3.3.08
School Advisory Report for Middle School academics, 3.3.08
All middle school students will be touring the Senior Projects Thursday morning
Middle School Art
6th grade made clay portrait busts a la Augusta Savage and abstract portraits like Picasso. Now we are studying folk art and making Mexican bark paintings to dovetail onto Social Studies curriculum. 7th are finishing people in action paintings on canvas after studying Jacob Lawrence. Next we launch into Australian art. 8th created amazing Romare Bearden collages and will make effigy pots after studying Weeden Island and Native n. and s. American pottery. All levels have written reflections about their art.
Art club is currently painting a mural of woodland scenes in the literary garden.
Leslie Peebles
Carolyn Harrell’s classes
1. 6th grade is presenting Shakespeare in the Garden this Tuesday. It’s sonnets, parodies of the sonnets acted out, and an English tea party.
2.On Friday, 8th grade mourned the logic fallacies they have been studying at the Fallacy funeral which was followed by a stretch limo ride to Cracker Barrel for comfort food. Kudos to Candies’ Limo Service who gave us a fabulous deal.
3.All classes produced Vocabulary Valentines just a bit ago. That’s always messy and fun.
4.Another work day on the Literary Landscape is being planned for late March. The Gainesville Sun will attend and do an article.
5.Dr. Craig Kitchens, PKY alum and noted authority and story teller on rattlesnakes will speak to my 7th and 8th graders (and Randy’s Herps) this Wednesday. This is in conjunction with Yearling, Huck, and Idella.
6.The literary art magazine, Making Waves is launching its own March Madness to finish all 64 pages of writing and art spread layout and deliver to the printer by the first week in April. The staff will take a field trip to Storter-Childs to see the off-set printing process in action.
7.6th grade speech class is finishing their compare/contrast speeches and summary speeches on magazine articles. They film their speeches, get critique, then present to the whole class. Soon, Vivian Filer will be here to help us with the art of story-telling after which we will tell our stories in some kind of fun and educational setting yet to be devised. Every single 6th grader, no matter how nervous they are, presents a speech every time one is required. That’s pretty amazing, I think. They have each done nearly a dozen speeches.
I’m ready to stop now and you’re probably tired of reading this. Thanks for all you do. As far as the Blog, I’m with whatever the group decides.
Carolyn
Middle School Spanish
The exploratory Spanish class is turning in their second set of books they’ve written in Spanish. During the 4th nine weeks we are hoping to find an elementary class with the time for us to share our best work.
Annamarie
6th Grade Science
Science- Sixth graders worked on an inquiry lesson for the Weathering and Soil unit. They designed and performed an experiment to determine what type of soil would be better for the growth of a bean seed. They chose the soil profile: sand, topsoil, clay or a combination of them. They were really excited checking the plants every morning or during class for about ten days. They are doing an awesome job writing all their lab procedure and conclusions (scientific methods steps) in their lab notebooks.
Then, along with the Weather Awareness Week proclaimed by the governor the students learned about weather. They prepared posters about different severe weather conditions: hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, thunderstorms, etc. They also learned to read the newspaper weather report.
We are now starting the unit on plate tectonics and earthquakes.
Thanks,
Mayra Cordero
6th grade World Cultures
We have completed our Mexican Yarn Paintings, and have moved into Central America and the Caribbean, while here we learn about gov’t and economics of the area. This week we are applying our new knowledge while looking at the influence of Pirates on the Caribbean.
Brian
7th grade Science
In 7th grade science we just finished studying reptiles and amphibians and move on to warm-blooded vertebrates such as birds and mammals. Today the students are flying their paper “birds” and discussion how different wing shape adaptations tell much about a birds way of living
Randy
7th grade World Geography
Asia, Globilization; Wall Mart, Disney, outsourcing (where our clothes are from)
7th grade LA
Newspaper project – Groups writing, editing and publishing their own newspapers.Field trip to the Gainesville Sun in February.expository/informational text.FCAT-based peer editing.
FCAT prep:Text interaction/Text coding:engaging kinesthetically with FCAT passages.
7th math
“We’ve been spending some time reviewing FCAT questions so students feel comfortable taking the test next week. We will also be involved with our Storybook Project, an interdisciplinary project which incorporates math and language arts. Students will be creating illustrated storybooks that will explain how to add and subtract integers OR how to find the measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode).”
8th Grade
The 8th grade went to the IFAS Plant Research & Education Unit last Monday to connect to Tangerine. (better late than never, right?)
Behavior reward trip to Easy Street in Ocala will be in 2 weeks.
8th grade LA
The LA arts intern is teaching media literacy, first focusing on the news. Today a crime scene investigator from the Alachua County Sheriff’s Forensic Unit is visiting our classes to be interviewed by the students and to show forensic techniques. The students will then write a newspaper article about the visit.
8th grade Science
is following up their catapult project with several mini-labs on roller coasters in their Physcis unit. They will be looking for the transfer between kinetic and potential energy to keep an object moving.
8th grade Math
Final FCAT review and preparation.
Ratio & Proportion
Slope and Linear Equations
Geometry in My World