Discovering Newton's Laws of Motion - ask your student about Newton's Laws, inertia , force, and acceleration.

For the past couple of weeks in Social Studies, students have been learning about and discussing how the Roman Republic functioned before the rise of Julius Caesar.  We have talked about some of the parallels between the Roman Republic and the US Government, some of the problems and difficulties that every government in the world faces, and how Julius Caesar was able to gain power in Ancient Rome.

Last week, students were broken up into different branches of Rome's government and had to solve real issues that had to do with taxes, starvation, invasion, and people within the government breaking the law. I was really impressed with how students not only took logical approaches to solving these issues, but how they allowed one another to speak without talking over each other.  Many students went out of their way to make quieter students feel comfortable sharing their opinions.  They were not able to solve all Rome's problems, but luckily that was the point.

Today, we did an Assassination Investigation for Julius Caesar.  Students formed their own opinion on the motives for his murder based on various pieces of 'evidence.'  

Enjoy the attached photos of the students "working in the Republic" and "investigating Caesar's assassination" - their enthusiasm is unmatched!

Check out the attached material about an essay contest sponsored by Central One Federal Credit Union. 

In ELA, we started our Hero Unit. This unit centers on the idea of the monomyth - the hero's journey. In the unit, we will be focusing on these essential questions:

• Is nothing new? Why do patterns in literature repeat themselves over and over?
• ​Why does society crave this type of hero?

During the unit, students will read both ancient myths and modern superhero comics and stories and will analyze the elements of the monomyth in each. The unit will end with students writing their own hero story. Check out  this  video, it gives a great overview of the monomyth!

​Problem solving is an important part of our work in math this year.  Students often believe that problem solving is simply applying a formula to a “word problem.” But, real problem solving is what you do, when you don’t know what to do.
 
All students had an opportunity to work with Ms. Freedman on the “Build your own Burger” problem. In this problem, Friendly’s Restaurant advertises that there are over 10 trillion combinations. Students used multiple strategies to evaluate the validity of this claim.
 
Ask your student if the claim is true and which problem solving strategies they used.