Cluster 2 News
January 25, 2024
Cluster 2 News!
Hello Parents, Guardians, and Caregivers,
Greetings!
- Believe it or not, progress reports for term 2 are available in the PowerSchool Portal. Now is a great time for students to complete any missing work.
- Also, i-Ready testing will be on Monday Jan. 29 and Tuesday Jan. 30. Be sure your student comes to school with a charged Chromebook.
- Finally, Caregiver University will be on February 8th. See the flyer below for information and how to sign up.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you!
Best,
Cluster 2 Team
English with Ms. Soares
Hello!
We are wrapping up our first round of book clubs next week. Students have had several weeks to explore different parts of America’s history through the eyes of characters their own age. Students have had insightful and impactful discussions about the stories, the lessons they hold, and their own analysis through discussions on Fridays.
The expectation is that your student is reading for 20 minutes at least 4 days of the week. They can read books, graphic novels, comics, or listen to an audiobook. Some ways you can help your student is to remind them to read, bring them to the library, or even read with them!
Social Studies with Mr. McDermott
Unit 6.2 Western Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa
Essential Questions
Why do human communities create government and laws?
What common elements do religions share and how do their differences matter?
How is the physical environment connected to people and the way they live?
Enduring Understandings
Students will begin to understand that:
The predictability of the Nile’s floods, and the agricultural prosperity they brought, gave the Egyptian and (later) Nubian government a stability that was unusual in the ancient world; the pharaonic system in Egypt lasted over 2800 years. These features also contributed to a religious cosmology that emphasized Ma’at (order and justice) as the norm established by the gods, and eternal life as a possibility. Ma’at was an ideal that also structured families and social roles.
The earliest religions of Western Asia and North Africa were polytheistic, filled with deities inspired by nature and human nature. Men and women found a place for themselves within these religions as worshippers and priests/priestesses. Political and religious power were joined, with monarchs either seen as divine themselves or as semi-divine intermediaries with the gods; the authority of these theocratic rulers was absolute.
After the collapse of Bronze Age societies in the Western Mediterranean, the Phoenicians and later the Persians demonstrated that new models of governing could work: either a network of maritime city-states organized around trade, or a vast multi-ethnic empire that knit its territories together through civic and administrative innovations.
Learning Objectives:
- I can assess the credibility of sources relating to the geography of the Nile River Valley in order to draw conclusions about how the Nile shaped life in Egypt and Nubia.
- I can analyze the credibility of a source concerning the role of the pharaoh, and trace the ruler’s and others’ positions in the social hierarchy.
- I can categorize Egypt’s gods and goddesses by function and decide which would be the relevant deity for solving various civic or personal challenges.
- I can depict the practices and rituals that ancient Egyptians believed would secure an afterlife by creating illustrated summaries based on primary and secondary sources.
- I can use evidence in primary sources to refute historical narratives about Nubia.
- I can generate inquiry supporting questions for the Guiding Question “Were women powerful in ancient Egypt and Nubia?” and examine textual and visual sources to answer them.
- I can use student-generated supporting questions and diverse evidence to answer the Guiding Question “Were women powerful in ancient Egypt and Nubia?”
- I can use knowledge and evidence from sources to support, in debate-style, an assigned position on the question “Were women powerful in ancient Egypt and Nubia?”
- I can explain the causes and effects of the Bronze Age Collapse using a secondary reading.
- I can describe how the Phoenicians innovated in civic life and maritime trade.
- I can analyze innovations in Persian government and civic life in order to argue their hierarchy of importance to the empire’s success.
Math with Ms. Tammaro
Helpful Links: grading policies in Cluster 2 Math, an introduction to Desmos, family resource for Unit 4, family resource for Unit 5
We are somehow already at our midpoint of the year! In the coming week, students will complete a math reflection and survey during class. The purpose of this is both to look at the past five months and celebrate the learning students have done as well as to look forward and see how we can grow and improve.
In our last unit students worked hard to conceptually understand fraction division. They used strategies such as drawing diagrams and using common denominators to break a total into equal groups. They worked through problems in the contexts of recipes, planting flowers, and comparing distances. In the last part of the unit, we’ll spend a little bit of time using fraction multiplication and division in geometry contexts by finding volume of rectangular prisms with fractional dimensions.
After, we’ll move on to Unit 5 which is all about decimal operations. We’ll spend a bit of time reviewing basics such as place value, addition, and subtraction. This will set up a great foundation for working on different ways of understanding multiplication and division with decimals.
Thanks!
Ms. Tammaro
Science with Ms. Ferguson
There will be a new museum in town….The Cell Museum. Students will be working in teams to research a specific organelle and to create a 3D model of it! Then, they will create a “museum” to show what they know. When visiting the “museum,” students will see how all of the organelles work together to make a functional cell. Next week, ask your sixth grader which organelle they are working on! This is a long-term project that we will be working on for a few weeks. More information including class specific schedules and due dates will be found on Google Classroom! In case you missed it, here is more information about Science Class this year.
Standards
Grade 6: Life Science: 6.MS-LS LS1. From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
6.MS-LS1-1. Provide evidence that all organisms (unicellular and multicellular) are made of cells. Clarification Statement: • Evidence can be drawn from multiple types of organisms, such as plants, animals, and bacteria.
6.MS-LS1-2. Develop and use a model to describe how parts of cells contribute to the cellular functions of obtaining food, water, and other nutrients from its environment, disposing of wastes, and providing energy for cellular processes.
Thanks!
Ms. Ferguson
ELA with Ms. Martin
Students have been working on a variety of topics and academic skills throughout their classes. It is important to continue to support our students in areas of time management, organization and resourcefulness. Critical thinking and problem solving and necessary skills that students can continue to develop outside of the classroom. Engaging in conversations about what is taking place at school and in the Watertown Community can provide families opportunities to have meaningful and deep conversations. There are many upcoming events happening including iReady Testing on the 29th and 30th of January. It is also encouraged that Cluster 2 students reference the priority assignments slides in their guidance google classroom. This will help support students identify and complete their missing work. Please also note that WMS offers learning lab after school which is an excellent service where students can receive additional support with homework, classwork and projects.