Nov 17-21

Upcoming Events:  No School Nov 24-28 Happy Thanksgiving!

What a fun week!  We started the week with a new math unit: Looking for Pythagoras.  The unit started with mapping on a coordinate grid.  We played a game of Human Twister to practice plotting points on a Cartesian grid. 

                                                                                                  

                                            

We ended the week in beautiful Borrego Springs.  After arriving around noon on Thursday, we set up camp, ate lunch then embarked on a nice hike to Palm Canyon Oasis.  The dry dusty hike ended in a cool palm oasis.  I have hiked here many times and was surprised at how dry even the oasis was.  Usually we would have seen trickles of water as we got closer to the palms.  We were hoping to see bighorn sheep, native to the area.  We did find a frog or two! Throughout the trail, kids climbed on the beautiful rocks and enjoyed each others' company.  As we were walking back from the 3-mile hike, the winds started blowing from the west bringing clouds with them. Dinner was a pre-Thanksgiving feast of roast turkey and ham, corn, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cornbread and stuffing.  Pie and s'mores made a perfect end to a great meal. Unfortunately those evening clouds didn't go away and kept the stars at bay. We were unable to see anything but low flying planes through our telescope!  Our High Tech High astronomy buddies decided to stay home and reschedule a night with the stars at IA soon.  We woke up to a wet morning after a little rain around 4 in the morning.  It was nothing hot chocolate and pancakes couldn't cure though!  Many thanks to the students who contributed food, tents and supplies and to our chaperones, Wes, Cynthia, Elise, Susan and Sandra. Thank you, parents for allowing me the chance to get away with your kids.  We had a blast!

Nov 10-14

Upcoming Events:

• Overnight to Borrego Palm Canyon State Park 9:00 am Thursday Nov. 20 - 12:00 Fri Nov. 21 cost is $6.00. Click here for emergency contact form and here for packing list and campground info.
• Recycling Drop off Friday mornings curbside or any time in room 509. We can take cans, plastic or glass bottles .

Update on my daughter Brianna:  After 9 days in the hospital, she finally came home!  Let the recovery begin! 

This week during our project, 'Where's the Water? From Drought to Deluge' students worked on their individual  topic presentations.  We also held a mock Socratic Seminar using simple classroom topics in order to practice the valuable discussion technique.  Click here for a model students watched before performing our own.  This coming Wednesday, students will hold a Seminar on "Climate Change."

In Math we completed our unit on Thinking With Mathematical Models with a group test - Students had no idea the fun activity we completed was their test!-

 Writer's Workshop below is a message from Melissa, our WW teacher: 

While we only had an hour of writer’s workshop time this past week, students were able to complete and submit their introductory paragraphs to me. I have reviewed their submissions and have commented on their Google docs entries or their printed sheets. They will receive these on Monday and will be given time to make corrections.  We practiced this past week identifying evidence to support a claim. Each student was given an expressive face and was asked to identify from a list of possible emotions which emotion the face expressed citing evidence. Most students were able to be specific about their evidence. For instance, if a student thought his or her face expressed the emotion happy, they would note that the mouth was curved into a smile, the eyes were bright, and the eyebrows were relaxed. We practiced this in anticipation of finding evidence in the short story, “All Summer in a Day” to support the claim or thesis statement in each student’s intro paragraph. Our goal is to complete the thematic analysis essay in time for exhibition night in December.

Nov 3-7

Upcoming Events:

• Veteran's Day No School Tuesday Nov. 11
• 8th Graders help with pizza lunch on Thursday
• Recycling Drop off Friday mornings curbside or any time in room 509. We can take cans, plastic or glass bottles .
• Overnight to Borrego Palm Canyon State Park 9:00 am Thursday Nov. 20 - 12:00 Fri Nov. 21 cost is $6.00.  More info will be posted this week.

Thank you for the well wishes for my daughter. Her surgery went well though she is a lot of pain.  I have had the pleasure of spending the past 5 nights in the hospital(not really a pleasure!) and am grateful for Cynthia for taking over our class on Wednesday and Friday.    

This week during our project, 'Where's the Water? From Drought to Deluge' chose individual  topics to research and present. The presentations will be on display at next month's exhibition night (Thur. Dec 18) Our field trip to La Jolla Shores couldn't have been a more perfect day, weather-wise at 80 degrees with a water temperature of 69 degrees! Unfortunately, the sharks weren't out in the numbers we hoped as it was low tide. There were sightings of one leopard shark, corbina and a seal swimming in the waves with the kids and tons of sealife in the tidepools north of Scripps Pier, including a large octopus!  More pictures coming!

