Cluster 2 News
December 14, 2023
Cluster 2 News!
Hello Parents, Guardians, and Caregivers
One more reminder that we are collecting new or lightly used coats for our Coats for Kids drive! Please consider donating by bringing them to the main lobby of WMS.
Have a relaxing break!
Best,
Cluster 2 Team
English with Ms. Soares
Hello!
We have finished our Inside Out and Back Again unit! Students wrote some very successful CER paragraphs about Ha, how she changed, and the struggles she goes through. We are starting our historical fiction book club unit before break. Students will be divided into groups that will read a different novel and prepare for a discussion each week.
The expectation is that your student is reading for 20 minutes at least 4 days of the week. They can read books, graphic novels, comics, or listen to an audiobook. Some ways you can help your student is to remind them to read, bring them to the library, or even read with them!
Social Studies with Mr. McDermott
Unit 6.2 Western Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa
Essential Questions
Why do human communities create government and laws?
What common elements do religions share and how do their differences matter?
How is the physical environment connected to people and the way they live?
Enduring Understandings
Students will begin to understand that:
1. Access to water has played a key role in the development of West Asian and North African societies since ancient times — from the river valleys of the Fertile Crescent and Nile, to the trading cities of Phoenicia that rimmed the Mediterranean Sea, to the irrigation systems invented by Persia. Water quality and access remains an urgent need shaping life in the region today.
2. City life in Mesopotamia introduced new opportunities in religion, education, writing, government, and the economy, as well as new social divisions and limitations. Drawbacks of civilization such as war, conquest, and slavery soon followed.
3. With more people living in greater proximity, governments and laws arose to keep order and ensure justice (as it was then envisioned). As Hammurabi’s Code illustrates, a range of matters needed regulation.
Learning Objectives:
I can, in the context of a scavenger hunt, select a kind of map that is most relevant to answer particular geographic questions about North Africa and West Asia.
I can organize geographical information by adding it to a map, and identify the kind of map created.
I can analyze a video and maps in order to develop civic knowledge concerning global and Middle Eastern water needs and issues.
I can analyze the vital importance of water to this region, past and present, and the challenge of scarcity through maps and readings centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
I can describe key aspects of Sumerian city life with a focus on religion, education, government, & the economy.
I can analyze works of Mesopotamian literature as primary sources to explain the thoughts and feelings of ancient people who read and wrote these works.
I can analyze Mesopotamian “firsts” related to technology, government, and the organization of societies in order to evaluate the credibility of a source and identify several profound drawbacks of civilization (empire, war and slavery).
I can analyze features and selected laws from Hammurabi’s Code in order to determine its purpose for ancient Mesopotamian society.
I can analyze selected laws from Hammurabi’s Code in order to determine their purpose for ancient Mesopotamian society.
Math with Ms. Tammaro
Helpful Links: grading policies in Cluster 2 Math, an introduction to Desmos, family resource for Unit 3, family resource for Unit 4
We just finished our third unit, which extended what students learned about ratios. Students learned about converting units, unit rates (including speed and unit price), and percent. In the upcoming week before break, students will have the opportunity to complete retakes in class. We’ll also do some review from our earlier units. After break, we’ll have a quick review on division and fractions and then put them together to start dividing fractions in Unit 4.
Have a good break,
Ms. Tammaro
Science with Ms. Ferguson
Make no bones about it! Students will be dissecting owl pellets next week to determine what ravenous raptors (owls) eat for dinner. Owls eat their prey whole. Hours later, they cough up a pellet containing the parts they can’t digest (bones, feathers, etc.). Sixth Grade Scientists will make observations about the shapes of the bones they find. Then, they will use various diagrams to recreate the skeletons of the owl’s prey. Through this, students will make inferences about predator-prey relationships in an ecosystem. Ask your student about it! Please see the Owl Pellet Opt-Out Permission Slip for more information.
What vocabulary do ecologists use to describe an ecosystem? For the past few weeks, students learned about organisms, populations, communities and ecosystems through a research project about an endangered species in Massachusetts. This culminated in a colorful foldable which will be displayed in the school. Next, we learned about one of the major interactions between organisms: predation. Students created a model to demonstrate how energy flows through an ecosystem through predation (a giant food web). After break, we will learn about two other relationships: competition and symbiosis.
Have a safe and relaxing break!
Standards
LS2. Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
7.MS-LS2-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of periods of abundant and scarce resources on the growth of organisms and the size of populations in an ecosystem.
7.MS-LS2-2. Describe how relationships among and between organisms in an ecosystem can be competitive, predatory, parasitic, and mutually beneficial and that these interactions are found across multiple ecosystems.
7.MS-LS2-3. Develop a model to describe that matter and energy are transferred among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem and that both matter and energy are conserved through these processes.
Best,
Ms. Ferguson
ELA with Ms. Martin
Students have been working diligently before the Winter Break. Students have been working through a variety of topics and concepts in their academic courses. As students continue to participate and engage with the content they are developing skills and strategies to navigate the material in a successful manner. We encourage students to take this time away from school to organize their academic materials, refocus their minds and bodies and return excited to learn. Please reach out with any questions, comments or concerns.
