Our Robin Hood adventure continues! We have been working hard on completing the different activities from the hyperdoc as well as reading and focusing on comprehension fill-in notes. We will continue to talk about inferencing and character traits while we read on with partners, and sometimes independently. Students should review notes on characters and be prepared for quizzes. Continue to check Google Classroom for announcements.

We are almost done with our unit on Ancient Israel. We watched an old cartoon with the Exodus story, we were history detectives, wrote Dear Abby Letters and really looked into proving history in many different ways! Students completed higher level thinking with primary and secondary source analysis and did fantastic! We talked about the origins of Thanksgiving and how there are ancient celebrations similar to our holiday! Great participation from all students! Students enjoyed “No Homework November” in my class and did Exit Tickets before leaving each class. We didn’t do less work, we did different work. I think the students appreciated this. They are awesome and I wanted to make November a little less stressful. We will be completing the unit this week and will begin Ancient Egypt. All grades are posted on Aspen, keep up to date on google classroom. Email me with any questions. Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!

It was great to meet many of you during conferences. If you ever want to sit down with me, please feel free to send me an email and we can plan a time to meet. We were working with percents before Thanksgiving, and we’ll begin to look at equations before the December break. Our next test will be Thursday, December 13th for E & F blocks and Friday December 14th for A, B, & C blocks. We will continue with the weekly IXL and TenMarks assignments. IXL will have two topics and the students need to get a 70 each week. On TenMarks, the students will be given 10 problems and they need to make sure they submit when they are finished. In addition to the weekly assignments, there will also be some extra assignments on TenMarks that students can work on to prepare for the test. IXL has a variety of topics that students can do at any time. Keep in mind that there is tutoring available during Powerblock on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There is also some after school extra help on Mondays & Thursdays, but you may want to check with me first. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

This month we have started our adventure into the Klondike. We’ve spent time exploring what life was like during the 1898 Gold Rush by using a hyperdoc. This is the setting of our latest novel, The Call of the Wild.

We are about halfway through this detailed masterpiece. Their book and packet should be coming home every night. They can be found on Google Classroom if they don't have their hard copies. There is a quiz after each chapter, which is directly linked to their homework packet. We will continue the novel throughout December and, hopefully, we will wrap it up by December break with a test, novel, and an in-class project.

Please keep checking Google Classroom for assignments and upcoming events.

Science class has been very exciting with the end of Unit 1, and the beginning of our engaging new unit on Earthquakes and Volcanoes. The students definitely seem to be enjoying learning about how things that happen miles underground can have major impact and implications on the Earth’s surface. We added a little bit of math into the unit when we tracked and mapped the most recent earthquakes using lines of latitude and longitude. It was great to see how almost all of the major recent seismic events happened right on or near the boundaries of the tectonic plates (and luckily, not close to Massachusetts!)

Next up is some explosive learning about volcanoes! We will hopefully finish out the unit with a fun earthquake jello lab, so if anyone would like to contribute to the classroom, we will be needing some jello packets! (Any flavor/color is fine!) I am excited to start our next environmentally-conscious unit about energy sources - where our energy comes from now, and where we can get energy in the future. The topic always raises some very thought-provoking questions, discussions, and sharing of ideas. Please continue to check Google Classroom for updates, assignments, and other information, as well as to monitor weekly research assignments, and check in on Aspen!