In Math, students applied their knowledge of linear and nonlinear relationships by completing the ACE #3 assignment.
 On Friday we started a activity relating arm span and height using the Vitruvian Man

Vitruvius, a Roman engineer of the first century B.C., influenced Leonardo da Vinci's work in architecture and also his drawing of the human figure. One of Leonardo's drawings is called the Vitruvian Man. It is based on a model of ideal proportions which Vitruvius established. Upon viewing the drawing, the conclusion can be made that the length of a man's arm span is equal to the height of the man. In other words the ratio of the Vitruvian Man's arm span to his height equals 1.

During this activity, students measured each others' arm span and height to investigate the conjecture by Vitruvius. On Monday we will decide how to best display and analyze the data to test his claim.

We are almost complete with our Unit on Thinking With Mathematical Models and should wrap it up by the end of the week.

Writer's Workshop below is a message from Melissa, our WW teacher:
Thank you parents for giving me the opportunity to work with your wonderful kids. Since I came on board in October to teach writer's workshop, I have found many of them to be very descriptive writers which is a hard skill to learn and use. To give me a sense of where they are in their writing maturity, I had them respond to a Cahsee test writing prompt. I hope to use this to show growth as the year progresses. In the past couple of weeks, the students have been exploring theme identification and summary writing in anticipation of writing a thematic analysis essay. This has included working on the structure of an introductory paragraph: attention getter, summary, and thesis statement or claim. Our finished essay will identify a theme found in Ray Bradbury's story, "All Summer in a Day." In class this past week, we worked did activities using well-known tales and short poems to help us identify themes and learn how to justify our opinion. We had a lively discussion as the point was not to arrive at a correct answer, but rather, to be able to support one's opinion. We found that several different themes could be identified with each story depending on how the student analyzed the story elements. We also practiced identifying the parts of an introductory paragraph and writing different kinds of attention getters. On Monday, we will use these ideas to start our "Summer" essays.

Week of Oct 27-31

Congratulations to our 8th graders!  They made $236 from their Fright Night fundraiser!


Events this week:

• Field Trip Thursday to see leopard sharks at La Jolla Shores.  Need drivers!
• Recycling Drop off Friday mornings curbside or any time in room 509. We can take cans, plastic or glass bottles .
• Overnight to Borrego Palm Canyon State Park 9:00 am Thursday Nov. 20 - 12:00 Fri Nov. 21

A field trip this week?  YES! If we can get enough drivers, we have an unscheduled field trip down to La Jolla Shores. I heard the leopard sharks are still down there.  One of the reasons is because of the warmer than normal water still on our shores. (An effect of El Nino ocean patterns)  Since we are studying the effects of weather on sea life, I thought this would be a great opportunity to see wildlife of San Diego.  If we are lucky, students will be able to snorkel with the sharks in just a few feet of water. 


This week during our project, 'Where's the Water? From Drought to Deluge' we gathered information about the El Nino and La Nina ocean-atmospheric phenomena.  We wrote an evidence summary after reading an article from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  We also did a web quest to learn details about El Nino weather patterns compared to normal patterns. Current Event #2 was due on Friday.  The topic of the  biweekly current event was "Weather.  "  Next week we will choose individual research topics as well as investigate possible water capture systems we can build for our school.  These systems will be on display at next month's exhibition night (Thur. Dec 18)


In Math, students learned about inverse variation, a nonlinear relationship in which the product of two variables is constant. An inverse variation can be represented by an equation of the form y=kx , or xy=k , where k is a constant. In an inverse variation, the values of one variable decrease as the values of the other variable increase.

We used scenarios such as finding area and determining speed to investigate:

• How do the values of y change as values of x increase?
• Describe the pattern in a graph of (x, y) values.
• Describe the equation that relates the values of x and y.
• How is an inverse variation similar to a linear relationship? How is it different?

During Writers' Workshop,   students use Bradbury's story "All Summer in a Day" to write intro paragraphs.

In Wes' Science class, students learned about convection, conduction and radiation.

Our Friday fun day included a spooky morning meeting with our Kinder/First grade buddies.  We spent the morning touring their classroom and seeing their games and activities they created for their Stormy Halloween party.  Buddies then worked together to make up spooky stories.  Friday Sci-day included a demonstration on gas pressure volume and temperature.  We saw what happens to a can filled with a small amount of  boiling water and vapor when it is inverted into a bowl of ice water.  We also watched what happens when a balloon filled with air is place in boiling water and ice water.