Thursday, March 13, 2014

General Announcments:

• If you notice anything missing or wrong, please comment below. I don't always have the whole picture -Grace
• Mondays: Wear or bring comfortable clothes for PE.
• There is no school for students tomorrow, Friday, March 14.

Math:

• 7th Grade:  
• 
  

8th Grade:

• Grace's Group
• Due Monday, 3/17: Complete 6.3 Practice if not finished in class. Remember that these will be based on estimations, so don't use a calculator.
• John's Group: 
• 
  

Humanities:

• All
• Reading log assignment #9 due Thursday
• Grade 7
• Write long composition. Due Monday
• Grade 8
• First half of rough draft due Fri., 3/21

Science:   
TWO ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE THIS MONDAY 3/17!

1) Your experiment team needs to print out both
your time and your speed data for your trials, in an organized chart like the ones
I have shared with you on Google docs

2) Your experiment team needs to print out, or share with me your team's
error / significant differences worksheet.  This document has been shared with you on google docs.

See you tomorrow!

• 
  

Atelier: 

• Borrowed scratchboard knives need to be returned.

Spanish:

• 7th Grade:
• gustar/encantar worksheet
• retake comida

• 8th Grade:
• La guitarra misteriosa cap. 15

8th Grade Project:

• First half of rough draft due Fri., 3/21
• Eighth Grade Project Deadline Calendar

Moment of Zen:

Maps of the World Made from Food

Henry Hargreaves and Caitlin Levin have a history of making food-related art. The same couple who brought the world Gingerbread Art Galleries and Deep Fried Gadgets have now composed maps of countries or continents made out of food associated with that place. By way of example, the above map of Italy composed almost entirely of tomatoes. 

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

General Announcments:

• If you notice anything missing or wrong, please comment below. I don't always have the whole picture -Grace
• Mondays: Wear or bring comfortable clothes for PE.
• Congrats on a fabulous and successful Coffeehouse!

Math:

• 7th Grade:  
• Quiz Thursday, 3/13 covering sections 5.1-5.4 in Chapter 5

8th Grade:

• Grace's Group
• Due Thursday, 3/13: 
• Finish Pythagoras "Triangle & Square" packet if not already completed.
• Finish measuring square root lengths on Wheel of Theodorus onto paper ruler.
• Make a table of approximate square roots based on your measurements
• John's Group: 
• Quiz Thursday, 3/13 on applying the Quadratic Equation!
• For Monday, do the Mixed Review, p. 524, #88 - 100 (evens)

Humanities:

• All
• Reading log assignment #8 due Thursday
• Final edit of newspaper due Thursday
• Grade 7
• 10 notecards due Thursday
• Grade 8
• First half of rough draft due Fri., 3/21

Science:   

• Due Tomorrow, Thursday, March 6: 
  Bring in your video materials tomorrow, as you and your partner may have time to shoot some parts of your Storyboard...

• Due Friday, March 7
  Bring in your cameras !Your numbered Procedure and your Storyboard for the Video lab: (I need one copy of each from your team)

Atelier: 

• Borrowed scratchboard knives need to be returned.

Spanish:

• 7th Grade:
• gustar/encantar worksheet
• retake comida

• 8th Grade:
• La guitarra misteriosa cap. 15

8th Grade Project:

• First half of rough draft due Fri., 3/21
• Eighth Grade Project Deadline Calendar

Moment of Zen:

Life-size origami elephant, folded from a single sheet of paper. 

The single sheet of paper was 15m square, or about 50 feet by 50 feet. It took Swiss origami artist Sipho Mabona and his team of 10 about four weeks to complete the 10 foot tall piece. The project was broadcast live on the web during the folding process and there is allegedly a time-lapse video of the process, but I haven't found it yet.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

General Announcments:

• If you notice anything missing or wrong, please comment below. I don't always have the whole picture -Grace
• Mondays: Wear or bring comfortable clothes for PE.
• Congrats on a fabulous and successful Coffeehouse!

Math:

• 7th Grade:  
• Quiz Thursday, 3/13 covering sections 5.1-5.4 in Chapter 5
• Due Wed., 3/12:  On a piece of plain, unlined paper, take the "tile" that you made today in class, and cover this paper completely with your tile. Your tile should tesselate - meaning that it should cover all blank spaced.
  
