We hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s Day and a big thank you to everyone who helped make the Valentine’s Day Book Fair, Bake Sale, and Bingo possible, it was such a blast! This week the middle schoolers have been working on finishing various projects, enjoying the sun, and getting their self-assessments completed. Do not forget that there is no school on Monday or Tuesday next week for February Break, enjoy the long weekend!  

Here’s a look at what is happening in each of the classes:

What’s happening in Science?

Sixth grade students were observing, analyzing, and researching this week. Their petri dishes have been providing a happy home for their bacteria and fungus samples to incubate…and both of the colonies are growing! We have identified both fungus and bacteria all over the school. The sixth grade students learned how to differentiate between qualitative and quantitative data in order to analyze their data effectively half way through the experiment. To celebrate their hard work this week, they participated in the “Egg Drop” challenge and made egg drop protectors to keep eggs from breaking from a two story drop. 

What’s up in ELA?

Sixth graders have started their nonfiction book unit. There are still a few students that have not gotten a nonfiction book of their choice yet. Please help them to select one this weekend. The mentor text that we are using in class for this unit is Fast Food Nation. Students are working on identifying new or uncommon vocabulary and highlighting information that they find pertinent to the main idea of their text. Your students will also be working on week fourteen of their grammar workbook and continuing with their study of figurative language. Please check for signed papers every Monday.

What’s going on in Math?

Your kids have known about lines for a long time, and they’ve known that when you graph a line it means something. What it means depends on what direction it’s going, how steep it is, whether it crosses through certain points – like (0,0) – and what two variables you’re comparing. But now they know that every line has a name, and it’s a variation of this: y=mx+b. No two different lines will ever have the same name. And from each unique name we can tell everything we’ll ever need to know about that line, and therefore about the two things it’s comparing. (Learning Math is one thing, but whoever came up with this stuff in the first place was on a completely different plane!) If your child is making a graph about Priya’s savings account, and he calls the line y=20x+50, we know that Priya started a savings account with $50, and she adds $20 each week. That leaves only 2 things to solve for: They can tell us how many weeks Priya has been depositing money (x) and we find the total in her account (y), or they tell us the total in her account at any point (y) and we solve for how many weeks she was putting in money (x). That’s it. No matter how many infinite line names we come up with, that’s all we can do with it. Almost makes you want to take the assessment yourself, huh? (Sure, I can email you a copy!)

What’s happening in Social Studies?

Sixth grade worked on completing their songs as their end of unit assessment for early empires in Europe! Students then began to master their vocabulary terms of medieval Europe before we dive deeper into it next week! 

Students will look into the Middle Ages next week. Students will not only be creating and performing a skit of life during that time, but also look into primary and secondary sources, specifically revolving around Charlemagne. 

Important Dates:

• February 20-21 – February Break (No School)
• February 28- Middle School Social (3pm-4pm)