Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Actually I missed Thanksgiving on this blog, so happy belated Thanksgiving too. Life with a baby is busy, and I don't want to miss much in the couple of hours that I have with him after school before he goes to bed.
During the day I haven't had time to do this, I've been teaching and helping kids to understand their math during study hall.

The 8th grade students have been busy learning about algebraic expressions, simplifying expressions, solving equations with expressions on both sides of the equal signs, and graphing inequalities, which also uses a lot of algebra. They are also getting better at problem solving using various strategies, such as drawing pictures, working backwards, making an equation using the information, making a chart to keep track of data, etc.

The 7th grade students have spent a lot of time with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with integers (positive and negative numbers) and also they have been doing some estimating with adding/subtracting decimals that are both negative and positive. They get frustrated with all the negative signs, but they will be thankful one day when they can do it with ease. We will get there.

7/8th grade science students have learned about why volcanoes form, the types of volcanoes, and what kind of materials are ejected out of each volcano type (and why!)They have also spent a bit of time learning about tectonic plates and how all of this action affects the land. We spent a couple of days talking about and making simple topographic maps too.
Students have picked a Volcano that they will either make a model of, or make a poster of, with all the information about the Volcano.(They have received a paper with requirements on it.)Presentations are due January 7th (Thursday)after school resumes.

6th grade students have done all kinds of activities and simple experiments regarding fluid pressure. They learned about Bernoulli's principle (fast moving fluid air-- which allows planes to fly), Archimede's principle, which explains why things float (buoyancy), Gravity, which pulls down on everything, increasing pressure especially deep beneath the sea, Hydraulic machines and how/why they work, and many other interesting things about air and liquid pressure. If they can't explain these things to you, they must have been asleep--we spent a lot of time critically thinking about how these things could work, discussing and doing experiments, and summarizing again what we found out in the experiments.

6/7 Religion students have been focusing on Advent. Mostly, I have been trying to share stories of people helping people. I know that the students hear the scripture stories about important people of faith from centuries ago, but those people's ancestors still exist today and are doing wonderful work in serving God and God's people. Today I read an article that appeared in the weekend edition of the paper about a 15 year old student in Plymouth MN who is raising money for the homeless in the Minneapolis area by sleeping outside in his cardboard box. He has been doing this since he was about 8 years old. His mother made him sleep on the porch where it was locked and safe, but he still braved very cold conditions to help put families in low income housing. Kids have the ability to do great things when they think outside of themselves. We all need to remember how MUCH WE HAVE and to see what we can do to help others who don't have as much. Time is a wonderful, irreplaceable gift.

Merry Christmas and thank you so much for ALL the things you have done to contribute to our classes, our school and our parish! I am in awe of the generosity that our parents/grandparents and other friends of OLL!

In Religion, we started watching a movie about Pope John Paul II, and what he and his family endured throughout the Nazi invasion of Poland. This is a glimpse into his young adult life before he entered into the religious life. Already, I can see how much terror and hardship he faced early on in life. It is amazing how much he was able to accomplish, given his circumstances.

Math 7 students have been practicing finding the greatest common factors and least common multiples of at least two different numbers, sometimes 3 or 4 different numbers. They have also been problem solving with these concepts, so they know some practical uses for finding GCF's and LCM's.

Math 8 students have been solving one and two-step equations, where they have been "undoing" the initial operations by completing the opposite operation, trying to get the variable alone. I thought that they had a good handle on it last week, but today in giving them a quiz, I found out that they need more practice with my guidance.

Science 7/8 students are either completing a test on the Rock chapter or are completing a power point presentation, a brochure, or a travel commercial on a rock formation of their choice. Examples are: Carlsbad Caverns, Copperfalls, Everest, etc. Presentations will start tomorrow, and tests should be handed in by Wednesday.

Science 6 students are just finishing up a chapter on Newton's Laws of Motion and Universal Gravitation. Today we completed a gravity lab in which students tested 4 types of paper to see which one was the strongest when a weight was pulling down on the end of each strip. The practical application is that materials need to be made using products that will be strong enough to hold things up with the added stress of gravity pulling down on it. For example, chains for swings and hangers for clothes or even heavier objects. Students should be learning and able to give examples of both positive and negative affects of both gravity and frictional forces.

Thank you for all your donations, time and efforts towards the Holiday Bazaar!

Hope to see all of our 7th grade parents at teacher's conferences tomorrow.

Stay healthy,
Mrs. Marita

November Greetings!
The flu hit Molly hard this past week, so it has been tough for me to get to the computer in my "spare" time to report on the classroom progress.

6th graders learned about Newton's 3 laws of motion last week, and also made some parachutes to experience the beauty of air resistance. The students picked out their parachute materials from a pile of resources that I provided. A popular choice was birthday balloons to attach their string and weight to. Those students who chose to use plastic bags with their parachutes landed much softer! We'll be discussing why tomorrow.

