Welcome to week three!
I have to start off by giving one more shout out to my kiddos that ran for Student Council offices last week. I was so proud of all of them that stood up in front of nearly the entire school and poured their little hearts out explaining why they would be best for the job. That took some serious guts! Also, congratulations to Miss Teagan for being nominated as Oasis’ 2016-2017 Student Council Vice President!
In projects this week we are finishing up our exploration of cells. Today the entire middle school did a gallery walk, where our classes traveled through each room, observing and learning each other’s three dimensional models of systems. Some of my favorite justifications include:
“The cell membrane is the structure of the jail. The structure of the jail is the cell membrane since the structure is behind the fence also known as the cell wall. The cell membrane is the inner layer of protection. The jail’s outer walls let certain things in and out, similar the what the cell membrane does.”
“The Cell Wall is only found in plant cells and it is positioned by the Cell Membrane and keeps all the cells safe. In a farm the fence is represented by the Cell Wall. The fence is similar to the Cell Wall because the fence protects everything inside the farm.”
“The Lysosomes job in a cell is to remove waste. In Cabela's the customers represent lysosomes. Customers purchase and remove merchandise from the shelves and exit the store, therefore the merchandise that is no longer needed leaves the store.”
“The nucleus is the control center of the cell, it tells the others what to do. The Coach is like the nucleus because he tells the players where and what they need to do. He is also one of the most important people in any baseball game.”
“We decided to use the blood as cytoplasm because our organs float in it. The cytoplasm is the fluid that fills the cell which helps the parts float together. In our model the blood is what the parts “float” in”
“The nucleolus is an organelle that directs proteins to different parts of the cell. The Map in the middle of the mall represents the nucleolus. We chose the map to represent the nucleolus because the nucleolus directs proteins just as a mall directs the people.”
Tomorrow we will complete our cell final and then move into body systems, with the goal of creating full sized body posters that depict the six main systems of the body.
7th Grade Reading- Our first week of reading log homework went swimmingly! Thank you for checking in with your kiddo and signing their reading log over the weekend. This week we will continue using the Daily Three (Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Word Work) along with making our way through the Antebellum period. It has been so interesting to listen to the class discussions and questions about the North and South during this time. We will also work on annotating a new poem!
Writing- I am so excited to start our first writing project of the year. We will start out strong with an informative essay on the Electoral College. We will begin tomorrow by reading through some examples of informative papers written by 7th graders, looking closely at the evidence based terms and how well they stuck to the facts. Next we will move into developing thesis statements of our own using the six writing traits.
8th Grade Reading- This week we are moving from hunter gatherer societies to agricultural and early farming societies. We have been using the CAFE strategies “ identify main ideas and details in informative texts” as we continue to read and annotate articles. Focusing on these skills has helped build a deeper understanding of this revolution.
