameter, and have practiced looking for the rhythm embedded in much of Shakespeare’s poetry by finding which syllables are stressed. We have been round robin reading through Twelfth night and using No Fear Shakespeare books to help us access and understand the more difficult and challenging sections of text.

We are starting a poetry unit next week (paired with Shakespeare). Students have an assignment to ask a friend or family member about their favorite poem. Please share with your student if you have a connection with poetry, including song or rap lyrics. Additionally, feel free to get in touch with me if you have any strong interest in sharing/teaching poetry in the classroom. In other news, Mr. Brown’s homeroom has voted on and agreed upon Class name—the Avocados!

In math this week we started the first unit on integers and rational numbers. We investigated both in effort to get them thinking about positive and negative numbers as well as converting fractions to decimals using long division. Several homework assignments were given but students we given substantial time in class to work on it. Homework is always due on Friday but due dates for homework are flexible, so if a student misses Friday, they can talk to me and turn it the next time they come to class. All assignments that are counted towards grading is posted on Schoolology.  Students can see any missing assignments on schoolology and download and print them if they lose the copies from the book. If students are having difficulties with homework, one resource they can use is the Pearson Online portal on the district website. Here is the link to the district resources page that has a link to Pearson Easybridge. Make sure you click under Middle School. Every student has access to this. The only thing on Pearson that is graded are the Chapter Assessments and Work Samples. I do assign supplementary material that students can use to help them with homework or review but these are not graded. Let me, Mr. Hill, know if you have any questions.

In science we started the modeling matter unit that focuses on what all matter is made of. We are looking at this through the eyes of a food scientists. We are looking at separating mixtures into there parts. We are connecting molecules, atoms and properties to what makes a mixture and the properties of that mixture compared to the individual molecules. We will also, eventually make a model of a molecule of our choice. This is a fun unit and I look forward to what we will be doing.

Mr. Hill's homeroom has named our class mascot. They are Caramel (or Carmel depending on who you ask) the sloth. We also built our chart. The word include; Positive, Challenged, Safe, Supported and Included. All great feeling to feel while learning. We talked about how to make sure everyone feels these ways. It is going to be a great year and I look forward to working together to support student growth this year.