General Announcements:
- Share Your Hi-Rock Trip Photos! We have set up a Flickr group for the class's trip last week. For security reasons, it is a private, invitation only group. You will need a Flickr account to view or contribute to the group (if you have a Yahoo account, you already do). Prisms and their parents should let me know if you want an invitation to the group. Send an e-mail to gmrowicki AT hilltowncharter with the following information:
- Your name
- The e-mail address to which the invitation should be sent
- Read about the Prism's ongoing observations in defining intelligent here.
- We need tissues! Cold season is upon us and we need nice tissues for sore noses. If every Prism family donated one box of tissues, that would almost certainly get us through the worst of tissue season.
- Fridays: Bring sneakers, clothes to run in and water bottle for Frisbee!
Math:
- Grade 7:
- Due Thurs., 9/23: Complete 1.2 on p. 9 of CMP book using your jumping jack data. Write all responses in complete sentences and restate the question in your answer. Refer to the model provided today.
- Grade 8:
- No homework
- Note: We did film Henry's presentation today, and we will make this available to whomever would like to share it at home as soon as possible, though it's not entirely clear in what format this will happen yet.
Social Studies:
Science:
Language Arts:
Spanish:
Moment of Zen
Iceland: On A First Name Basis with Volcanoes
In Iceland, the phone books are organized alphabetically by first name. Instead of having family last names like we do, folks in Iceland are known by their given first name and patronymic. A patronymic is based on your father's name and indicates you as
son of __________ or
daughter of __________. Musician Björk's full name is Björk Sigmundsdottir. Iceland being related to English as it is, the breakdown of
Sigmundsdottir is actually fairly transparent: Sigmund's daughter. If she had a brother, he would be Sigmundson. Other cultures still highly integrate patronymics - In Russia and many other former USSR nations, the patronymic is a middle name, and people are formally addressed not by their family name (e.g., Mr. Dostoyevsky, Ms. Akhmatova) but by first name and patronymic (e.g. Fyodor Mikhailovich, Anna Andreyevna). (
Read more about patronymics around the world).
But,
Iceland has the coolest volcanoes (see above), sitting as it does on the line between the American and Eurasian plates as they spread apart, so they get the picture.
