Shark Talk
Quarter 2, 2011
PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE
Dave Rogers, Principal
6th GRADE SCIENCE
6TH GRADE SCIENCE
6th Grade Science has finished the weather unit. We were studying the atmosphere and severe weather including hurricanes, tornados. The kids had a chance to witness a little snow as winter break started.
The kids have also been studying alternative energy sources. They each designed an environmentally friendly house, which included but was not limited to some of the following - solar panels, geothermal heat pump, windmills, recycled building materials, straw and cob building.
6TH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS NEWS
The second quarter has been a busy time for sixth grade language arts students. We have been deeply involved in historical fiction and read a variety of selections in our Elements of Literature book Each class read at least one historical fiction novel such as: Charley Skedaddle, Across Five Aprils, My Brother Sam, Fever, 1793, and Seaward Born. Students were able to draw connections with actual historic events and throughout their social studies curriculum. Students have also been learning about biographies (through Lincoln, a Photobiography) and autobiographies and were able to choose a biography subject to research. and ultimately write about in a five-paragraph essay or a Power Point presentation.
Students participated in all stages of the writing process and showed growth in their ability to self-edit and peer edit. Students spent time in the library learning how to gather multiple sources, cite those sources accurately and create a bibliography. Thank you to Sue Washko for all of her help and support in the library!!!! We have continued with our word build program and introduced classes to new prefixes, suffixes and roots. In addition, we have also worked on expanding our vocabulary with new words within our texts. Grammar is ongoing with an emphasis on nouns, pronouns and subject/verb agreements. We have enjoyed working with each of our amazing sharks and are excited for our next quarter! Mrs. Bardwell, Ms. Desimini, Mrs. Haan, Mrs. Harris
6TH GRADE MATH HONORS
In 6th grade math honors, students are working very hard on real-life situations that can be expressed algebraically, and exploring the meaning of those algebraic equations by constructing a table and graph.
Additionally students are learning how to interpret graphs, particularly when two graphs intersect and when a graph intersects the y-axis at points other than at (0,0).
We will soon be exploring equations from the investigation with graphing calculators and compare those graphs with student-created graphs.
7TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES
During the second nine weeks, students studied the causes of the Great Depression and its widespread impact on Americans, which led to economic control and reforms by the government. Students analyzed the causes of World War II and what led to American involvement in the war, including the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Cold War period led to the study of a divided Germany, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and yes...more wars - the Korean War and the Vietnam War. We finished the semester by learning about the actions taken to gain civil rights in the U.S. for African Americans and women.
We look forward to meeting our new classes and going back to the Wild West as we study westward
expansion.
7th GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSES ROCK!
The Devil’s Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen, is a book read by the 7th grade students. This book tells the story of a modern day teenage girl who is transported to the Holocaust and experiences life, and death, in a concentration camp. Other students have read the exciting book, The Lightning Thief, written by Rick Riordan.
7th grade language arts students have been deeply involved in group and class activities such as: predictions, research, citing sources (regarding WWII and the Holocaust), vocabulary in context, character traits and analysis, prioritizing data, timeline projects, theme projects, participating in a Seder dinner, deducing and evaluating through rigor, relevance, and relationships. This was a sophisticated and successful second nine weeks for the 7th grade language arts classes.
ALGEBRA I
For this past 2nd quarter, the students have worked even harder as the topics increase in difficulty. We've used the calculators and the smartboard more as we graph to learn about slopes. The semester exam proved to be not so much of a challenge for most of the hardworking Algebra students as they had reviewed a lot and played several review games to prepare. As we delve into the third quarter, we will be working on polynomials, multiplying them and factoring them. We have been using Algetiles as manipulatives and
diagrams on smartboard that will help the students understand the topics better. They can now touch the topic and see it on the smartboard. The difficulty level increases but as they focus and concentrate as true mathematicians, they will prove successful.
After polynomials chapter 9, we will also work on Chapter 7: Systems of
equations and inequalities, Chapter 5 Functions, and then 8.5-8.8
Exponential Models.
