Weekly Update 2/1/13

Weekly Update
2/1/13

This week's bloggers:  Rocco, Paul, Tyler, Emilia, Cassy, Michael K, and Michael P.

Math Ratio Experiment

When we did a math ratio experiment where we tossed 10 pennies and recorded the results. Cecelia said that she learned that she could toss pennies anywhere, and it wouldn't matter, she would still get the same results.   There is always a 50:50 chance but the individual results can vary.

Second Step in Advisory

We are doing a program called Second step to help everyone learn to get along better.  On Thursday we did skits about how to react assertively to a problem that can test your patience. We're all learning how to not be aggressive or passive.  

In this video Cassy is reading the scenario, Owen & Tyler are coaching Emilia by giving her suggestions, and Emilia is using their advice to practice talking to a friend assertively.

Social Studies:  More Ancient Egypt Projects

We finished presenting our Egypt projects this week, and here are some more great ones!

Tyler's Garageband movie about Hatshepsut

Devin's stop-action movie about Egyptian gods & goddesses

Emma's Egyptian royal women poster
She talked how royal woman were close to gods.

Lorie's felucca, complete with crocodiles in the Nile!

Kayce's women of Egypt poster, with facts on a pyramid

Henry's Nile Slideshow about the geography of the Nile River Valley.

                                                              Carol's hieroglyphics poster
                                  The Egyptian hieroglyphs have been used for over 3,0000 years!

 Om's Egyptian god presentation about Ra.  

The most interesting thing Om shared was that Ra rode in a sun boat.

 Claire's Akila's Diary (Claire researched and wrote diary entries for  a modern-day Egyptian girl.)

Alex's hieroglyph tablet:  translation:  "Scribes made journals of daily life."

Nathan's Egyptian god Re (or Ra) presentation.  Nathan shared that Egyptians believed that the weather was decided when Apep and Ra fought.

Rocco and Nathan's pyramids

Rocco made his out of sugar cubes & brown sugar, and Nathan's is made out of cardboard.
The most interesting thing Rocco learned was that each brick weighed 2.5 tons.

Owen's sphinx presentation.  The most interesting thing Owen learned was that people believed the sphinx was the god Anubis.

Rhea's Book of the Dead

∑igma Celebrations!

Emma with her Chinese New Year dragon to decorate Mrs. Hsu's room.

Tyler did a magic trick during team celebration time.  Paul was his assistant, and they baffled the crowd together!

Weekly Update 1/25/13

This week's bloggers, 1/25/13:

Michael P. & Owen
Rhea & Henry
Ben & William

Social Studies:  Egypt Projects

In social studies we chose a topic we wanted to learn more about and researched it.  Popular choices were mythology, pyramids, and pharaohs.  Then we created models, presentations, or whatever we wanted to do to share our learning with the class.  Below are some of our awesome projects.

Patrycja researched and built a model of the Sphinx.

Connor made a comic about Egyptian gods.

Ben researched the mystery of Tut's death.

Charlie made another great stop-action movie, this time about Egyptian tombs.

Trey built a Lego model of the Sphinx.

Matt researched a lot of different gods.

Cassy showed us how papyrus is made with her really detailed model.  Ziran made an Egyptian boat or  felucca and explained how Egyptians used these boats.  Paul made a model of a pyramid and also sculpted a cobra

Sean did a really nice slideshow about the story of Horus and Osiris.

Cecelia built a 3-D, foldout pyramid.

Isabel taught us about mythical Egyptian dragons and cobras.  One represented the circle of life by chewing its own tail!  She also drew the dragons.  This is one of her favorites.

Emilia did a two-part project.  She made a model of the Nile River, and then she also made a display board about the land and rocks around the Nile.

Second Step

In Advisory we are doing a program called Second Step.  We are learning about empathy, which is having feelings for others.  In these pictures below we are practicing scenarios involving respectfully disagreeing.   Now we will try to use the skills we've practiced at home and at school in real situations.

Claire, Keatyn, Nathan W., Emma

Annie, Emilia, Paul, Om

Social Studies:  Daily Lives of the Egyptians Skits

Rhea, Veronica, Annie, and Connor taught us about the mummification process that the Egyptian priests used.  

Patrycja, Sean, Emma, and Michael taught us what Egyptian artisans did--carved stone, painted, and made jewelry.

Nathan W. is a servant at a banquet of Egyptian government officials.  They were just below the pharaohs on the social pyramid and had very fancy feasts where they drank out of gold cups and listened to music.

