8th Grade Team October Newsletter

Staying connected to our families is important to our teachers. In addition to the front page of our Canvas courses, we are excited to share this monthly newsletter with our families to keep you aware of upcoming events, activities, lessons, units, and materials from our classes! The 8th Grade Team has compiled this newsletter to share some of the upcoming experiences your student will be having with us. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child's teachers!

As a reminder, the final day of the 1st Quarter is Thursday, October 20th. Families are encouraged to use the instructions at the bottom of this newsletter to check Canvas regularly for students' progress in each class.

Students finished Zentangles recently. The concept for this artwork is to mindfully add repetitive shapes and patterns to their paper. Students chose a silhouette image to center their work, then filled the entire thing with a wide variety of learned or custom patterns. Using sharpies provided high contrast and a brilliant effect. Students found the process relaxing as they could just get into the “zone” and freely draw without fear of “not doing it right.” The results were incredible! Featured Artist: Gianna Cazares

8th Grade choir has been hard at work learning pieces that range many styles. Mainly, they have been learning how to read multiple musical parts at once, splitting into THREE distinct sections. This month, they will finish up their fall pieces and transition into new music for the holiday concert. 8th Grade students will have the opportunity to audition for JAM Fest: a music competition at the high school. Students will be preparing pieces for auditions in Mid-October. 8th grade choir will also have the option to audition for a select choir that will meet during 8th grade intervention. More on that soon.

The 8th grade band had a fun night with the HS Marching Band on Friday, September 23rd. We are now transitioning into “concert band” mode, where we will begin reading through music to select for our Winter Concert.

Students in PE are currently learning new ways to stay physically active both in and outside of school. Last week we learned a little more about volleyball, and over the next few weeks, we will be incorporating soccer! Along with that, we will be adding some fun new games to the mix.

In wellness, we are finishing up our nutrition unit. We are learning about ways to eat healthier, discovering new fruits and vegetables, how to read nutrition labels, and how to plan our meals to resemble MyPlate (a guideline that helps us figure out how much of each macronutrient we should be eating for each meal).

In technology, students have been working on creating Android apps using simple “drag and drop” programming languages. They should soon have an entire soundboard ready to bring home and install on any phone!

Starting next week, these students will be having some discussions about digital citizenship concepts (oversharing online, offline meetings, keeping online discussions civil, and online ethics). These discussions will eventually lead to a summative animation assignment, attempting to teach the concepts.

In World Languages, students just finished translating their way through the Spanish Unit 1 vocabulary list! We have been learning how to pronounce words, practicing our conversation, and will have a speaking assessment coming up. We are going to start learning about the countries and capitals of the Spanish speaking world, so we’ll have a video to practice, and then students will complete a research project about a country of their choice from the Spanish speaking list. We are also going to create posters in Spanish that review the language we’ve already learned and that help students express themselves in the target language.

In ELA, classes are currently in the middle of Unit Two, where students have been reading and analyzing a variety of short stories. We’ve been working hard on identifying elements of plot, conflict, theme, point of view, and even irony. Although this unit is short, students have even had the opportunity to pair up with the other ELA classes to read and analyze “The Tell-Tale Heart” and put together a short presentation on all of the important story elements we’ve been learning about. After this unit, we’ll be moving into Unit Three, which is Informational Reading and Writing. Students will have the opportunity to read a variety of nonfiction texts and research a Science or Social Studies topic of their choice. As always, all classes are still working on their ongoing independent reading projects, too.

Math 8

Students finished Module 1 with a test this week and we will start Module 2 this upcoming week. Module two covers real numbers. By having a solid understanding of real numbers, students will be better prepared to study more advanced mathematical concepts in later courses as well as making mathematical connections in everyday life. The module will include the following concepts: terminating and repeating decimals, roots, irrational numbers, and different kinds of estimation. Please help support your student by doing the following:

• Irrational Numbers: Discuss the necessity to use approximations of irrational numbers and when you might use those approximations, such as using to find the circumference or area of a circle.
• Square Roots: Have your child explain how they would find the dimensions of a square floor, if they knew the area in square feet.

Algebra

Algebra class is just finishing up their unit on linear functions. This was an awesome unit and really showcased students’ knowledge of 7th grade standards so WELL DONE! We began chapter 3 this week that covers all things simplifying - exponents, complex equations and products. Next week, students will take their chapter 2 unit assessment on Tuesday, 10/4. Students will have an abundance of resources supplied to them and will have a full study day in class on Monday, 10/3 - they should bring headphones if they’d like to listen to music that day. Reminder: all quiz corrections must be turned in by the end of the quarter! The last day to submit these will be Thursday, October 20th and I will take corrections from ANY quiz we took in quarter one! To end October, we will have our chapter 3 assessment on Friday, October 28th. As always, please email with any questions!

Mrs. Hall and Mr. Whitt are currently learning about how the Earth was formed through constructive and destructive forces (Earth Science). We will be focusing on the layers of the Earth, and the absolute and relative age of rock layers using index fossil and radiometric dating. This chapter will culminate with the Earth’s History Project where students will work in groups to create their own geologic column of the Earth. This will lead us into the study of Plate Tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes.

In social studies classes, students are beginning an analysis paper on the Lost Colony of Roanoke! Students viewed a video on theories of the Lost Colony attempting to be settled in today the Outer Banks region of North Carolina by the English. Students viewed or listened to a guest lecture by our librarian, Mrs. Conley, about using the resource InfoOhio to research the topic. Students will be submitted in groups an analysis paper on what they believe is the reasoning behind the disappearance of the lost colonists! Starting next week, students will begin learning about each of the thirteen English Colonies established along the coastline of the Atlantic, the settlement of Jamestown, and then will begin creating Colonial Sales Booths to attempt to sell students on moving to their colony!