8A - Mr. Katelanos

Rediker Grade Book Acess

Grade eighth students have had a wonderful beginning to the new school year.  They are happy to be in the classroom setting with their classmates as well as their teachers.

In English, students have been perfecting their writing skills by reviewing grammar and punctuation on a daily basis as well as writing responses to thought provoking journal questions.  They read and discussed the lyrics to “House on Pooh Corner” by Loggins and Messina, as well as the poem “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas.  Students then wrote an original poem expressing their sentiments about leaving childhood behind. This was done as preliminary work to the reading of Thoreau’s Walden.
  Students also researched the 188 Thoreau artifacts posted in the Collections of the Concord Museum web page.  They chose the one artifact that intrigued them and drew it.  Next, they wrote a narrative from the artifact’s point of view, expressing its experience of being in the Thoreau household.

A very spiritual day was spent on September 29 when the students went to Camp Christopher for an all day retreat sponsored by the Got Prayer team of Trinity High School.  Students enjoyed being outside in the beautiful setting and listened to witnesses by the high school students, engaged in a nature hike, and did various activities.  They experienced various types of prayer and were quite enthusiastic with song and dance.  Father Haren culminated the retreat with the celebration of Mass.
In Religion, the eighth graders learned about the characteristics of being Catholic.  They have also discussed beliefs mas found in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.  Father Haren teaches Religion classes once a week and is explaining the basic tenets of our faith. Also, students have spent time researching a saint of their choice and will present their findings in a power point to the entire class.

Students in Reading have also been very busy.  Does technology improve or control our lives?  That question is the current focus in Reading.  We have read the short science fiction story "A Brave Little Toaster".  A short story includes all the basic elements of fiction, such as setting, characters, plot, conflict, and theme, but the text is limited in length. Science fiction is a genre of fiction that combines real scientific information with imaginary elements. Science fiction often raises questions about issues facing the world today by describing potential outcomes in the future. In this lesson, students analyzed the elements of plot in “The Brave Little Toaster” to draw conclusions about the author’s message about technology.  We have also looked at an informational text piece titled  “Are Bionic Superhumans on the Horizon?”  The purpose of informational text is to present factual information. The article may use text patterns like main-idea-and-details or question-and-call-to-action. Features, such as headings and captions, also point to main ideas and details. In this lesson, students used text organization to explore the article “Are Bionic Superhumans on the Horizon?”

It has been an exciting start to the school year in Science. Our eight graders were introduced to the earth's interior by reading excerpts from the Jules Verne class,  " Journey to the Center of the World." They traveled and explored the various layers of the earth. They used a loaf of bread, a hard boiled egg, and play doh to demonstrate all four layers of the earth. Next, they wrapped up the unit by researching, compiling, and presenting a slide show presentation, answering the SOLE question, "  What would happen if earth's core cooled down?" This is an area where the eighth graders s excel! They are beginning a new unit on Pangea, plate tectonics, and continental drift.

In Social Studies, the eighth grade students have been exploring the settlement of the Americas, and the various groups responsible including the Spanish, French, Dutch, and British. They have learned about the different colonies and the governments and economies that developed.

In Math, the students are working on a chapter that talked about rigid transformations such as translations (slides), reflections (flips), and rotations (turns). They also discussed the angles in triangles and with parallel lines. They decided one day to find out how to finger out the measure of the insides of any polygon if the class knew how many sides it has. Instead of just learning a formula they figured out how to do it by drawing triangles inside. Soon,  the eighth graders will work on dilations, similarity and slope. The first two relate more to geometry and the last one will relate more to algebra eventually.