Here one of the peasant groups is working in the fields and singing a song about how they "love their work."  If they didn't work hard, they could be beaten!

∑igma Celebrations!

Meeting for B.Y.O.T. (Bring Your Own Technology)

We (Rhea, Michael P, Henry, and Ben) were asked by Mrs. Bingaman to make a presentation about bringing our own technology to school for school purposes only. We got to show our presentation to all of the District 25 administrators!  We told them about a set of guidelines we made for using our own technology and answered questions about it.  We were a little nervous about presenting, but we had a lot of fun, too.  Watch our presentation below:

 

  B.Y.O.T. Presentation

Weekly Update 1/18/13

Weekly Update 1/18/13

This week's bloggers: 

Nathan W, Jack B, Alex Y,

Veronica, & Kayce

We love Veronica and Kayce's heart! ♥

LA:  Maniac Magee

In LA, we have started reading aloud and independently Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. The book started out sad but as we got more into the book, it came to be kind of funny! In the book a boy named Jeffery "Maniac" Magee lives with his aunt and uncle because his parents died when he was three years old. He then runs away and actually ends up running for a year!!! We think that the book is very detailed and we can't wait to read more! :)

Social Studies:  Daily Life of Ancient Egyptians

In social studies we learned about the Ancient Egyptian Social Pyramid. We learned that the slaves and peasents were at the bottom, artisans were next, scribes were after, then priests, government officials, and the at the top was the pharaoh. To do a simulation we each got assigned one of these groups on the pyramid and are now making skits to teach the rest of the class about the daily life of each group.   Below are the first skits:  the government officials.

Period 2 government officials after their banquet

Period 3 government officials at their banquet

Science:  Smell Unit
We smelled cotton balls with different scents on them.  We smelled them with our eyes closed, our ears plugged, or both.  We learned that when you smell with your eyes closed you picture the scent in your mind, but it's harder to identify a smell with your ears plugged.  We learned that you need more of your senses than just one to smell things well.  Jack B. learned that raspberry smells really bad.  

Nathan W. smelling lemon

PE Dance Week

In PE we learned different dances from different parts of the world each day.  We learned Irish dancing, Samoan, slap-dancing, New Zealand dancing.  We all had a really fun time learning new dances!

Om learning the New Zealand dance

Irish dancing

Samoan dancing

More Irish dancing

Samaon dancing

Isabel and Tyler in front

Kayce, Patrycja, and Emma in back 

Cassy and Emilia doing Samoan dancing, too

Henry, Michael P, Owen, & Keatyn

Carol (on left) doing the slap dance

Tyler, Keatyn, Kayce, and Patrycja Irish dancing

Weekly Update 1/11/13

Weekly Update 1/11/13

This week's bloggers riding in a felucca (Egyptian boat) with some "ancient" Egyptian artifacts:

Colin, Alex S., Jack S, and Emma

(Connor helped blog, too.)

Social Studies:  Ancient Egypt

We made a basic form of Egypt's geography.  Here we are creating the geography of Ancient Egypt, including the Nile River, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, and Arabian, Libyan, and Nubian deserts, using our bodies.  Then we decided which was the best place to settle during this time.  We all agreed that we would have wanted to live near the fertile Nile River Valley.

Period 2

Period 3

Period 3 settling along the Nile.

Next our social studies classes took a field trip to Egypt. We sailed down the Nile River with our very own tour guide! We visited the Great Pyramid of Giza! We also sent a postcard to someone back home and told a fact about our trip! We barely got back in time for fourth period. :)

Science: Molecule Models

In science we got to make models of molecules using gumdrops! Some were simple little ones while others were hard and complex. It was hard not to eat the gumdrops but we made it through! We even made a model of the element table salt.

Alex Y & Colin's models

Math:  Graphing
In math class this week we made graphs. This is a picture of the graph of the height of the girls and boys in the 4-5 period class.  We recorded all the heights and found the mean, median, and mode of the students' heights.

We each collected data about all of our classmates to make our own graphs.  

Alex S. collected data about ages.  Below are his recorded data and the graph he made. 

∑igma Celebrations! 
Sean was in the GeoBee and he was awesome!

For his science in the news Charlie made a Lego stop motion movie. Stop motion movies are movies made with pictures all put together. When each picture goes by very fast it looks like objects or figures are moving. In each picture you move the moving object very slightly and when they're all put together  the objects seem to move.  But he did it like a boss.  Kudos to Charlie!

Charlie's awesome movie!