As we settle in, there are the subtle signs that we’re becoming a community of learners. Students are building friendships, showing grace, noticing who’s missing, keeping each other on task, and testing the boundaries (in healthy and welcome ways). They are finishing units of study and completing their first projects of the year. It’s been a shorter, yet productive, week.
In MATH:
6th grade - Finished a unit working with numerical expressions and factors.
Coming up: fractions and decimals in real world applications
7th grade - Finished unit writing and solving equations with ratios and proportions, including direct variation.
Coming up: Solving percent proportions and equations
Algebra - Finished unit on solving linear equations.
Coming up: Solving linear inequalities
They are off to a great start, and Miss Kim looks forward to next week and new opportunities for learning.
In ENGLISH and HISTORY:
Students finished their origin story project - a children’s book retelling a creation myth from around the world. Stories came from indigenous cultures, including Cherokee, Hopi (Arizona), Polynesian, Chinese, Hebrew, Mossi (Upper Volta of Africa), Kono (Guinea, near the Upper Volta), Mesoamerican, Norse, and Apache. There are so, so many stories from many cultures, and so hopefully students will continue to explore origin stories now that they have had a brief introduction.
We also viewed a spoken word poetry performance of an origin story explaining the first meeting of two friends. It was interesting to hear how two people could tell the same story differently, with a few common threads intertwining the account.
History started this week with an introduction to the timeline of the formation of the universe. Time was put into perspective by turning 13 billion years onto 13 years. From this point of view, our modern time period has been around for 53 seconds! We also took notes in our journal in preparation for next week. The PowerPoint used with students is provided as a material on their Google Classroom page.
This coming week, we will tie up the unit by discussing the common themes that may be found in many stories from unrelated peoples. Students are comparing their individual myth with the scientific timeline of the creation of the world. It will be interesting to see where they view unique qualities and where they view commonalities between science and myth.
ADDITIONAL ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Students should be collecting bits and pieces for our group art creation. Please, please, please help us to collect enough supplies by saving every bit of throw away cap, lid, broken toy, extra key chain, left over and lost earrings, and the list goes on. We need it all, and we love colorful bits! We will need SO MUCH “TRASH” to succeed in our goal!
As motivation, I have been able to connect with the artist that is inspiring our project. As an extra special add-on, when we travel to Columbia for our museum field trip, we will now be able to also visit Kirkland Smith’s personal studio and gallery. Kirkland is giving us a tour of her space and spending time with our DGS middle school to guide us and answer our questions on how to successfully make assemblage art. This is a Big. Deal. I am incredibly thankful for Kirkland’s generosity!
(Project with Hand Middle School, Columbia, SC -https://www.kirklandsmith.com/artwork/hand-hornet )
Also - from Miss Maya and reinforced by me - People should be preparing for the Variety Show!! Get practicing, my fabulous middle schoolers!
Peace,
Patricia
Coming up:
A new novel study
Humans enter history!
Passion Problem explained….in more detail
Extended Learning Field Trip planning begins…..Woot Woot!
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