7/8th grade science students have made very nice posters illustrating the rock cycle. The students were quizzed on 10 samples of the 3 main types of rocks last week and most scored very well on it. Small quizzes will frequently find their way into our lessons from day to day, in holding the students accountable for the information presented to them. We will also be choosing famous landforms, such as the Black Hills and Carlsbad Caverns to make power-point presentations, travel brochures, or video commercials on their rock formations and story of origination. Students will have time to research this project on Thursday.

7th grade math students have started working on solving equations. They have been using negative and positive integers with their equation sums,products,differences and quotients as well.

8th graders have been solving tricky story problems involving mixed numbers with uncommon denominators, and remembering how to borrow from a fraction or mixed number in subtraction problems, as well as getting correct unit measurements and simplifying to lowest terms. We are moving on to solving two-step equations that will also use rational numbers within.

Religion 6/7 has focused on the virtue of charity this past week. Students learned about several non-profit agencies that exist entirely for the welfare of specific target groups, such as Native American Tribe Preservation, Empowerment of Women, Direction and homes for troubled teens,etc. I asked the class why they thought that so many charities currently exist. Some students realized that people are inspired to help others after they have gone through a hard time and they don't want others to have to endure what they did. Also, perhaps someone special helped the founder of that charity when they were in despair, so they are returning the favor for thousands of people experiencing the same hardships. I have been stressing the point that all of God's children deserve to have their needs met, no matter how different they are from us.

I'm looking forward to a healthier week ahead! Hope you are all doing well!

Mrs. M

Religion 6/7: Liturgy
Great job singing and reading, students! Thank you Jacob Berlin for playing your trumpet for one of the songs.

Math 7: Adding and subtracting integers
p. 85, 46-52 and 55, and start on p. 90 1-20

Math 8: Dividing Rational Numbers
odds 1-23 and evens 24-46

Science 6: Friction demonstration results and Newton's 3 laws of motion; no work assigned today.

Mrs. Marita

back at it!

Hello! This is my second day back, so I'll tell you what is going down....

Religion 6/7: We are hosting liturgy for the next two weeks. Please come join us tomorrow! Also, the students decided what 5 commandments teenagers should absolutely obey. Some were not directly out of the 10 commandments, but ones that the students thought affected teenagers. We also decided one out of the 5 was the most important for us, personally. Then, we wrote the one that we struggle with the most, personally, and why it was so hard for us to follow.
Yesterday we attended Eucharistic Adoration in the church, and offered thanks, asked for forgiveness and prayed for those people in our lives who need extra prayers.

Math 7: Students are learning how to use a number line to add and subtract integers. We are learning how to think of negative numbers as in a debt and positive numbers as in a deposit in our checking account. We make a check ledger today and completed some debit and deposit transactions.
We also worked on 13-28 on page 84 to be corrected tomorrow morning.

Math 8: We corrected the 15 odds chosen at random by students from p. 78 that was on multiplying rational numbers. This means that we multipied fractions, whole numbers and mixed numbers that had both positive and negative signs.

Science 7/8: We looked at rock samples and decided which ones fell under the sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous categories and the characteristics that helped us to assign their type.

Science 6: Students played tug of war yesterday, trying to create balanced forces with no movement of the rope and unbalanced forces with one team pulling hard enough to get the other team across the victory line. The most balanced force we could create was with Jackson opposing Matthew! What strong guys!
Today the kids designed demonstrations of how friction slows down objects, in which they used various object like marbles, tennis balls or toy cars on different textured surfaces. They are supposed to state how the surfaces affected the speed of the object and how much of that speed reduction was due to the friction forces at work.

Thanks for all the donations for the Halloween party for Friday! We appreciate all of your support and help!
Good to be back!

Mrs. M

School is underway!

School has started and looks to be going well already! Molly is excited about her year as a Kindergartener! Junior high kids, you have grown over the summer, that's fun to see! Keep in touch and let me know how things are going for you. Making two trips into town each day is not very practical, but at least I get a chance to see all of you and feel like I'm still connected!
Hoping that your learning (and playing) is fun and rewarding!

Love,
Mrs. Marita

Wishing you well

Dear School Families,
One week left of your summer before school starts! As I take care of our newborn son, Samuel, I am thinking of all of you and hoping that you are gearing up for a positive school year.
I will not be starting out the school year in the classroom, as I continue to be on maternity leave until the 26th of October. I will be available for calls and e-mails though, and you will see me around school, as our daughter Molly will be attending Kindergarten.
My maternity sub is Andrea Haugo. She has been busy these last few weeks, preparing for a good start to the year in the jr. high. Please maintain good communication with her during her long-term sub position as the 7th grade homeroom teacher. Please contact her with any concerns that you have, or if you are able to help or volunteer in some way. I will also be checking in with her to stay in tune with the students and their progress.
Thank you for your support. Wishing you all the best at the start of this 2009-2010 school year!

Mrs. Marita