The Month of March

UPCOMING:

Family Night: Thursday 5:30-7:00. I will provide pizza. Please RSVP so I know how much to get. We will go over final plans for Sacramento trip, including itinerary, money and packing list. I will also have computers up with the websites and programs available to you as additional learning resources for your family. Christine will be meeting in the lower bay at 6:30 with all school announcements and information about next year.

No School Friday April 1. This is not an April Fool's joke! It is Teacher Day only.

Spring Break next week. See you back at school Monday April 11. Enjoy the long break!

Yearbooks for sale! $15 Purchase by March 31st and a portion comes back to our school. Last day to purchase is April 29th.

MATH:

NEW MATH GROUPS were started last week. If you are not aware, our 7th and 8th graders have a wide variety of knowledge in math. Some students never had the opportunity to master basic math skills, while other students are far advanced. Although I have made a huge effort to make sure all students are learning in class, it is very difficult with the limited time we have to satisfy the needs of every student. I have found some students are checked out because they are lost, while others are checked out because they are bored. I was teaching three levels at one time and feeling as if many students were not getting the attention they needed. I made the decision last week to break my class up into skills based groups rather than grade based. The periods have been broken up into Advanced Math/Skills section and a Middle School Math section. While I am teaching Advanced Math, Christine and Trish have taken on the Math Skills class in the commons for those students needing extra practice. So far, it seems to be going smoothly and I have felt a sigh of relief from students as they are getting THEIR needs met.

SCIENCE:

We had an awesome fieldtrip to Camp Pendleton on Tuesday for our HOVERCRAFT PROJECT. Students saw and got to board a real military hovercraft or LCAC (Landing Craft Air Cushion). Looking at the design, we were able to understand how our own hovercraft designs can be adjusted to work more efficiently. Everyone should be done with the assembly of their hovercrafts by Thursday Night's Family Night. We plan on racing them On Tuesday after spring break for the whole school to see.

Students worked on Zingy Lesson 6: Topics 4-6 in class. If your student is not that far, please help them work on it at home.

Velocity experiments are due Wed March 30. Students should have: 1) A model or diagram of their experiment. 2) Conduct the experiment. 3) A written description of the Materials and Procedures needed to perform the experiment. 4)Written conclusions about what they learned and how this experiment taught them about speed and velocity.