September is quickly coming to a close. Can you believe it? Hopefully it will cool down a little bit so it is slightly more comfortable in the classroom. We took our second metric conversion quiz this week and we will be moving on to Linear Motion this week.





I have had several students who have come in during their lunch time to receive more help with metrics last week and to retake last week's quiz on Thursday. I wanted to say, "Good Job Guys!" I am really proud of your hard work. Homework Hub also started this week and many students attended. Students can attend Homework Hub on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights after school. I am there on Wednesday nights, but students can get help with any subject every night.





Open House was a great evening and I enjoyed meeting all of you. I am looking forward to seeing all of you again mid-October for conferences. If you need to get in touch with me, please email me using the Milwood Magnet School site or leave a voice message at 337-0670 ext. 236.





Let's have a great week!





Science





Monday, September 24th





Students will be reviewing their quizzes that they took on Thursday. Then we will review the team procedures for taking a reflection. We will then work on Scientific Notation. Students will take notes in their journals about the steps needed to do this and then be given some practice.





Homework: Complete Scientific Notation practice sheet.








Tuesday, September 25th





Students will be going over their homework with Mr. Korchnak as their lead teacher. They will work in groups to be sure everyone understands how to do Scientific Notation. Then students will be given a card that has a number or a number in Scientific Notation. They will be given some think time to figure out how the number could be written in the other form. Then they will do a Kagan structure called "Find Someone...", to find the other student who has the number that is the same as their own. We will practice this several times and with different cards.

HOMEWORK: The Conversion Factor worksheet from last week will be handed back. Students will be asked, if they choose, to correct their mistakes and turn it in on Thursday to get some points back.

Wednesday, September 26th

Mr. Korchnak will be teaching about how distance, rate and time relate to each other. We'll explore this by doing a quite introduction in front of the classroom and then start a two day lab designed to look at how distance, rate and time relate to each other. We'll also work with the scientific method.



Thursday, September 27th

Mr. Korchnak will continue from the previous days activities by conducting our paper airplane experiment from the day before. We'll collect our data and on Monday we will be graphing and working with the data. Students should begin to think about their conclusion for the lab because after we look over the data they will be turning in a short write up on the lab. Making sure to relate it to the relationship between distance, rate and time.



Friday, September 28th

Students will arrive in class and then be taken to work in the Library Classroom! We will be taking our quiz and then working on vocabulary words. Students will then be taken in small groups to work on their Interest sheet to find an article or two that is about the science of the item of interest that they chose.


Ecosystems

Monday, September 24th

Today we will be going outside to do a scavenger hunt in the 8th grade courtyard. Students will be asked to fill in a sheet by finding examples of what we have been talking about in class over the last few weeks.

Wednesday, September 26th

Today we will be using the Michigan Ecosystems posters to solve riddles about plants and animals that are found in each ecosystem. Students will walk around the room going from station to station trying to solve their riddle cards. Afterwards we will take a few examples from the cards and do a short exercise about how populations change based on changes within the ecosystem.



Friday, September 28th

Today we will be exploring the idea of life out of balance. We will watch a few short clips from the documentary Koyaanisqatsi and writing about the contrasting images of nature and human civilization.

HOMEWORK: Students will be asked to write a short story about how live on plant Earth is out of balance and relate it to the images they saw in the clips from the film.