Monday, May 24, 2010

General Announcements:

• Tues., May 25: Bring acoustic guitars for music class.
• Important End of Year Dates:
  • Thurs., 6/3: 8th Grade Project Presentations
  • Sat., 6/12: Hilltown's 15th Birthday Party
  • Thurs., 6/17: Summer Celebration at Overlook
  • Fri., 6/18: 8th Grade Graduation
  • Tues., 6/22: Last Day of School
• 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:

• 7th Grade
  • Due Tues., 5/25:
    • Be ready for a brief quiz on Inv. 1 & 2
    • Complete Reflections for Inv. 2, p. 23.
• 8th Grade:
  • Due Tues., 5/25: Do #3 and #5 of 1.3 Follow-up and #1 on p. 12

Social Studies:

• Due Tues., 5/25: (8th Grade) Final draft of political cartoons.
• Ongoing:
  • Continue working on newspaper assignments.

Science:

• Fri., 5/28: Test on plant studies/genetics. See gold review sheet handed out today for details about what material will be included.
• Due Tues., 5/25: (8th Grade) Finish your illustrated version of Goethe's "Metamorphosis of Plants" (section we memorized).

Language Arts:

• Tues., May 25: Bring acoustic guitars for music class.
• Quiz, Tues., 5/25: Quiz on sentence structure. Review practice sentences from the last few days.

Moment of Zen:

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

With pollution in the Atlantic getting so much press these days, let's not forget the havoc we wreak in farther distant seas as well. What amounts to one of the world's largest landfills lives afloat the Pacific Ocean about a 1000 miles offshore from anywhere. About 10 million mi² composed of trash from at least three continents, approximately 80% of which washes out from land, the Garbage Patch is formed by a pattern of converging ocean currents called the North Pacific Gyre. The Garbage Patch, for all its concentration, presents a difficult cleanup. It does not cohere into an "island of trash" but instead floats lots of pieces of debris in close quarters, largely under the surface. Additionally, floating matter of this becomes an unhealthy habitat for a number of marine species, which further complicates cleanup. Click the picture above to read more from the National Science Foundation about the Garbage patch, or click here to read what Mother Nature News has to say. On a related note, here's an article from the UK's Guardian newspaper about efforts underway to have the term "ecocide"—referring to actions which lead to the large-scale destruction of an ecosystem—recognized and established as a crime (to be tried by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands) on par with genocide. The Guardian also has a photojournal of its Top 10 ecocides.