November 8, 2013
Team Notes: It's a new quarter and a great time to talk to your student about setting goals. In many of their classes, students have reflected on first quarter and set goals to help them move forward. Please feel free to continue that conversation at home!
We have had a lot of conversations with students about grading and also did a presentation during Connections classes outlining how grades are determined. (That presentation is attached to this email.) This is our first time doing standards based grading at OMS Ms. Anderson sent home an email blast last weekend with a lot of information about report cards and grades. If you have not yet read that information, we would encourage you to do so. In particular, it outlines the difficulty in assigning a letter grade and also delineates what each letter means. The idea of what a 'B' or a 'C' previously represented is no longer in line with how we are grading at the middle school. We have encouraged the students to talk with you about their grades, especially if they believe you will be surprised or disappointed with their grades. Please listen openly to what your students have learned about grading and what their goals, plans and responsibilities will be moving forward. If you have questions about grading, please feel free to contact an individual teacher or Ms. Anderson with more general questions.
Yankee Candle fundraiser orders are due to English teachers on Monday.
English (Totzke): This week we began our research unit, starting with the basics of search queries and the great tools that can be found on google and other search engines. Next week we will continue the unit with our actual researching. Each student has a time period, but they can choose what they research within that time period. You should ask your student what they are researching! Happy Reading!
English (Rigell): https://sites.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/oms-enriched-english/home/homework
Tech Tools: In Tech Tools we are reviewing some skills and learning some new ones via a game board (online game board, of course!) Students will work on four different levels of tasks and move up to the next level by completing the tasks and filling out a google form. I will send them the "secret password" (link to the next level of tasks) when the first level is completed. Students are earning math money as they compete the different levels! Skills reviewed or learned are: saving and making folders in their network home drive, using the snipping tool, sending an email with an attachment, finding images legally and saving them, citing images on easybib.com, creating folders on google drive, saving and sharing on google drive, and creating a google draw. As you can see, your student will be busy learning and going through "the game" at the same time!
Geography (Stoller): Students took our latitude and longitude quiz on Monday and saw their corrected assessments yesterday. Many students just had a few things to practice and then they can see me during a study hall to demonstrate what they know. Tuesday, we were lucky to have Mr. Foley, guidance counselor, share some insights into learning styles and study skills. Wednesday, Mr. King, from Mapping Specialists in Madison, shared a bit about being a cartographer and showed the students the future of mapping. Ask your student about the cool maps we saw. Thanks, Mr. King, for giving up your day to be with us! Students signed up for a current event date for second quarter and have to write their current event as a news reporter. In the past, students have gotten really creative with this assignment and it's been a lot of fun. We have moved into studying the Middle East, having started with maps of that region. Next week, we will begin discussing some basics of economics and how that plays into our relationship with oil of the Middle East.
Geography (Howe):
Math (Stauss): In math this week, students learned about scale factors and how they relate to similar figures. They used what they learned about this relationship to find the missing side lengths of different types of polygons. On Wednesday we worked on a review of what we have learned up to this point about similar figures. Next week we will finish up the unit and begin our review of the content in preparation for our next summative assessment. Our test will most likely be on Monday, November 18th.
Math (Krueger): See separate IC email and blog post
Science (vanStenderen): So ... Mrs. van's students are really getting into the study of cells. We finished unknown presentations and reviewed biological systems. The quiz on Thursday was over applying biological systems to a specific plant or animal. Cell parts and their jobs were discussed and teams are working on an analogy project as a way to help the learn what the cell parts do. Upcoming events include the appearances of plant and animal cells and how to use a microscope.
Science (Howe):
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Andrew Dolejs (Special Education) - acdolejs@oregonsd.net
Kelly (Eickert) Manzeck (Special Education) – kjmanzeck@oregonsd.net
Alex Howe (Geo and Science) - abhowe@oregonsd.net
Bryan Krueger (Math) - bmkrueger@oregonsd.net
Katie Stauss (Math) – kmstauss@oregonsd.net
Amanda Rigell (English) - akrigell@oregonsd.net
Jeri Shumaker (Tech Tools) - jsh@oregonsd.net
Laura Stoller (Geography) – lms3@oregonsd.net
Caitlyn Duffy (FACE) - cmduffy@oregonsd.net
Tiffany Totzke (English) - tntotzke@oregonsd.net
Debe vanStenderen (Science) – ddv@oregonsd.net
Team Blog: http://oms7-osharks.blogspot.com/
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