Happy Holidays from the 8th Grade Classroom!

Happy Holidays from the 8th Grade Classroom

8th graders singing at the K-12 Holiday Singalong

Thank you to Calysta Phillips for organizing the Advocates Holiday Gift Program!  The 8th graders organized by

advisory to purchase a gift or gifts for local residents through The Advocates organization.  The Advocates

provide safety and services for people affected by domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking in Blaine County

and surrounding areas.  Visit The Advocates website for more information about this amazing organization. 

Students have begun researching the background and history of their 8th grade project topics.  After a lesson on the

Dewey Decimal system, Naomi led the students on a field trip to the Community Library.  Students had to find

and check out books related to their topic. (Please help them return these books to the Community Library on time!)

Back at school students have begun to formulate their outlines and dig into their resources by taking notes and

tracking work cited.  In addition, students are learning to carefully evaluate the reliability of website resources. 

To help students gain first-hand information about their topic and give them access to first hand experiences early in their process, they are required to interview a professional in a field related to their topic by January 9th.  Some students are still working on making a connection with an adult in their topic area. Click here for a list of student topics.  Please email Reggie or Naomi if you are or know an expert in one of these fields and would be willing to have a student contact you.

In Math, we have been problem-solving with ratios and proportional relationships. Students have practiced finding unit rates to determine the best deals at the grocery store, the carnival, and the gym. Please ask them if you are unsure which sale price is best! In addition, we looked at architecture plans to estimate the costs of tiling a kitchen floor. Students were surprised to find out that, based on Disney's assertion that Olaf is 5'4'', Elsa is actually 9'9"! This week we began with virtual holiday shopping in which students used percents to calculate th sale price of items. Lastly, we investigated a percent change including different percept population increases in Blaine County, decreases to available moose tags, the potential impact of the Epic Pass, and how a math rap can really help you remember an important math process.

In Writing, we are continuing to work on gathering information and "research" about our own identities as we work

with the We Are America program to explore what identity means to us. We will start to work on our final We Are

America submissions for our book in January.

A few housekeeping items: 

• Don't forget to check our weekly schedule document if you want to know what your child is doing day-to-day in school.
• We have officially started the Winter Schedule! This means that Tuesday through Friday, MS and US students are dismissed at 1:30pm. We do offer a variety of after-school clubs that run from 1:30-2:30, so make sure to check those out (Sam sent an email about them a couple of weeks ago) if the early  dismissal does not work for your family.
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On Friday morning students participated in the annual K-12 Community School sing-a-long. It was a fun way to welcome the holidays and winter break. We hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year. As many of the students have noted, this is the last blog post of the decade! See you in 2020!

Locker clean out!

More locker clean out

Performing at the K-12 Sing-along

Secondly, we have officially started the winter

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