  You can place your tile anywhere on the page to begin; but then you have to "fit" the other pieces in, like puzzle pieces. It might be easiest to start by lining up your straight edges of the square with the edge of your paper.

8th Grade:

Grace's Group: 

Due Tues., 3/11: Complete "Triangle & Square" photocopied packet begun in class.

John's Group: 

Quiz Thursday, 3/13 on applying the Quadratic Equation

Due Wed., 3/12: p. 524 Quiz #1-25 (odd numbered problems) Bring your questions tomorrow!

Humanities:

• All
• Reading log assignment #8 due Thursday
• Find something for a costume and be ready for abolitionist meeting.
• Final edit of newspaper due Thursday
• Grade 7
• 10 notecards due Thursday
• Grade 8
• First half of rough draft due Fri., 3/21

Science:   

• Due Tomorrow, Thursday, March 6: 
  Bring in your video materials tomorrow, as you and your partner may have time to shoot some parts of your Storyboard...

• Due Friday, March 7
  Bring in your cameras !Your numbered Procedure and your Storyboard for the Video lab: (I need one copy of each from your team)

Atelier: 

• Borrowed scratchboard knives need to be returned.

Spanish:

• 7th Grade:
• estudia comida
• quiz manana

• 8th Grade:
• La guitarra misteriosa cap. 14

8th Grade Project:

• First half of rough draft due Fri., 3/21
• Eighth Grade Project Deadline Calendar

Moment of Zen:

Apparently, Elephants can tell the difference between human languages. 

From Time: (WASHINGTON) — Dr. Seuss had it right: Horton really does hear a Who. Wild elephants can distinguish between human languages, and they can tell whether a voice comes from a man, woman or boy, a new study says.

That’s what researchers found when they played recordings of people for elephants in Kenya. Scientists say this is an advanced thinking skill that other animals haven’t shown. It lets elephants figure out who is a threat and who isn’t.

The result shows that while humans are studying elephants, the clever animals are also studying people and drawing on their famed powers of memory, said study author Karen McComb.

“Basically they have developed this very rich knowledge of the humans that they share their habitat with,” said McComb , a professor of animal behavior and cognition at the University of Sussex in England.

“Memory is key. They must build up that knowledge somehow.”

The study was released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It’s close but not quite like the Dr. Seuss book, where the empathetic elephant Horton hears something that others can’t hear.

McComb and colleagues went to Amboseli National Park in Kenya, where hundreds of wild elephants live among humans, sometimes coming in conflict over scarce water. The scientists used voice recordings of Maasai men, who on occasion kill elephants in confrontations over grazing for cattle, and Kamba men, who are less of a threat to the elephants. The recordings contained the same phrase in two different languages: “Look over there. A group of elephants is coming.”

By about a two-to-one margin, the elephants reacted defensively — retreating and gathering in a bunch — more to the Maasai language recording because it was associated with the more threatening human tribe, said study co-author Graeme Shannon of Colorado State University.

“They are making such a fine-level discrimination using human language skills,” Shannon said. “They’re able to acquire quite detailed knowledge. The only way of doing this is with an exceptionally large brain.”

They repeated the experiment with recordings of Maasai men and women. Since women almost never spear elephants, the animals reacted less to the women’s voices. The same thing happened when they substituted young boys’ voices.

“Making this kind of fine distinctions in human voice patterns is quite remarkable,” said Emory University animal cognition expert Frans de Waal, who was not part of the study.

While it shows quite a bit about elephant intelligence and adaptability, it also indicates a problem, said biologist Josh Plotnik, founder of Think Elephants International, a research and advocacy group.

“This is both fascinating in that it supports evidence we already have that these animals are behaviorally quite flexible, but also sad because it suggests that the conflict between humans and elephants is growing,” Plotnik, who was not part of the study, wrote in an email.

In yet another experiment McComb and Shannon altered female and male voices, making female voices sound male by lowering their tone and resonance, and males sound female by raising their pitches. Those kinds of changes fool most humans, but the clever elephants weren’t tricked, McComb said. They still moved away from the altered male voices and not the altered female voices.