Week 7

Upcoming Events

• Picture Day Thursday Oct. 28
  7th grade 10:00 - 10:35
  8th grade 10:40 - 11:20
• 8th grade Sacramento Trip Fundraiser Garage Sale
  WHEN: November 6, 2010 from 7:00am – 5:00pm
  November 7, 2010 from 7:00am – 1:00pm
  WHERE: 3622 Sunbird Way, San Diego (Tierrasanta)
  Details coming

I want to thank all of our families who attended Student Led Conferences this week. If you did not meet with me, you can still make an appointment.

Although the turnout for Family Night was not the best, we still made $215! Thank you to everyone who brought food in, helped sell tickets, helped set up and serve. Almost every student was involved with this event!

Class Happenings
We spent Monday math honing our addition/subtraction integer skills one last time before moving on. Because of the rest of the week being half days we did not have a "traditional" math period. Math was integrated into our science labs.

Science this week was devoted to hands on labs. In "What's the Matter?" we investigated density, mass, volume, pressure and temperature.
*Our yummy candy bar lab helped students understand how density is a measure of mass per volume. They determined the mass from the actual packaging and the volume by measuring length x width x height. Reminder: Density = Mass/Volume or D = M/V.
*Balloons, boiling water, a soda can, and cold water helped us to discover what happens with changes in temperature. We learned that molecules get excited when they get hot and pressure changes. Parents: do YOU know what happens to a balloon when you put it into a freezer or into boiling water? Does it pop?melt?disintegrate? How about when you heat a soda can with about a centimeter full of water to boiling and then invert it into a bowl of cold water? Does it create steam?explode?float?sink? Although those are some of the ideas we thought might happen, we found out what actually happens by experiment! Next week we will find out why it happened.

Because of conferences, short days and no school Friday, we did not have our weekly Academic Language quiz. We will have it next Friday Oct 22.
Academic Language Quiz 4 will include the following terms:

density
mass
volume
pressure
temperature
Boyle's Law
Charles' Law

Week 5 and 6

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS:
*Minimum days Tuesday, Wednesday,Thursday.
*No school Friday. It is teacher Professional Devolopment day.
*Please contact me if you have not signed up for STUDENT LED CONFERENCES yet. Right now I only have seven students who have signed up. I want to meet with EVERY family this week.
*Our class is in charge of dinner for Family Night this coming Thursday(this is a class fundraiser!)
*During Family Night I will be holding a PARENT MEETING to discuss cost and fundraising ideas for our Eighth grade Northern California class trip at the end of the year.

CLASS HAPPENINGS
In our math class, we finished our tessalations and worked on addition and subtraction of integers. I am stressing the importance of practicing the basic integer addition and subtraction skills. Over the years most of the mistakes I see while solving complex algebraic problems is in simple addition/subtraction errors.

During science we practiced using the scientific method and writing a laboratory report. Students were given the challenge to create a car that rolls and carries an eraser using only two pieces of paper, a 16cm piece of wire and glue. It was fun to see their ideas and their reasoning for creating their cars. We started our chemistry unit "What's the MATTER?" Students were introduced to the three states of matter: solids liquids and gases.

During our project time on Wednesdays, students created a piece of artwork to portray their Summer vignettes written in Tony's class. Students made chalk and tempera paint in my class and many students used their own created colors as their medium for their artwork.

Academic Language Quiz 2 consisted of the following science terms:

scientific method
question/observation
hypothesis
materials
procedure
data analysis/results
conclusion

Academic Language Quiz 3 consisted of the following math and science terms:

Integer
Whole Number
Absolute Value
Matter
Solid
Liquid
Gas