Thursday, December 17, 2009

General Announcements:

• Friday, Dec. 18: Field trip to Amherst College (Bassett Planetarium & Amherst Natural History Museum) still needs a few more drivers. We will leave Hilltown right after All-School (~9:30 a.m.) and be returning about 2:30 p.m.
  • All students must bring their own lunch, even if you usually get pizza or a lunch from Blue House on Fridays.
  • Please dress warmly, as some parts of the field trip will not be heated. Dressing in layers is recommended.
• Copies of Eighth-Grade Project documents for phase one available for download here.
• You must have an independent reading book every day. If you are getting close to the end of one, have the next one at school and ready to go.

Math:

• Note: All assignments should be turned in to Grace first thing, before 8:30
• 7th Grade:
  • Due Fri., 12/18: Make-up work only
• 8th Grade:
  • Due Fri., 12/18: #1, 2, 3 on p.166 of Additional Practice (photocopy from Teacher's Edition, handed out in class today) — more practice with determining slope and y-intercept for linear equations in the form y=mx+b

Social Studies:

• None assigned:

Science:

• None assigned :

Language Arts:

• Note: All assignments should be turned in to Grace first thing, before 8:30
• Due Fri., 12/18: On separate paper, typed or neatly handwritten, write a one-¶ response to your beginning experience with Shakespeare's play. Be certain the paragraph is edited and has a main idea sentence as its first sentence.

Moment of Zen: For those of you who have been folding pieces to make a 12-piece spiky ball ("stellated octahedron" in geometry-speak), there's a lot more to do with them besides. The pieces are called Sonobe units, named for their creator, Mitsonobu Sonobe, and there are many websites out there with other ideas of 3D figures to make with them and plenty of pictures of these sometimes-boggling constructions. Click the picture above (featuring a 30-piece spiky ball or stellated icosahedron) to visit one of these sites.