Meeting Notes
In addition to classroom highlights, we also have Options Department Parent Meeting notes to share. Please click here to read the notes from the Panel Meeting of Bell School Graduates that took place on January 16, 2020.
In addition to classroom highlights, we also have Options Department Parent Meeting notes to share. Please click here to read the notes from the Panel Meeting of Bell School Graduates that took place on January 16, 2020.
From the Desk of Ms. Demitripoulos:
We have had a wonderful start to 2020 in room 106!
In science, we have been discussing how forces happen between two objects. The kids are now able to understand that objects move because other objects exert forces on them (pushes and pulls). This has been helpful to explain cause and effect in depth.
After reading “Rosie Revere, Engineer” the kids had an opportunity to become engineers and construct a model of a machine or robot that could be useful. They wrote about their creations and had a wonderful experience during the construction process.
January was a great month to discuss the way that our world was many years ago so that we could compare and contrast to how it is now. We discussed the importance of MLK and how his bravery changed our lives.
It is also so great to see the kids responding so well to Reading Workshop. Many of the children have increased their stamina during independent reading time and have shown tremendous growth in their reading fluency, accuracy and comprehension. I am so impressed!
We are excited and looking forward to our 100th day of school in February! Stayed tuned for pictures of our Fashion Show in next month’s Newsletter.
From the Desk of Ms. Kaim:
The first graders began the new year with several snow and snowman themed activities. They wrote about snowmen, read books about snowmen, and made snowmen glyphs with their fifth grade buddies. They also learned about Snowflake Bentley as well as followed steps to fold and cut in order to create six-sided snowflakes. Many students enjoyed participating in other snowflake activities during Family Winter Night
We also read Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution and made resolutions about being better students and friends. Later in the month, we celebrated Squirrel Appreciation Day! The first graders learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and practiced choosing kindness. This included making pinecone bird feeders to be kind to animals.
In science, we concluded our study of matter. The first graders explored small solids and separated them using screens. The boys and girls observed different kinds of liquids and solids interacting when they made lava lamps. They also observed what happened to candy canes when they were placed in different liquids. We ended the month with a paper chain STEM challenge.
Our continent of the month was Europe. The boys and girls learned about famous European landmarks, works of art, and animals like the red and arctic fox. They read The Littlest Matryoshka, The Mysterious Giant of Barletta, A New Coat for Anna and The Story of Ferdinand. Afterwards, the first graders created nesting dolls, dyed cloth napkins, and made flowers for Ferdinand. The month ended with a delicious Taste of Europe!
In math, the first graders concluded a chapter that developed place value skills to 1,000. They began using a variety of patterns and strategies to find sums and differences for basic facts. They also finished creating slideshows about shapes in the computer lab.
D’Nealian handwriting lessons continued to stress using the proper strokes, slant, size, and spacing when forming lowercase letters.
Other special events were a visit from Junior Achievement, a virtual visit to the Vancouver Aquarium to learn about camouflage, a presentation about the Chinese New Year, and watching classmates and buddies in the Bell School Talent Show.
We are looking forward to celebrating the 100th day of school in February!
From the Desk of Ms. L Murray:
I cannot believe that we are halfway through our school year! Our Second Graders have made so much progress so far! We enjoyed many special events this month including, 1.) Chinese Artists arranged by Mr. Qiao our Chinese instructor who taught us about the Chinese New Year, 2.) The Talent Show which showcased three or our students, 3.) a field trip to the Swedish American Museum, and 4.) dissecting owl pellets!
In Language Arts, we finished the biography, Take a Stand, Rosa Parks!. We began our new novel, Riding Freedom. This is a moving work of historical fiction based on the real person, Charlotte Parkhurst. The complex characters are providing meaningful moments that are generating thoughtful group discussions.
In Writing, we continue to practice our Poetry Writing skills. Our work is "published" on our classroom "Poetry Line."
In Math, we built on our foundation of multiplication skills including writing equations to find the unknown, to dive into division. Students are quickly analyzing word problems and constructing division equations.
In Social Studies, we took a field trip to the Swedish American Museum to learn about the immigrant experience. This trip provided background and opportunities to make connections between what we are learning in the classroom as well as information gathered from our Family Interview project questionnaires. Students then created original projects from models to board games to tri-fold boards to be displayed to other second graders and parents on Feb. 4. Finally, we learned to identify the states in the Midwest and Southwest regions.
