Friday Update, December 8th

Here is an update of what students on Team Prospect have been up to in their four core classes:

Science

Students are organizing their Science Fair Packet 2017 in their Google Drive. Background info may be found at http://tinyurl.com/ProspectSci1718.  Other studies include Earth Systems via Rock & Water cycles.

Math

7th Grade is continuing to explore the concept of similarity and exploring the effect of a scale factor on length, area, and volume. They also are learning how to construct scaled drawings of simple shapes. We should be finishing the unit and testing the week before the break.

8th grade has been working on finding slope of a line using graphs and the formal equation for slope. This requires them to be able to accurately identify points on the graph. They also are exploring how this presents itself in a linear equation. Next, they will work with equations in standard form and learn how to convert this into the slope-intercept form of a linear equation. 8th grade will be taking a test on this unit following the winter break.

Social Studies

Students have begun Unit 2: Immigration. We are covering the 4 major waves of immigration into the United States, plus the basic process of how a person from another country immigrates into the USA. Students will learn the basic vocabulary associated with immigration. We have resumed our Wednesday Gameday, and student engagement in their learning for these sessions has been strong! Currently students are reading autobiographical narratives of immigration- one is about a 12-year old girl who came from Russia in 1894. The other is about a boy who traveled from a refugee camp in Sudan to Chicago in the 1980's, eventually graduating from Harvard. Feel free to check our Google Classroom feed for assignments and additional video!

Language Arts

Students have been reading one of two books about the immigrant experience: either Crossing the Wire or The Day of the Pelican. Ask your students if they have reading homework! Those reading Crossing the Wire, about a boy trying to get to the U.S. from Mexico, should be to page 92. Those reading The Day of the Pelican, about a family fleeing Kosovo in the late 1990's, should be to page 56. Today, all students will take a spelling test on the words they've been studying for the past five weeks.