GEOMETRY
The students have completed the first seven chapters of the textbook. The midterm covering the first six chapters was given when we returned from the winter break. The scores were excellent. Sutherland Geometry students averaged a 93.9 while the school district averaged an 84.3. Our next quarterly will be given the last week of March.
The new nine weeks will include material on area, the Pythagorean theorem, and volume. Although these appear to be review topics, the classes will investigate the concepts at a deeper level. Please encourage your child to review their conjectures regularly to better prepare for quizzes and tests.
KIM KENNEDY’S
LANGUAGE ARTS
This past nine weeks students in Mrs. Kennedy’s class have had the opportunity to read and study the timeless novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Additionally, the students have read (and are continuing to read) a varied selection of short stories. The students have also engaged in independent and group projects revolving around the literature that was covered in class. Next nine weeks we will continue our studies by focusing on writing skills in conjunction with literature.
MRS. PARMITER’S
LANGUAGE ARTS
Blocks 1 & 2
The students have been working hard. We completed our study of a Christmas Carol and we are beginning our intensive preparation for the Writing SOL in March. The students will be taking notes on the different forms of writing: expository, persuasive, and narrative. Then they will look at different prompts and analyze them to determine the type of prompt and the key words in the prompt that are important for planning. Next they will work on planning multiple prompts and then choose one to take through the complete process. Finally, we will spend time talking about the steps to planning, drafting, revising, and editing. Additionally, we will talk about the importance of sentence structure and word choice.
Block 2
In addition to the writing preparation above, the Advanced Honors students will begin an independent study of the novel Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They will be assigned to read a certain number of pages per night and come to class ready to discuss those pages. They will keep a Detective’s Log of evidence as they work their way through this classis murder mystery. As a culminating project they will create a movie poster of the characters in the book.
SPANISH I
Spanish I eighth grade students' written stories will be on display during the Curriculum Fair. Spanish I seventh grade students' have just completed the reading of a short story in Spanish.
SPANISH CONVERSATION
Spanish Conversation students have begun a cultural study of Argentina and have studied the cultures of Costa Rica, Mexico and Spain.
DESIGN, WRITE AND PUBLISH
Design, Write and Publish students have completed a research paper and are presenting the highlights of their papers on PowerPoint. They will be publishing the online SMS magazine this semester. Gail Wasulko, Spanish Teacher
6th, 7th AND 8TH GRADE HEALTH
8th grade health classes have worked on environmental calendars as part of their expeditionary learning project. Students read articles about 4 different types of pollution: air, land, water and noise, and how it affected our community. Mrs. Curtis shared her recycling and composting methods with each class and was quite fascinating. Each student prepared two calendar pages with conservation tips. Excellent work from students was chosen to be in our 3 published calendars. Congratulations to the following students: Emily Walsh, Sean Dyer, Sarah Prestiy, Jisoo Han, Quinn Egner, Julia Harrison, Divya Sriram, Laura Miller, Allison Moore, Bailey Bush, Karweik, Emily Farabaugh, Collette Rogers, Katie Rice, Matt Huschke, Natalie Lemay, Reagan Eadie, Carleigh Sprouse, Amanda Batten, Mykaela Grevious, Scarlet Foley, Anna Bonham, Lauren Kohler, Jasmyn Carter, Willa Lin, Kara Williams, Chloe Lynch, and Amanda Udstuen.
7th graders created awesome informational slide shows on first aid and 6th graders created brochures on bicycle safety.
PE NEWS
All students participated in an Archery Unit in PE class before break. This month, 6th graders are skating and 7th and 8th graders are creating jump rope routines and practicing basketball skills.
Coming in the spring, students will train for a 5K run in PE and have an opportunity to participate in Hoops for Heart to raise money for the American Heart Association.
7th AND 8TH GRADE DRAMA
The 7th Grade Drama Classes delivered a successful performance on Wednesday, January 19. The performance included three one-act plays that included all of the drama students enrolled in the class as an end of semester project.
