Wednesday, March 9, 2011

General Announcements:

• If you ever notice something missing or wrong on the blog, comment to let me know about it - I don't always have the whole picture. -Grace
• March 16 (PM only) & 17 (all day) - Spring parent/student/teacher conferences. Conference sign-ups available in the River Classroom.
• March 16, 17 & 18 - Wed., 3/16 will be an early dismissal day (No Homework Club), and on Thurs., 3/17 and Fri., 3/18, there will be no school for students.
• Fridays: Hip-Hop Dance - The Prisms' next PE unit will be hip-hop dance class on Friday afternoons. Students need to wear or bring comfortable clothes and shoes for class.
• Wed., March 16 - Ukulele Club registration forms due. Download Ukulele Club documents here.
• Fri., March 25 - First Ukulele Club Meeting
• Eighth Grade Project resource page updated 1/24, including project deadlines through the end of February and downloadable documents. Page will be updated as I get new information.

Math:

Grade 7 and 8
• Test Thurs., 3/10 and Fri., 3/11 Continue to review for unit text using the review problems provided. Bring all to class to show preparation done.

Language Arts:

• Due Thurs., 3/10: Write the second paragraph of the essay—the first “body paragraph”. Be certain that you have developed it with significant, specific details and/or examples.

Social Studies:

• Due Thurs., 3/10: Illustrated timeline of Jerusalem. Use colored pencils.

Science:

• Due Fri., 3/11: Read pp. 188-194 in Physical Science text. In 1 ¶, write about 3 interesting things you learned AND at least one question you have or experiment you propose.

Spanish:

Moment of Zen:

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of the Adolescent Brain

The excellent sociology blog Sociological Images had a piece the other day about connections between our changing construction of "adolescence" and incoming research about the brain development, which seems to suggest that teenagers do what they do because their brains aren't fully developed, and won't be until they're nearly 30. However, one researcher, Robert Epstein, (whose recent Scientific American article is linked in the post) theorizes that the differences in brain activity are a recent devlopment related to the way society treats teens because of how we expect them to act. There's no ready conclusion to be drawn from all the research, but it's interesting fodder for discussion about the way in which teens' actions and brain activity are related to what we expect them to be.

Which begs the question, what do we expect teens' brains to be?