Friday, February 28, 2014

Dynamic Dialogue 3/28/14

Happy Full Week Dynamic Team!


Upcoming Events:       Mar. 4th – 25th Scholastic Book Fair
                                      Mar. 11th and 13th Parent/Teacher Conferences
                                      Mar. 13th  Spring Picture Day
                                      Mar. 14th – 23rd Spring Break



Important Information:
    Below is the link to sign up for the Student Conferences on Tuesday, 11 March or Thursday, 13 March; the 20 minute time blocks begin at 4:00 and the last appointment begins at 7:40. Choose any one of the Dynamic blocks: A, B, C, or D.
Click here for information on the FamilyEnrichment Fair.  If you would like to activate your Edline account, please contact Mr. Daniels or Mrs. Pettid for your activation code.

The 8th Grade registration is open and forms should be turned into the Hixson Middle School office as soon as you are able. Remember the electives are scheduled on a first come, first served basis.

English –

     A busy and productive week for English students. Our week began with a visit to the library and persuasive writing in response to our current reading "After Twenty Years." Next students either participated in a class discussion as a follow up to the persuasive writing or worked independently on searching for details in the text to support questions related to foreshadowing, which is one of the traits that O.Henry's writing is famous for. Also, students practiced taking on a character's tone by writing a letter from the story character to a classmate evaluating their advice. Finally, students worked together to brainstorm sentence variations for our sentence combining work. On Friday, students will have computer workshop time to wrap up the week's assignments.

Grades in the portal were updated today. :)

Susan Artkras – artkras.susan@wgmail.org


Math- 

Wilma Slaughter – slaughter.wilma@wgmail.org

Science –
In Dynamic Science this week the students completed a lab investigating specific heat capacity of sand, water, and soil. The recorded the temperature every minute of each of the materials while in exposed to a heatlamp for 15 minutes, then another 15 minutes with the heatlamp turned off. The students created a line graph for their data. The conclusion the students wrote consisted of four parts: results, hypothesis, evidence, and possible sources of error. The students created a GoogleDoc and moved their conclusion document into a shared folder. Understanding the uneven heating of different materials enables the students to account for many of the differences in regional climate.



The students took the Weather Unit formative quiz for the third time on Monday, 24 February. You should be seeing their scores improving every week. This is a Quia online quiz (www.quia.com/web) which covers the concepts of the entire weather unit. I RECOMMEND your student takes the Quia quiz two or three times over the weekend using their notes as a learning experience. As you check the portal, remember Weather Unit Formative Quiz is just a road sign to help students check their understanding of the major concepts of the unit and do not figure into their semester grade. Since the quiz covers all the concepts of the unit, the total points possible has been adjusted down to the topics covered up to this point in time to more accurately reflect their level of understanding. The students will take the quiz again on Monday, 3 March 2014.

Next week the students will investigate warm fronts, cold fronts, stationary fronts, and climate factors.

We have covered the following concepts so far this semester:
1.    Kinetic temperature theory with the 3 temperature scales Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin, including absolute zero.
2.    Density of air and air pressure.
3.    Properties of cold and hot air masses.
4.    Weather caused by the center of a low pressure and weather caused by the center of a high pressure.
5.    The Direction of winds around a low or high pressure centers.
6.    The three states of matter (solid, liquid, & gas) and the freezing/melting & boiling/condensation transition zones.
7.    The 3 ways of heat energy is transferred: convection, conduction, and radiation.
8.    Heat energy moves up and from hot towards cold.
9.    Winds blow away from the high pressure and towards the low pressure.
10.  Interpreting weather station plots.
11.  Understanding cold fronts, warm fronts, and stationary fronts.
12.  Understanding the how rain, sleet, hail, snow, and freezing rain are formed.
13.  Specific heat capacity of different materials.

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

Dynamic Science Course Website

Dynamic Systems Science – Coach Daniels - daniels.mark@wgmail.org

Social Studies –

Students are continuing their look at ancient Rome.  We have wrapped up the Republic and the beginnings of Empire.  We have also spent some time looking at the tremendous architectural and engineering achievements of the Romans.  Next week we will continue with Rome by focusing on life for  the non-famous people.  My goal is to wrap up Rome by Spring Break.  The Classical World test will be March 13th..  Fingers crossed, there will be no more “bonus days”.

After school help is available in my room every Tuesday until 4:00
 


Dynamic Social Studies Course Website:

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

Please visit the following links for more information:


Dr. Heisserer's blog - http://hixsonprincipal.wordpress.com/




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