Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln

In Humanities, students in the Red and Green rotations read and discussed chapters 10-13 in The City of Ember. Students discussed predictions and theories that they have about what is to come in the text. There is no homework tonight.

Today in math we furthered our math learning from random ratios to converting different measurements. With our powers combined, we made a list of different units of measure and classified them as “imperial/standard” or “metric”. We made sense of metric system and the use of the word “meter” or “gram” while we discussed why we would need to convert measurements at all! We discussed the 1999 Mars probe that failed due to engineers NOT converting measurements, and we discussed the fatal mistakes of doctors who cannot readily convert from pounds to kilograms which could give them the wrong dosage of medication. It was fun! :)

HOMEWORK: blue and red—Lesson 4 Practice Problems

Some students also were introduced to a new math project! They were pulled during PLT to find out about their new scaled down building project. This was assigned on Math Google Classroom and will be due at the end of the month. :)

We continued reading Wrinkle in Time today with blue rotation having time to work on their setting CSI which is due tomorrow. In yellow rotation we had a discussion around the difference between sameness and equality. To begin our discussion we looked at the excerpt from Winkle in Time which Meg recites the Declaration of Independence as well as another quote from Thomas Jefferson, “there’s nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.” I believe it was an enlightening conversation for these students and encourage you to continue it at home. In the words of George Orwell from Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

For Science Green and Yellow began exploring with gears. We discussed the difference between driving and driven gears as well as how the diameters of each can be used to manipulate torque or speed. Partners worked together to create a circuit to power a motor and then attach two different gear trains. These attempts were recorded as video and turned in as evidence of learning today.

THANK YOU for the tape donation! I didn't see which kid dropped it off. Also, we are still in DESPERATE NEED of shoe box sized boxes for partners to store their solar car projects once we start building them next week.

Finally, parents, are you interested in coming in next Wednesday morning to help with solar car design and prototype building? We are planning to use most of our morning of the early release in station work for solar cars. Please email me (kerin.motsinger@camas.wednet.edu) if you'd like to come in and assist. Thanks!