The 8th Grade Drama Classes will present one act plays on February 1st and 3rd.
ART EVENTS
What a busy semester! Whew….and for 6th and 7th grade, we get to start exploratories all over again!
6th grade discovered the joy of Form and Shape with clay by designing and building Animal Pinch Pots, on display now! We also learned how to draw objects in perspective and studied Impressionism. By combining the two, students worked on drawing a traditional STILL LIFE and used color in similar ways to the Impressionist painters.
7th grade learned about Value and the historic grid technique through black and white portraits. The results were nothing short of amazing! Expanding on the theme of value, students practiced Still Life drawing and painting using a Monochromatic Color Scheme. For our final project, student artists worked with a traditional hand-building clay technique, making a coil pot, and finished it with a Pueblo Pottery design. These beautiful pieces are on display in the art case…come by and see them!
The 8th grade Positive/Negative Space projects are on display outside the art room. I was so impressed at how they turned out and the level of attention 8th grade artists put into them. Our current project is COLOR THEORY and students are making color wheels with TINTS and SHADES in preparation for a Self Portrait. Our final unit will focus on advertising as students prepare for the 2011 Sutherland Film Festival!
ORCHESTRA ONLINE
Our orchestras are online now! Find us at ajsorchestras.org
Orchestra Fruit Sale! Orchestra members will be selling fresh citrus and strawberries from Florida in February. Please contact Mrs. Finnegan at Sutherland if you would like to place an order.
Delivery will be in mid-March.
Orchestra District Festival – Saturday, March 12 (required for all 7th and 8th grade orchestra members)
GIFTED AND TALENTED NEWS
The Sutherland Robotics Team participated in the Regional competition in Lynchburg this past November. Our ten Robosharks had a busy day practicing and preparing for their presentations and robot missions. During their research presentation, they proposed that nanobots use sound waves to seek out and destroy cancer cells. They discussed teamwork and robot design. And the most exciting part of any robot competition, the table missions, allowed them to show off their programming skills. The team is to be congratulated on their hard work.
We recently held our school MathCounts competition. Twelve students did an outstanding job after practicing all year. Unfortunately we are only able to take eight students to the regional competition on February 12th. Congratulations to all the MathCounts students working toward this goal. We wish our eight representatives the best of luck.
The Sutherland Spelling Bee will be held on January 24th during the school day. Students have been selected from each language arts class to participate. The winner of the school bee will move onto the countywide competition next month.
Sutherland students involved in National History Day, Science Fair, and Destination Imagination continue to work towards their respective events. In addition to these upcoming competitions, we look forward this spring’s publication of the Sutherland online literary magazine and forming a 6th grade robotics team. As always, the students here at Sutherland are willing to work hard as they take on these academic challenges.
GUIDANCE NEWS
The counselors will begin working with all 8th grade students throughout the month of February as we begin the registration process for Albemarle High School. The counselors highly recommend that ALL 8th grade students review the Program of Studies book and select three or four electives from the book that might interest them. Individual meetings with students begin the second week of February. Parents are welcome to attend these meetings, but please know that we cannot reschedule meetings due to the number of meetings scheduled each day. During these meetings, we will go over course recommendations made by this year’s core teachers, select electives and create a four year plan for graduation. We will also be giving out the elementary school records to each parent that attends.
Parents of current 8th graders should keep these dates in mind:
· January 21st –January 31st: SMS teachers meet with 8th grade students to discuss course
recommendations.
· Monday, February 7th – early March: Individual meetings with students to register for classes.
· Wednesday, February 2nd: Albemarle High School will hold a Curriculum Fair (6:00 – 7:30 PM) for
students and parents, providing information on courses (required and elective), clubs and sports at AHS.
· Friday, March 4th: MESA, AVID and LEADERSHIP applications due (MESA and LEADERSHIP
applications are available on the school’s website).