May 7, 2015 - Homework: Answer all questions, p. 1 of the Soil Weathering Erosion Deposition Study Guide to prepare for test on Wed., May 13. If you are unable to answer some questions on p. 1, answer the equivalent number of questions from p. 2.
May 4, 2015 - Homework today: Dig In Lab Reports. Most students in Period 3, and about half the students in Period 2, need to finish drafting the Data and Conclusion sections (contents are shown below under the May 1 entry) for the experiment we demonstrated today. Other students are working on writing or typing (student choice) their Final Copy of the Lab Report. Lab Reports are due on Wednesday, May 6.
Period 3 also has to write flash cards for a quiz on variables.
This Week's Newsletter:
Busy Busy Busy!!! Events coming up:
May 8th School Dance, admission $10
May 8th deadline for Permission Slips and money for Lake Compounce trip
May 12th 7th Grade (A house) Field Trip to Wax Museum & Bodies Exh.
May 13th 7th Gr Science Test (tentative)
Faculty vs. Student volleyball Game; Early Release
May 13th 7th Gr Science Test (tentative)
Faculty vs. Student volleyball Game; Early Release
May 16th STEMfest. Come see Mr. Sapia and our Rippowam Raptor
Robotics Team at Mill River Park 10 am to 4 pm
May 21st 3rd Quarter Honors Ceremony
May 28th RaptorDash
June 1st/2nd ELA Finals 6th and 7th Grade
June 4th /5th ELA Finals 8th Grade
June 5th 7th grade Trip to Lake Compounce
Robotics Team at Mill River Park 10 am to 4 pm
May 21st 3rd Quarter Honors Ceremony
May 28th RaptorDash
June 1st/2nd ELA Finals 6th and 7th Grade
June 4th /5th ELA Finals 8th Grade
June 5th 7th grade Trip to Lake Compounce
June 10th
8th
grade to Holiday Hill
June 11th Science Finals (6th? 8th? All? TBD)
June 12th 7th Grade Science Finals (requested); 8th grade Poetry Slam
June 16th
5th
Grade Moving Up (Time TBD)June 11th Science Finals (6th? 8th? All? TBD)
June 12th 7th Grade Science Finals (requested); 8th grade Poetry Slam
June 17th Honors Luncheon (12pm) Early Release
School Board action from last week makes it necessary to update my Newsletter (new info shown in red):
- Wednesday 6/17 - Early Release
- Thursday 6/18 - Early Release
- Friday 6/19 - Early Release and Moving Up Day for 8th Graders and Last Day of School for all students.
May 1, 2015 - Parents - Big News - Ask your students about the Rippowam Raptor Dash; an entry form should come home today.
My students have spent much of this week viewing and working on a draft report for the Dig-In lab. We've done much of the report in class during SBAC testing week. The final version of the Lab Report will be due on Wednesday (not Tuesday). Students are being given this early notice in case they want to work on their report over the weekend, but are not required by me to write the report over the weekend. The information shown in blue, below, are instructions or guidelines, and should not be copied into the report.
1.For your Data section:
* insert a completed data table,
* graph the data, and
* show the mean, median and
mode, if any.
*Then, write a paragraph
that puts your
observations in sentence form. Discuss your Data,
including the amounts of water percolated
through, and absorbed by, the
soil;
and which soil would be best for a) building,
and
b) gardening, and say why.
2.Outline a Conclusion that answers the following
questions:
a. According to your data, was your hypothesis correct? [Be reasonable]
b. How
would you improve the lab?
c. Did you make any errors? Were there
any variables that you did not control? Is there anything you would do differently?
d. What
new question(s) do you have about soil absorbency and percolation that you could answer with another
experiment?
e. What
would you do for a follow-up experiment?
3.Now, label and re-write parts
into a final draft:
I. Problem
II. HypothesisIII. Materials
IV. Procedures / Experimental Design
V. Data & Analysis
Vi. Conclusions
April 27, 2015 - No homework today. Since we are in SBAC testing during the week of 4/27/15 through 5/1/15, I will not be giving homework this week.
Homework for 4/23/15 - Homework for Thursday night is a worksheet:
8-4 What Landforms Does Running Water Create?
A Message to Parents:
As you may have noticed, I have not been giving a lot of homework lately, so my blog has been unusually inactive.
A few parents just explained to me, however, how much they would like better communication. So I'm going to experiment.
Newsletter:
First, some news about upcoming events:
- Garden Club sign ups in progress, will run on Thursday afternoons after school.
- SoundWaters visits Rippowam on the morning of Friday, April 24th about an exciting, new after-school program this spring: an introduction to sailing. They will be coming to Rippowam to speak to students directly about their program and hope to get more students to sign up. SoundWaters will pick up students at Ripp after school, and the best part is....the program is free! Learn to sail for free! I wish I was 12 again.....uhhh, no I don't. The program begins in less than a month.
- To help beautify the office courtyard I need to move 1 or 2 cubic yards of topsoil that the City will deliver. I will be coming in on a Saturday, probably May 2. Any parents willing to volunteer? Please E-mail me at mgoldsmith@stamfordct.gov.
- Field Trip to Lake Compounce set for June 5. Permission slips and money are due no later than May 8th.
- School Dance coming up on May 8th, admission $10, Ripp students only . Expect your child to bring home a Permission Slip for this event in the next 1-2 days. If you don't get a form from your child, email me and I can send you a copy.
- Our Field Trip to the Wax Museum and the Bodies Exhibit is scheduled for May 14th for the B team (a/k/a Blazin' team). Last count was 76 students who are going!! Thanks to Ms. Judson for planning the trip, collecting money, tracking who is going, and coordinating with other teachers and admin! Parents interested in chaperoning, please email me.
- Honor Roll Recognition Ceremony -Date TBA
- STEMfest coming up May 16th, 10 am to 4 pm at Mill River Park will include lots of great stuff, including Rippowam Raptor Robots...and some of the students who program them. Should be cool....don't miss it!
- Thursday 6/18 - Early Release
- Friday 6/19 - Early Release and Moving Up Day for 8th Graders
- Monday 6/22 - Early Release and Last Day of School.
Today, we observed Earth Day in our 4th period classes. Some classes cleaned up outside, some made posters, some watched videos, and some planted flowers and rose bushes. Check out #RIPPIB for a few photos.
In 7th grade science, we are most of the way through our unit on Erosion and Deposition. Our students have been experimenting with how water helps move around earth materials, and how some materials are way easier to move from a little simulated rain than other materials. In this unit, we have also refreshed our learning about land forms such as mountains, valleys, hills, plateaus, and floodplains. We have learned how to draw and read topographic maps. We have learned how Earth processes can be destructive, as when we simulated how water cuts channels in land to create river beds and canyons. Also, we saw that some of these processes are constructive, such as when our river models built up river deltas. In class, we read about how our Southern states are the product of deposits from the Mississippi River, and how artificial efforts to protect New Orleans actually have helped to undermine the city, as shown most dramatically by Hurricane Katrina. In the remaining lessons, we plan to model the erosion effects of ocean waves against a cliff; we will read about beach formation, currents, and how human efforts to limit erosion of one part of a beach affect other parts of a coastal system. Then we will design, build and test our own model of a cliff erosion barrier. I estimate the assessment on this unit will be given in about 2 weeks.
Our next unit of study will be about Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tectonic plates.
If I get some positive feedback from this experiment, I will do this more often. You are more than welcome to send messages to this blog, but please don't use your student's full name, and don't expect a reply. If you want a reply to any feedback that you send, please instead email your comments to me at mgoldsmith@stamfordct.gov.
