clc middle school news -...
TRANSCRIPT
CLC Middle School News October 24, 2014
More Cross Country Success Way to go, Green Team! Cornerstone’s runners participated in the Aucilla Christian Warrior Stampede last Saturday at the IFAS Jefferson County Extension Property out near Monticello. Congratulations to our girls team for placing 2nd overall after Holy Comforter and ahead of Florida High! Only three of the middle schools had at least 5 participants in the race (the minimum). Our top five girls were Maia M. (11th overall), Naomi R. (14th overall), Danielle
J. (16th overall), Skylah R. (22nd overall), and Lillee T. (25th overall). We had four boys participate in the meet, including Sean C. (30th overall), Loic C. (31st overall), Roan T. (37th overall), and Connor O. (38th overall). Full results are available at http://fl.milesplit.com/meets/172068/results/333896 for girls and http://fl.milesplit.com/meets/172068/results/333892 for boys.
Halloween Policy Reminder Students who celebrate Halloween are allowed to wear a costume to school next Friday, as long as no elements of it are inappropriate or scary for the youngest students on campus to see. Please also do not bring or send candy to be distributed to friends or classmates at school. Thank you!
Dates to Note TOMORROW! Oct. 25 (Sat) Pumping Carving & Potluck 5:307:30. Bring your own pumpkin to carve and a dish to share. It’ll be a great evening! Oct. 27 (Mon.) MS Service Learning Groups will help at HOPE, Second Harvest, or on campus locations. Oct. 27 (Mon.) CLC Soccer v. Wakulla Christian 4:00 @ Tom Brown Park Nov. 3 (Mon.) CLC Soccer v. SAS 4:00 @ The Meadows Nov. 6 (Thurs.) CLC Soccer v. Comm. Christian 4:00 @ The Meadows Nov. 7 (Fri.) End of 1st Trimester Nov. 10 (Mon.) Teacher Planning No Classes
Many Thanks To... Contributors to the annual fund for giving middle school a leading role with high percentages! Austin Mast for coaching the CLC cross country runners Melanie and Karl Hicks for their service at Cafe Cornerstone this week supplying refreshments
C l a s s r o o m U p d a t e s As an International Baccalaureate World School candidate, Cornerstone Learning Community’s Middle Years Program ensures that students inquire deeply across all the subject areas of Science, Language & Literature, the Arts, Individuals & Societies, Design, Language Acquisition, Physical & Health Education, and Mathematics. Read on for details about how this week’s studentcentered learning integrated academics, service, creativity, selfawareness, and internationalmindedness.
PHysical & Health Education with Chris Gosier, [email protected] 6th, 7th and 8th Grade PE classes are still going strong! All are working on strategies of teamwork and spacial contemplation. Sports classes are working on football, soccer and Cornerstone’s own gutterball.
Spanish with Caroline Hazelton, [email protected] Middle School Spanish (6th Grade)
During our unit on identity and home, students have been watching and reflecting on the situation of having no home by watching Which Way Home, a documentary by Fullbright Scholar Rebecca Cammisa about the plight of child migrants.
Linguistically, students will be assessed on their personal introductions in Spanish on Thursday. Spanish 1 Part A (7th Grade)
¿Qué es tu emergencia? 7th grade can help you out! Upon request, 7th grade Spanish students are learning medical terms in Spanish to assist during a health emergency such as asking about pain, body parts, and other choice words.
They have demonstrated their vocabulary knowledge thus far by translating a segment of “La capercutia roja” (“The Little Red Riding Hood”), by writing their own skits in Spanish and by playing “La ambulancía.”
Spanish 1 Part B (8th Grade) 8th grade has shown off their newly acquired Spanish skills in a multitude of ways this week, the most
evident being their ability to wait on someone in a restaurant setting and order food (that they researched and prepared!) in Spanish. Students also followed the “all questions in Spanish” protocol successfully with adding complete Spanish at random conversations in the mix. Some students even translated the Spanish version of “Let it Go” (Libre soy) from Frozen for the younger grades!
Next week, we’ll continue to move on to reflexive verbs; these are tricky, but definitely possible for these students!
Science with Karen Metcalf, [email protected] PHysical Science (8th Grade)
This week physical scientists determined the density of solids and liquids. In the process they learned why we don’t always write down every digit that the calculator tells us when multiplying and dividing measurements. Next week we continue discovering characteristic properties when the students measure the density of a gas and determine the freezing point of a substance.
In preparation for any experiment conducted during class, students are expected to complete the prelab activity. This requires a bit of reading and writing out the materials, procedures and safety concerns for an experiment. It seems a good time to remind everyone that this task is not optional and will cause a student to miss out on free time during lunch when experiments need to be made up.
Life Science (6th and 7th Grades) Ecologists worked hard all week to justify the need for preserving a habitat. Acting in this role, students
developed an essay, brochure or infographic that explained the justification for their own Ecosystem Protection Act. Legislators, I hope you are listening!
Language & Literature Drafts of the comparison/contrast essays were tucked away into folders this week. We will give them a
rest and take a fresh look for revisions later next week. All classes have now begun our international literature unit for this year: The Cow of No Color: Riddle Tales
and Justice Stories from Around the World. Our reading of these 24 short stories will be interwoven with a study of the surrealistic, lineart illustrations in the book. Throughout the integrated unit, we are inquiring
into how both authors and artists both narrative to express ideas about fairness and civicmindedness.
For the first activity, students examined four of the illustrations to identify surrealistic vs. realistic features; discuss a creative choice the artist made and its effect; explain how the artist used different kinds of lines; and wonder about the illustrator’s intent.
Then we enjoyed the first story a “poetic justice” tale from Ghana in reader’s theater format.
Ask your student how the Ghanaian wisewoman, Nunyala, devised a way to avoid an unfair execution.
