WMS: Math/Science Update

Dear Families,

We are starting a wild schedules week here at Whatcom Middle School. We have field trips and MSP's and schedule changes... oh my!

No Homework This Week

• I will send no homework this week. Instead, I asked students to Sleep (extra?), Rest, and to THINK on the MSP. That homework time they would usually use for math, they can use dreaming about math. Next week there will still be field trips and schedule changes, but I will start homework back up.

Math Topic This Week

• We are still looking at algebra and I anticipate that while we may not have a math review quiz this Friday, we may be ready for a quiz on learning target 4.
• Learning Target 4: I can write an equation to represent a set of data or a situation.
• The greatest difficulty I've seen students have with this so far is trying to write in mathematics what they can say in words perfectly well. I wrote a more in-depth blog post about it last week that you can read here [link]. But we will be working with this throughout the week as we prepare to show we can do this learning target.
• I have tried to help students think through it with a mnemonic device: my ODE to algebra.
• O: Observe a pattern.
• D: Describe the pattern in words, then replace English words with some mathematics words if you can. (AND might become add. LESS might become subtract. GROUPS OF might become multiplying, etc.)
• E: Write an equation that expresses your description in math symbols.

Field Trips This Week

• This week our BLUE group will be going on the field trip on Tuesday and Wednesday. The blue groups are based on your child's language arts group colors. So just ask your child what color group they are and they should know! We leave at 9:30 AM and will return at 2:30 PM to school.

Science This Week

• Aside from the field trips, we are completing our study of the rocks of the grand canyon. We have now collected observations on the rocks' colors, shapes, hardness, composition, fossils presence, and reactivity to hydrochloric acid (also a marker of fossil presence for hard shells that contain calcium carbonate). The field trip will interfere with our research into the grand canyon rocks and their organization a little. But we are building evidence that the rock layers in the canyon are similar between different parts of the canyon.
• The very big picture we are building is that these layers were laid down over millions of years and that the river has cut down through these layers, exposing them as it cuts lower and lower toward sea level.

Our field trips should be so much fun.

Thank you for all you do for your child!

Sincerely,

Brian MacNevin