November 5 - High School Night
November 15-18 - NAGC Conference in Denver - No School
November 19- 25 - Thanksgiving Break (WOO!)
December 21 - Teacher Work Day
December 22 - January 2 - Winter Break
January 3 - Teacher Work Day
January 4 & 7 - 2nd Quarter Family Goal Setting Conferences
Dear Families,
Division III teachers had wonderful goal-setting conferences with all of you last week--thank you for coming!
Please consider donating to our school's holiday food drive. Many families in our school community are struggling financially, and we would love to be able to alleviate some of the stress that accompanies the holiday season by being able to provide food baskets for all who need them. We can't do this without your generous donations. Non-perishable foods can be donated to the boxes outside the office, and grocery store gift cards in $10 increments can be donated as well, being brought to the office. Every item donated matters and will make a difference for a family. Thank you for your generosity in advance!
Second quarter is off to a great start:
In LifeSkills, we've started discussing how to calm down when we begin to feel strong emotions and role playing our responses to situations that can cause strong emotions. The more students can practice these techniques, the more automatic they will become.
In the World of Math, Ms. Brown's class is finishing up their first exploration into measurement. Students have practiced measurement to the nearest inch, half inch, quarter inch, and explored measuring using metric units as well. Students also learned to find the perimeter of polygons and experimented with different ways to calculate area. Most students have begun working toward their quarterly goals of improving math fact automaticity and accuracy by using xtramath.org to practice each night as well. By the end of the school year, all students should be fluent in math facts for all operations. Continued practice at home will help in meeting this goal. Our next unit will focus on common uses of multiplication and division. The Unit 4 family letter was sent home in binders and a digital copy emailed home today.
In Mrs. Burns' Math class, students are delving in to algebraic concepts with learning "legal moves" with pawns and cubes that represent variables and number values.
Dr. Ricotta's World of Math class is completing Unit 3 on Friday. Mastering multiplication facts has been emphasized, division introduced, and beginning algebraic equations has been practiced through open-ended equations.
Ms. Brown's Art of Language class has started work analyzing patterns of change in literature. During this unit, students will be analyzing the language of literature through four-level sentence analysis, other grammar and vocabulary activities, and class discussion, while reading literature which explores the concept of patterns of cyclic change. Over the past two weeks, students have created a Frayer Model to explore cycles we see around us every day and started delving deeply into the vocabulary that writers use to communicate their messages. Students analyzed a portion of Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning," this week and had some very interesting connections to the poem!
In Mrs. Burns' Art of Language class students are jumping into researching on an animal report. They are working on taking notes on important information and getting ready to compile it into a report.
Dr. Ricotta's Art of Language class completed reading The Secret Garden. Each student will now be writing an essay relating the novel's theme of 'Change" for one chapter in the book. A home project for their chapter with many choices to choose from is optional.
Division III has chosen to level students for our current Scientific Inquiry which explores rocks and minerals. Because many of our students have demonstrated mastery of the standards relating to this unit, they are exploring topics within it that appeal to them, becoming experts on the topic of their choice. Others are experiencing these concepts for the first time, while others are going a bit deeper, synthesizing what they learn while working their way through a web quest and then experimenting hands on with rocks and minerals.
No comments:
Post a Comment