In Science, we finished our unit on "Structures of Life" by taking a closer look at skeletal systems. We arranged paper bones for a human skeleton and counted them. Then, we dissected owl pellets to find the skeletal remains of rodents eaten by owls.
What will Third Quarter bring?!
From the Desk of Ms. Thiel:
2019 was off to a wonderful start! It is hard to believe we are beginning the third quarter.
This month we covered Chapter 5: factors, multiples and patterns. We then tackled fractions! The children were able to generate equivalent fractions, put fractions in simplest form and identify common denominators. We ended our chapter with comparing and ordering fractions.
This month we began reading a new novel, The One and Only Ivan. The children are enjoying getting to know our new characters. We are exploring theme as well as figurative language and learning to identify them in context.
The children are all working very hard during our Lookingglass Residency as they learn about using actors’ tools including their voice, imagination and body. Our informance will be Friday, February 14th at 9:30 in the auditorium.
We completed our unit on the Earth, Sun and the Moon. Our last investigation led us to discover the different phases of the Moon and how to identify them. We then focused on those phases and the lunar cycle. We will enjoy a culminating field trip to the Adler Planetarium next month.
In Social Studies we began our unit on Early Explorers. We discussed reasons for European explorations and the technology that made it possible. We have learned about the aims, obstacles and accomplishments of early explorers. We then traced the routes of these explorers to identify the areas they claimed.
In Writers Workshop we continued to work on our informative piece. We laid out our chapters and began writing with our selected text structure. The children have added fun ways to elaborate on their information including; jokes, fun facts, graphs and pictures. We finished revising and editing before moving on to the introduction and conclusion to create our published piece.
From the Desk of Ms. Milstein:
During the month of January our social studies unit on Westward Expansion has been a highlight for Room 208. The students’ favorite activities are always those involved in our live simulation game of the Oregon Trail. The 4th graders work together in “wagon groups” to make purchases, budget money earned through behavior points, and make decisions that those traveling west had to make many years ago. Outside of the game, we have participated in a lot of other engaging related lessons as well. The class worked in expert groups to learn about a famous explorer who made westward expansion possible. After they researched, the students created posters and taught their classmates about their expert explorer. In studying why people wanted to move westward we analyzed various push and pull factors that existed during this time in history. The unit will culminate in a student created assessment. Each student will review their readings and notes to create three different types of test questions. The entire test will be comprised of a combination of these questions developed by the 4th graders themselves.
The class has begun our new writing unit on opinion writing. Students are working hard in their writers’ notebooks to gather ideas for writing strong personal essays. In math, we have finished our chapters involving decimal operations and have moved onto working with fractions. Second quarter math projects and book reports were both turned in towards the end of the quarter. It was wonderful to see so many diverse presentations spanning various mediums and topics.
The 4th graders are getting a very special experience this year with Chinese. Each week the classes are practicing various forms of traditional Chinese dance. We are lucky to have a special teacher working with our class. The kids will have a final performance for parents and peers later on this quarter.
From the Desk of Ms. Caskey:
Students in 317 are warming up with classic literature in the new year! We formed small groups and met almost every day to dig deep into portions of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. We talked about the cultural implications of the tale and whether or not Kipling should have told the story. ELA had students in 317 teaching each other about verb skills in grammar and we finished a memoir unit (with a fun anecdotal comic) in Writer’s Workshop.
Math got off to a running start after break when we finished our unit on fractions using all of the operations and we began our geometry unit. Geometry focuses on analyzing the formulas for area using rectangles, triangles, and parallelograms, and it also will explore three dimensional shapes.
Social Studies is probably the most exciting time of the day as we get our Bell City up and running. We have named our classroom city, DiverCity, and we will go through the process of forming political parties, run/vote for office, and get private businesses up and running. This unit is so engaging and supplements well with what we are working on in financial literacy.
Our Planetary Science unit is wrapping up, and as we zoom further away from the Earth, we get an understanding of how temperature, atmosphere, and light play an important role in how astronomers understand what is going on “out there.” We will culminate our unit with a trip to the Adler and an interest project.
