Team Gryphon Newsletter
Courage, Intelligence, and Strength
General Announcements
Please join us tonight from 5:00 - 8:00 pm to celebrate Sierra's National History Day showcase. Also, don't forget about student led conferences this Thursday night from 3:30 - 7:00 pm. This is a chance for your student to sit down with you and share what they are doing in class.
Class News and Notes
Social Studies
We just completed a successful gallery of projects on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The work was beautiful and showed great care in execution. Everyone should be very proud.
Next week, we begin a three week unit on Westward Expansion with many fun learning activities looking at the multiple perspectives involved. Students will have choices on what content they will focus on to show mastery. We welcome your visits any time and thank you for all your support!
Math 8: We are starting a new chapter on properties of exponents. Students will be working through Chapter 1 in the textbook. Students will have homework assignments 2-3 times during the week. The homework assignments are listed on my classroom calendar located on my website. There are several other in class activities we will be doing as well. We will have a quiz over the properties we have learned next week. Please have students see me before/after school or during Advisement if they need help at any point during this chapter.
Algebra 1: Students have started learning about Quadratic Functions. Students recently created a poster comparing different Quadratic Equations and the similarities and differences between them. We are going to be working through this topic over the next couple of months. It is a new topic so please make sure to let students know to stay on top of homework assignments and not get behind. I am available before/after school or during Advisement for extra help.
Science
We are continuing our learning of chemical reactions and changes in matter. Students have been practicing how to balance chemical equations and demonstrate the Law of Conservation. This week we are going to continue our understanding of chemical reactions by focusing on chemical bonds and the role of energy. The students will apply this information within a lab activity next week and have a lab report assigned.
Health
This week we have continued with our mental health conditions as we progress through a small research project which entails the students to gather information on a specific mental health illness of their choice. They have two days to work on this in class this week, but the final product will be due on Tues. Feb.15th. Our SOS chapter has been pushed back a week and we plan to continue it after the upcoming long weekend. We will complete the Emotional / Social Wellness unit by then and move on to Violence Prevention / Risk Management.