Design Architectural Design with Karen Metcalf, [email protected]
Students continue to think about Universal Design implementation in buildings of their own design. Graphic Design with Laura Young, [email protected]
The group has done an awesome job thoughtfully evaluating a variety of yearbook cover options using criteria and then making a recommendation based on those criteria. We’ve narrowed the choices from 13 to 3 and are ready to ask a panel of faculty to weigh in on the decision.
Meanwhile, logo creation continues... the first final designs have been posted to Edmodo. Interactive Fiction Design with Laura Young, [email protected]
The students’ detailed plans for how to make their particular game idea a reality show clear thinking about the materials, tools, and process needed. By Friday, several scripts began to take shape!
Visual Arts with Jana Kiwala, [email protected] 2D Art
The class continues to practice showing depth and texture through line and shading, working from photographs. We looked at the artwork of Joe Hutto, a wildlife researcher and author who will be visiting CLC. Mr. Hutto draws and sketches the animals that he works with from life. We are planning a trip up to the first grade chicken coop to practice life drawing!
3D Art Our artists have added another layer of paper mache to their sculptures and most have added eyes. Our
next step will be to adhere textural elements and before adding color. Civics & Economics with Jessica Kimelman, [email protected]
We began our week with our usual routine before a quiz: study/quizeachother/copyanymissing information. This gives students a chance to fill in any blanks, ask more questions, and help each other.
Tuesday, 6th and 7th graders took the second content quiz, and 8th graders took it Wednesday. After the quiz, we began our next unit a study of our founding documents with the introduction of the
Frame sheet for taking notes. 7th and 8th graders used it in previous years, and it is a great visual way to see the key topic, main ideas, and supporting details of a unit and how they relate to each other. We learned about the background to the Declaration of Independence using the Frame, and its key parts.
History Fair topics should be in the air! All 6th graders will create individual exhibits, and 7th graders have the choice to work individually or in groups, as well as the choice of format (website, documentary, drama, paper, or exhibit).
8th graders should all be at work on their prezis. Final drafts of the research question and action plan are
due next Monday. 8th graders also had a chance to learn about careers in Social Sciences during Friday’s Cafe Cornerstone.
Ask your student why the ending of the French and Indian War was so important to the Declaration of Independence, and what life was like for the colonists during that 13year gap.
Performing Arts with Patty Callender, [email protected] Singing Circle
We are getting ready to share our time and talents next week at dropoff as part of the Annual Fund campaign. Our group is sounding awesome we hope you can stay for a few minutes next week to hear us!
Fusion Band This week we looked at chord progressions with a minor vi (6). Both of the songs we have elected to work
on have a minor vi chord combined with the traditional I IV and V chords (1,4,5). Students need to continue to work on their individual parts during athome practice times.
Math with Ai Ying Choong, [email protected] 6th Grade Middle School Math
The class began reading the script for “Operation Central” and discussed the big confusing math problem involving order of operations. Roles were assigned and swapped around. Next week, they will begin to put their lines on index cards and began memorizing their lines. Ms. Patty Backes will visit us on Thursday to coach the students on dramatizing this mathinspired play.
We also summarized all of our calculations for the bedroom redecoration project. Students prepared their individual prezi to share with their friends their calculations as well as the types of floor and paint that they would be purchasing for the redecoration.Through this period of time, they have multiplied and divided decimals to find the areas of wall and ceiling, cost of the flooring and paint of their choice as well as taxes for their purchases.
As part of their homework assignment for the next few days, they are going to take a look at the four steps to problemsolving and review a few number system concepts that would be part of the test, scheduled for Tuesday, Oct 28.
HS Algebra 1 Part A The class continued their study of matrices this week. They looked at how rational numbers are arranged
in matrices of different sizes, and added/subtracted matrices with the corresponding rows and columns. This also serves as a review for the unit 1 assessment.
Several students have been given time to make up missing work either for their HOPE Community project or the Party Planning assessment project. This will complete their study of the tools of algebra, before we begin solving equations in the coming weeks.
Students also investigated number properties, and studied the basic laws guiding algebraic manipulation. After researching the properties on their own, they began making a jeopardy game to challenge the other teams in class.
HS Algebra 1 (Part B) AND 8th Grade Middle School Math This group began their week by exchanging their review packets (Algebra 1 and 8th Grade Math), and then
working these problems out together in class. We have many (student) teachers throughout this week, as the review intensified prior to the final assessment.
Students will begin to review concepts previously taught in Algebra 1A in preparation for their final exam in a few months. We will begin by reviewing solving equations and then bridge into our next unit, which is solving systems of equations.
We also looked at a plan for problem solving and used these four steps to solve problems of the week (POW) in class.
HS Geometry Students began the week by analyzing and creating advertisements to explore logical reasoning. They
collected advertisements in several different media and identified conditional statements used in them.They studied the converse of these statements and determined if the truth values of these conditional statements and their converses. Finally, they created several interesting advertisements that are really convincing. Next week, they will be creating a larger advertising campaign to promote their product or service.
This group also took a final assessment for the unit on proofs and reasoning. Students later watched part of the movie Clue and used their deductive reasoning to write a paragraph proof. We also read 5Minute Mysteries to check our ability to identify false or missing proofs.
Events around us: 1) Math Kangaroo registration is currently taking place. Competition Day is on March 19, 2015 at 4 pm. Please visit www.mathkangaroo.org to register. 2) Chiles Mini Mu is on Dec 13 this year. I will let you know as soon as there is more information from Chiles, but mark this date on your calendar. Cornerstone Learning Community engages each learner in a respectful, nurturing school that values
High Academic Expectations Diversity Social and Environmental Responsibility Developmentally Appropriate Challenges
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