New School

Nova International Schools
8th Grade LASS (8-1 and 8-3)

Friday, October 15, 2010

Welcome to Quarter 2! October 18-22

Good morning everyone:

Well, say goodbye to Quarter One and hello to Quarter 2! The next time we meet for class we will be starting a whole new grading term, a whole new ballgame! Let's make Quarter 2 the best quarter yet!

To start off the new Quarter, the 6th Graders will start learning about the history of the Americas! Our first mini-unit will be the culture of the Maya. The students will be given packets to guide their learning and activities (DO NOT LOSE THESE!!! I WILL NOT BE PRINTING MORE!) with built-in extra credit that can be done during down-time in class.

**Teacher's note: I chose to move to packets for the 6th graders because I found they had trouble taking the instructions I wrote on the board and fully completing them. I'm hoping that these packets will solve this problem by having the instructions RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM!! :)**

The 7th Graders had a great time "judging" Christopher Columbus this past week, but next week will shift their focus across two oceans to Ancient India. They will start on Monday and finish on Thursday looking at how geography shaped the culture and people in India's past.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be "odd" days in 7th Grade--we will have less than 10 students in the room! The track and field competition will be claiming over half of our class for those two days, but the students who stay behind will be watching a short movie explaining the scientific contributions of the Ancient Indians and will completing a webquest in the computer lab!

8th Grade finishes their Ancient Egypt unit today, and will start fresh next Monday with the Greeks. We will begin with the Greeks' arch-enemies the Persians on Monday, then look at the geography of the area on Tuesday. Wednesday-Friday will give the 8th Graders the opportunity to become "archaeologists" and find out about some of the ancient Greek city-states.

The Seniors Communications curriculum for quarter 2 calls for a focus on speeches...but we only get to meet 11 times during the quarter!! So, expect a lot of at-home speech practice and prep. Next Thursday the seniors will look at speech outlines, and learn how to write a totally great speech introduction!

And, of course, on Friday we will be celebrating United Nations day! The students have told me that this is "The BEST day of the year" so I hope to see you all there enjoying it with the students and me! Remember, school is out at 11:45 next Friday. (Click here for a bit of history on the UN!)

Have a great weekend! See you in quarter 2!

KF

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