COWs - Week 3

7th grade COWs were returned today with comments, and all 6th grade COWs will be returned tomorrow with comments. The new COW for Week 3 was assigned today. Notice that one of the constraints has to do with not only who can go in the boat at one time, but also what can go in the boat. Think tonight about how you will represent the who and what as they travel.


Fact Fluency - we are working to help students develop 'automaticity' with basic math facts. The four arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) with single digit numbers should be 'automatic', meaning a student just knows them without having to think about it. Without automaticity the development of higher-order skills - multi-digit addition, fractions, and problem solving, will be severely impacted. Think of it as freeing up brain space to work on problems rather than using it up on basic math facts. We will have timed 'mad minutes' for all four operations each day this week, and then calculate the mean of each operation. We will do this again periodically throughout the year to see our growth. For practice, you can go to MATH FACT PRACTICE.

7th Grade

Check out this website for interquartile range help.
box and whisker plot website

Challenge of the Week

Attached are copies of this week's COW for you use.

COW #2 7th Grade
COW #2 6th Grade

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY!

The Morehouse School of Medicine’s Ben Carson Saturday Science Academy has extended an invitation to the students at our school to participate in our science enrichment program from October 9-November 20 (Saturdays ONLY). The program runs from 9am-1:30 pm offering extensive hand-on science experiments which include dissections and also a robotics component. We also include parental workshops on various issues pertaining to children. The purpose of our program is to introduce students to the health sciences field. Students in 4th-8th grade can participate. Registration dates are from August 2-August 31 so please act fast!
Ben Carson Science Academy Link:

http://www.msm.edu/community_health/commhealth_trainingprograms/commhealth_trainingprograms_ben.aspx

COWs

This week's Challenge of the Week was assigned today, and each student received a 3-prong folder to complete the work in. Some helpful links for the knowledge portion may be found to the right.

Drilling for Oil

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. On Monday, we will be introducing our first 'Unit of Study' looking at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Click here to see a video about drilling for oil in general. After watching this video, please post a comment to the blog.

6th Graders - one area of our learning expectations in Science this year is geology. We started an experiment about fossil fuels on Thursday. We will look at the results on Monday. I posted a link to a video about fossil fuels on the previous blog. Please remember to post your comments to this video.

Fossil Fuels

In sixth grade today, we began an experiment to investigate fossil fuels. One of the concepts we explored is "What are fossil fuels?" The attached link has some great information - check it out!
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/6187-energy-what-are-fossil-fuels-video.htm

In seventh grade, we began a lab to explore the behavior of oil in water. We will continue the lab tomorrow. Students need to measure the area of a rectangle or a circle. We will continue with this lab tomorrow.

For both grades, we have had great progress for our Challenge of the Week (COW). It has been reviewed daily, and will be turned in tomorrow for a grade. I will be returning the graded COWs next week.

We will also be celebrating our first 'Success Day' tomorrow during the last hour of the day. Students who have completed the Math, Reading, Writing, and Research portions of their Summer Activity Journals will participate.