I was very disappointed not to have parents' night, and I hope you and your family are not having too much trouble with the rain!
Weather aside, in 6th grade this week we were all about latitude and longitude! (Click on the link to find the latitude and longitude of any place in the world!) Parents: ask your 6th grader about their location-finding skills. Designate a line in your tile floor as the Equator, another as the Prime Meridian, and see how quickly they can tell you where they are! Next week we will be working with a "sweet" grid and geographic features, and are finally ready to make our own maps!
6th Graders enjoying learning about grids...and giant blow-up high fives!The 7th graders also worked with latitude and longitude, but it was more of a review for them, and they finished with both grids and geographic features as of this morning. Monday will see them starting a unit on culture, beginning with the creation of a map of the location for their culture. We will be working on the seven elements of culture until the Independence Day break!
8th grade this week was all about family...the students studied family life in prehistoric times, took a quiz (and evaluated themselves) on whether or not they would have survived as a hunter-gatherer, and presented their family history to the class. Who knew we had such a culturally varied and interesting 8th grade class! Next week we will begin studying Ancient Civilizations, beginning with Ancient Mesopotamia. The students will conduct experiments early in the week to understand just what was involved in the civilization of human life.
The Class of 2011 met twice this week, and were all together for the first time this afternoon. We started our unit on research skills by evaluating what elements of research they were confident in, those they were comfortable with, and those they knew they needed help on. They also brought in examples of 2 websites: the best and worst they found in a simple, one-word Google search. We also looked at magazines, evaluating what type of magazine would be good for what type of research. Next week we will continue evaluating resources, especially books and other periodicals.
The seniors are also completing weekly blog posts. This past week they were asked to evaluate another blog and compare it with their own. Please feel free to visit their blogs, which are listed to the right of your screen.
Here's hoping that the sun shines on us all this weekend, and that we will meet at the rescheduled Parent's event next week!
KF
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