Triad+Article+for+February

This is a busy time of year for eighth graders. During the third week of January, Sheehan guidance counselors visited our classrooms to present students with an overview of what they need to do in order to prepare for their first exciting steps into the high school. Team teachers have sat down with each student individually making sure they are selecting the proper classes and credits they need in order to have a successful freshman year.

In language arts, students have just completed oral book reviews. It was a nice chance for students to select a novel of their choice to read and then encourage their peers to read it. They worked on their presentation skills and learned the difference between a //book review// and a //book report//. Aside from this outside reading project, in class half of the team just finished reading Robert Lipsyte’s __The Contender__. Throughout this experience, they kept a journal of facing personal challenges head-on and striving to reach the top. We watched //Rocky// as a final activity and compared the stories of two contenders Many of them were seeing this film for the first time! The other half of the team got exposed to the classic murder mystery genre. We read Agatha Christie’s __And Then There Were None__. Students enjoyed applying their knowledge of literary terms such as symbolism and red herring to try and solve the mystery. At the end, we watched the classic black and white film version of Christie’s novel and discussed the roots of the classic “who did it?” stories.

Have you ever wondered if more containers are being recycled each year? Or ever wondered about the amount of wasted being disposed of and if that amount of waste disposed has increased or decreased over the past ten years? The students on Team 8-2's pre-algebra classes have been working on applying their knowledge of percents to sovling "real world" situations. To do this they needed to increase their number sense with fractions, decimals, and their percent equivalent. In addition to doing all those calculations, the students learned how to construct a circle graph (pie chart) so that they can display their results in a graph easy to read.

In the algebra class, the students are just being introduced to the concept of a linear function and the special category of linear functions. They will observe that the graph of a linear function is a line, and they will learn to read a wealth of information from the slope of this line. They will then investigate several forms of writing an equation for the line. In addition, students will be doing serveral hands-on investigations that will connect them with "real world" situations that have a linear relationship. In one investigation, the students will be using a graphing calculator with a motion sensor (CBR unit) attached to the calculator to determine the "rate of change" of an object. From these investigations, the students will be able to make accurate predictions about the two sets of data (time & distance) that have a linear relationship. At the end of the unit, the students will be given a challenge. They will be asked to predict the length of a bungee cord they will need to make from rubberbands when given the height the object (a waterbottle) will be dropped from. The objective is to make the cord long enough so that they will have their object (a waterbottle) get the closest to the ground without hitting the ground.

In Science the students have recently concluded their unit on astronomy. Students learned about their solar system and the exploration of space. The unit concluded with a visit to the planetarium at Sheehan. The students are now beginning their Cells and Heredity unit which will teach them how traits get passed on from generation to generation, as well as how complex their genetic code is and how the simplest changes can have major results. The students are also preparing for the brand new Science component of the Connecticut Mastery Test.

Need help deciding who you should vote for in the upcoming Presidential election? In Social Studies the kids just finished creating websites to inform voters of their choices. They are now working on children's books on the War of 1812/Star Spangled Banner that will be sent to elementary students in Amherst, Virginia. In return our students will receive constructive criticism that will help them prepare for a unit they will be teaching on Native Americans to a group of fourth graders in Guilford, CT. In March they will start traveling on the Oregon Trail. The students' work has also been highlighted this month by the Connecticut Education Network. We have been chosen as this month's Spotlight school ([|http://cen.ct.gov/cen/site/).] The students' work with wikis, blogs, and podcasts, has also been selected by several staff developers for use in workshops across the country as examples of how to innovate and create with technology in the classroom. One recent example of the students use of technology in the classroom is a debate that one class had with a class in Kansas. We debated the Republican vs. Democratic viewpoints represented in the upcoming primaries live on streaming video with a class 1000 miles away! They have also created many videos and podcasts on the American Revolution and Constitution that have been viewed and listened to by thousands of people from across the globe. Our team wiki has had over 18,000 visitors!! Please visit our wiki for links to all of our work: www.collaborationnation.wikispaces.com