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