Sunday, October 28, 2012

Oct 15- Oct 26

I would like to give a grateful thank you to all families who came out to support our students with their Student Led Conferences.  It was so great to watch as students showed off their work and I had the opportunity to meet with our wonderful eighth grade families.

Upcoming Events:

Mon-Thur: Mini Beach Fieldtrips (see info below)

Tuesday Oct 30:
           Language of Math Quiz 7 PreAlgebra
                                          Expression, Term, Combining Like Terms, Simplify, Equation, Solution
  
           Language of Math Quiz 7 Algebra
                                             Expression,  Equivalent Equation, Solution, Inverse Operation, 
                                       Properties of Equality(addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)

Friday Nov 2:  Grand Opening of Student Store

Mon Nov 5:  Whole Class Fieldtrip: Birch Aquarium.  (We need drivers!!!)  $7.50 per student


OUR PROJECT NEWS
Rate Your Beach Project is in full swing! We are taking 4 students at a time to their selected beaches throughout this week.  Last week, we took our first group, Ella, Jared, Kiale and Maddie to La Jolla Shores. As our "test group", we found if the group works together and complete their specific tasks, they can efficiently collect all of their data in two hours. During the next week, we have scheduled two groups per day.  Tony will take one group in the morning and Lisa will take another group after lunch.  One teacher and our co-teacher Luisa will stay at school with the rest of the students.  This should be fun! Please make sure your student is prepared on the day they are scheduled.  They especially need clothes that can get wet, sunscreen and a packed lunch.

Here are the Mini Fieldtrip location and groups:
Monday: La Jolla Cove     Abbey, Anthony K, Calvin, Emily
               Torrey Pines     Anthony P, Ashlie, Amanda, Trevor
Tuesday: Ocean Beach Pier     Carson, Clara, Michael, Sydney
                S. Mission Beach Jetty    Martin, Natalie, Chad, Zoe
Wednesday: Coronado    Shareese, Noah, Xavier, Joseph
                  Point Loma Tidepool s Morgan, Prasadini,Sarah,  Umar
Thursday: Moonlight Beach     Bianca,  Kimberley, Sam, Shane
                  La Jolla Childrens Pool    Willy, Tori,  Chris, Cierra
 


MATH SUCCESS! Many acknowledgements during the past few class meetings have included math work, students helping other students and successes involving math skills.I am excited to see smiles and light bulbs going off during class (often a rarity in this school subject!)

PreAlgebra students were quizzed on exponents and integers last week. We started a new unit on simplifying algebraic equations.Students are combining like terms and using the distributive property to simplify expressions.

Algebra students are using the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division properties of equality to solve single step equations.  Students are learning the importance of keeping both sides of an equation equal in order to solve for variables.







SCIENCE MATTERs In our continuing quest to understand matter, we examined my favorite type of matter (sweets) to learn about density.Density is the amount of matter in a fixed volume. Students measured the mass and volume of a variety of chocolate bars to determine their density. They discovered which candy was least dense and predicted whether the chocolates would sink or float in water. We will revisit density while examining our sea water from our Rate Our Beach Project.

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