Friday, January 11, 2013

Dynamic Dialogue 1/11/13

Welcome Back Dynamic Team!

Upcoming Events:           Grades will be mailed home January 11th
                                       MLK Holiday – January 21st
                                       Orchestra Festival - January 24th, 7 - 9 p.m.
                                       Hixson Adult Trivia Night – January 26th

Important Information:            If students have not yet cleaned out their binders and restocked their school supplies, they should still do that.  Some students may need a few new spirals and to check the workability of their binders.  We have had several students asking for pencils and erasers this week, so they should restock those, as well.
                                                The Hixson Adult Trivia night is coming up.  Attached you will find a registration form:  https://docs.google.com/a/wgcloud.org/file/d/0B47t0_AnyTUhd2Y4S3I5cF9jUkU/edit.
English –


Susan Artkras – artkras.susan@wgmail.org


Math – 
Mrs. Slaughter was out this week, but students have continued their work with Shrinking and Stretching.
Wilma Slaughter – slaughter.wilma@wgmail.org

Science –


Welcome back to the second half of 7th grade Dynamic Systems Science! We have stormed into resuming our weather unit this week!  We have been discovering the kinetic temperature concept and air density/pressure! The students are doing data collection and graphing temperature and barometric pressure over time on the same graph (a new graph type) to analyze the relationship.

Standards based grading (please see bulleted list below) has been very beneficial for student learning and achievement! I have been delighted about the students’ increased focus on learning! Please review with your student about their learning experiences in Science and about their achievements with developing their skills creating data tables and graphs, identifying independent variables, dependent variables, and constants, and writing hypotheses and conclusions.

1.    Can perform skill only with help. (D)
2.    Can perform some or most the skill independently. (C)
3.    Can perform all important aspects of the skill independently. (B)
4.  Can transfer the skill to a new situation or set of circumstances never seen before, or make a prediction about something which has not been tested. (A)

Weather Unit Outline:


In Dynamic Science today we are working on Goal #1: I am able to describe the movement of energy through the biosphere. The students wrote a hypothesis about which of the following would be the hottest or coldest:
  1. Shallow pond water
  2. Deep pond water
  3. Sunny asphalt
  4. Shady asphalt
  5. Sunny concrete
  6. Shady concrete
  7. Sunny grass
  8. Shady grass
Then we went outside to collect data from thermometers. We have been talking about significant figures in our measurements which allows scientists to keep one uncertain number. Today that meant estimating how far in between the lines on the thermometer the liquid was. Hence all the Celsius measurements had one decimal point to it. The students have also been converting Fahrenheit to Celsius and inches of Hg to millibars of Hg for barometric pressure every day and then graphing the data. When barometric pressure is falling the weather will become cloudy and rainy!

After they collected their temperature measurements they entered the data on a GoogleCloud document. You might ask your student to show it to you.


The links for the course websites are listed below:

If you have any questions or comments please let me know.

Dynamic Systems Science – Coach Daniels


314-918-4603



Social Studies –
On this first week of the new semester we have continued with Ancient Greece.  We have explored the secrets of the Parthenon, and looked at the three dominant eras in Greek art.  Next week we will focus on Athens and Sparta and towards the end of the week we will begin our Greek Myth Books.
I am available for after school help every Thursday until 4:00 p.m.
The links for the course websites are listed below.
Course Websites:

Lisa Pettid – pettid.lisa@wgmail.org
314-918-4602

Please visit the following links for more information:
Hixson home page - http://schools.webster.k12.mo.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectionid=7
Dr. Heisserer's blog - http://hixsonprincipal.wordpress.com/


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