Math:
This week the 7th graders practiced finding the area of a circle. They ended the week by designing rooms, calculating the square footage, and the area of the furniture inside their rooms.
The 8th graders learned the angle-angle criterion and how to identify if triangles are similar. They practiced sorting triangles into similar and non-similar and with task cards reviewing the unit.
Algebra students learned how to deal with negative exponents. They practiced the entire unit with a review game and a scavenger hunt. monomials.
Humanities:
It was a week filled with emotions as out our novel War Horse took us into the trenches of France in 1915. Students began the week analyzing the voyage and first battles for our main character Joey the horse. They identified the key ideas that shaped Joey’s involvement and the bravery he showed during the initial stages. We mirrored those talks with our continuing look at wartime poetry. This week we tackled the post war time of death and remembrance. The gold stand poem “in Flanders Fields” summed up the experience by allowing students to find words and phrases that shaped our history with the end of World War One and our celebration of Veterans Day. We will finish our first novel and start our second, The Book Thief next week!
Theme:
The Battles have begun in our Theme Class as we finished our first mini-projects: the living trenches of World War One. Students pour their creativity, and a fair amount of soil, into their models of the trench. The results were amazing!
With that process behind us, we focused the rest of the week on determining the causes of the war. Students defined these reasons and analyzed WHY they created the conditions for war. They created maps to show the relationships and geographic alliances that existed in the pre-war era. They finished with the seeds and conditions that “forced” the United States into the war by evaluating the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania. We will exp;ore the other conditions that ushered in America’s involvement next week.
We also began to plan and outline our project to grow our own “Victory Garden”/ With the expert help oof Ms. Anne, the Epsilons will cultivate several vegetables that were staples of the special gardens during both world wars. The object is to have a tasting the week before we leave for spring break. Stay tuned for the progress and results!
Epsilon student spit the finishing touches on their World War One models of Trench warfare. The models are displayed for visitors.
At top, students create their visuals to collect information about the cause of World War One. Above, Epsilon and Delta students prepare to visit the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum to view the exhibits relating to the History of the Earth
At top, students view and document the story fo the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum. The field trip, which was rescheduled to this quarter due to our bout with the flu, gave students the chance to wander through centuries of and millennia of rich history.