From the Desk of Mr. Prince:
6th grade currently reading the Giver by Lois Lowry .They are examining Jonas’s community for aspects of isolation, conformity, Individual, freedom, choice and desire. We started with a very interesting gallery walk examining the photos for elements of those ideas. They are currently working on transmitting memories to each other. In math students tackled the complexity of solving single variable equations, slope and finding x and y intercepts. Our representatives to the Spelling Bee were Matthew and Maggie. Although they did not emerge victorious we are still proud of their achievement. Finally we got to spend time with our second grade Buddies working on community building activities.
7th grade math completed Growing, Growing, Growing a unit on exponential functions . We have moved on to quadratic functions in the unit Frogs, Fleas, and Painted Cubes.
In 8th grade math students continue working through the CME Algebra or Geometry text at their own pace. They are currently working on Lines and slope in Algebra to looking at Dissections and Area and also some are already working on Similarity.
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6th grade currently reading the Giver by Lois Lowry .They are examining Jonas’s community for aspects of isolation, conformity, Individual, freedom, choice and desire. We started with a very interesting gallery walk examining the photos for elements of those ideas. They are currently working on transmitting memories to each other. In math students tackled the complexity of solving single variable equations, slope and finding x and y intercepts. Our representatives to the Spelling Bee were Matthew and Maggie. Although they did not emerge victorious we are still proud of their achievement. Finally we got to spend time with our second grade Buddies working on community building activities.
7th grade math completed Growing, Growing, Growing a unit on exponential functions . We have moved on to quadratic functions in the unit Frogs, Fleas, and Painted Cubes.
In 8th grade math students continue working through the CME Algebra or Geometry text at their own pace. They are currently working on Lines and slope in Algebra to looking at Dissections and Area and also some are already working on Similarity.
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From the Desk of Mr. Klein:
During the month of January, the emphasis in physical science has been on the study of the periodic table. Experimentation to this effect has centered on the following areas: Density is a Periodic Property: Discovering an Element, Periodic Trends and the Properties of Elements: The Alkaline Earth Metals, and All in the Family: The Halogens and Their Compounds. Concepts explored have included periodic law, density, group IV elements, period number, periodic trends, group vs. period, alkaline earth metals, activity series, double replacement reaction, families, halogens, and single replacement reactions.
In life science, the focus for the past month has been on genetics. Laboratories being conducted during this time include Genetics of Taste, Genetics Probability, Genetics of Organisms, and Eye Color and Polygenic Inheritance. The concepts being explored include heterozygous vs. homozygous, forms of dominance, dihybrid cross, genotype vs. phenotype, dominant vs. recessive, independent segregation, independent assortment, monogenic vs. polygenic, taster, and pedigree analysis.
In seventh grade language arts (reading and writing), the students are continuing to develop an understanding of Greek and Latin roots in vocabulary, read and discuss science fiction short stories, compose original pieces of prose and verse, participate in literature circles and produce articulate written responses, derive a deeper and richer appreciation for grammar in general and the parts of speech in particular, manufacture mind maps to reflect greater comprehension of complex text, and concoct eloquent responses to philosophical inquiries.
During the month of January, the emphasis in physical science has been on the study of the periodic table. Experimentation to this effect has centered on the following areas: Density is a Periodic Property: Discovering an Element, Periodic Trends and the Properties of Elements: The Alkaline Earth Metals, and All in the Family: The Halogens and Their Compounds. Concepts explored have included periodic law, density, group IV elements, period number, periodic trends, group vs. period, alkaline earth metals, activity series, double replacement reaction, families, halogens, and single replacement reactions.
In life science, the focus for the past month has been on genetics. Laboratories being conducted during this time include Genetics of Taste, Genetics Probability, Genetics of Organisms, and Eye Color and Polygenic Inheritance. The concepts being explored include heterozygous vs. homozygous, forms of dominance, dihybrid cross, genotype vs. phenotype, dominant vs. recessive, independent segregation, independent assortment, monogenic vs. polygenic, taster, and pedigree analysis.
In seventh grade language arts (reading and writing), the students are continuing to develop an understanding of Greek and Latin roots in vocabulary, read and discuss science fiction short stories, compose original pieces of prose and verse, participate in literature circles and produce articulate written responses, derive a deeper and richer appreciation for grammar in general and the parts of speech in particular, manufacture mind maps to reflect greater comprehension of complex text, and concoct eloquent responses to philosophical inquiries.