Social Studies

In Social Studies class, we are learning about Ancient Greece. We watched the Disney movie Hercules, and now we are learning about the similarities and differences between Athens and Sparta, which were two rivals of Greece.

                  Some differences between Athens and Sparta was how Sparta was a military-based society. All Spartans were focused on becoming athletic, strong soldiers, ready to fight. The young boys in Sparta were trained to be warriors and the young girls were trained to be mothers of warriors. As an Athenian, anyone was able to do what they wanted freely. People received a good education and could pursue in different kinds of art and sciences. Young boys had the choice to be in the military, and young girls were restricted to jobs that didn’t involve war or business.

                  A well-known person from Ancient Greece was Socrates. He was a Greek philosopher from Athens, who’s famous teaching was a way of educating people by using questions. For instance, his method would be shown if a teacher was trying to teach kids and instead of talking about something, they keep asking questions and make it so that the kids are actively participating. Socrates died by being forced to drink poison because he was convicted of corrupting the youth and impiety.

Sports Banquet

Sports Banquet

Every year St. Maurice holds a sports banquet in the gym for all the people who played on a sports team throughout the year. People who didn't play on a team but would like to go, have to pay $10 for a ticket.

Awards are given out, for example MVP awards. You also get a meal and at the end of the banquet there's a dance. People dress up formal and it's supposed to be really fun.

Gym Class

Gym

 In gym class, we are currently doing badminton. On Monday, we had a badminton test. We had to know what the game was originally called, where it originated, the rules, the different types of serves and shots. We also had to know the court lines really well.  We have been playing King’s court in gym class. We are also doing skill testing in class; so far we have been tested on our short and long serves. The last thing we are getting tested on is how we play against someone.

Later on this month we will be having our school track meet on May 21. We have just started our track and field unit yesterday. We ran for 8 minutes inside instead of running around the school. We only did high jump yesterday. It got pretty boring because we were not allowed to put it any higher. We also have to fill in participation logs after every class. 

 

Social studies blog

     In social studies we just finished our Egypt project where we had to choose something from Egypt and make a diarama of it and create 2 poems about it, a cinquain and a title poem. A cinquain is a poem that only has five lines all reflecting on one topic. The first line should be the subject which must be a noun. The second line should have 2 adjectives that describe the subject. The third line should have 3 action verbs that end in "ing" and describe  the subject. The fourth line should be a phrase or sentence that describes the subject. The fifth line is a synonym for the subject. A title poem is a poem in which the letters of the title are going down and the each line represents/describes something about the title, conveying a single thought. Some people did this project by themselves and some people partnered up. Some things that people did were: sarcohphagus, pyramids, shaduf, lotus flower, nile, canopic jars, sphinx, etc. Overall everyone's projects were amazing. The poems are 10 marks each and the diarama is worth 30 marks, so the whole project is worth 50 marks.

http://www.peregrineadventures.com/blog/12/03/2013/11-things-you-didnt-know-about-egypt


      We just handed in a title page on our new unit Greece. We had to include  5 pictures that have something to do with Greece from our textbook. On a separate piece of paper we have to type up 5 facts about each thing that had to be double-spaced. Some things you could draw and write about are Spartans, Parthenon, columns, what they ate, the Trojan Horse, etc. The title page is out of 20 marks.
 

 http://817eportfolios12.wikispaces.com/Sompong

    

Art

This week in art we are finishing up a shading drawing of an animal then painting it. I am already on the painting stage as most people are too. We have to start with dark colours first and then progress onto lighter colours until it looks like the picture. Mine is almost done except the face looks a little messed up. The picture that i am painting is of a dog. We can sometimes listen to music if it is a holiday or close to a holiday.

This week we are just painting and we are focusing on making it look exactly the same as the picture. This is the final assignment and will be worth half of our second term mark. We also have to do quotes with different colours and only using pen.  The quotes have to be following an alphabet that Mr. Cotter has in his room.

http://missmcdonaldart.blogspot.ca/?m=1

E.L.A Literature Circles

Currently in E.L.A we are doing literature circle groups. The people in my group are Tyger, Surafel, and me, and the book we are doing is giver, which is a book about a boy names Jonas, who is in a community, and is chosen to be the person that holds everyone's memories, and then runs from the community. Noah, Min, Kaleab, and Chris are doing heat of the night,which is about a cop who is investigating a murder. Navroop, Kiran, Mya, Zara, Jayda, and Malory are doing a fault in our stars, which is about a cancer patient named Hazel, who is told by her parents to go to a support group. Keygan, Aumber, Carter, and Daniel are doing light in the forest, which is about John Butler who is captured by people for 11 years. Ashley and Delaney are doing Divergent, which is about what it would be like to live in a post-apocalyptic society. Olivia, Kim, and Amy are doing Carries war which is about two world war 2 evacuees. Patrick and Adam are doing I AM DAVID which is about a young boy who escapes a concentration camp. We will be meeting every Monday, and will have to have our book read by June!

Gym            In gym class we are doing badminton. At the beginning of class we have to jog around the gym for 5 minutes and then we grab a racket and a partner and practice our shots and serves like the short serve or backhand serve and the long serve. We also learned how to hold our racket when we do certain shots like if you need to hit the birdie far, put your thumb on the back to give it more power to go farther. Near the end of class we do games like doubles kings court or singles, or we just try to rally.            A climbing wall was also added to the gym the other day. We haven’t climbed it yet but we will get to climb it during our next gym class. It isn’t that tall but it is wide. We also finished our fitness testing a few classes ago too. We were tested on our vertical jump, how many sit ups you can do in a minute, how many pushups and pull ups you can do, we did the beep test, and we also did some more tests.

Science

Right now in science we are studying optics. We have learned about how light reflect off objects and some colours are absorbed and some aren’t. We have looked at the electromagnetic spectrum and the different levels of radiation, with radio waves being on the far left of the spectrum (lowest level) and gamma rays being at the far right of the spectrum (highest level). The levels of the light waves are measured in two ways. The wave length which is the distance between two crests, and the frequency which is how many waves pass a given point in a certain amount of time.

We have also looked at different sources of light. For example, bioluminescence. This is where living creatures naturally contain a source of light, somewhere on or in their body. We have also checked out different types of light bulbs, how they work and the pros and cons of them. Later in the unit we will learn about eyes and how they work.

Kaleab 8B

ELA BLOG

In ELA we are doing poster project with a partner which is due by the end of the month. We have to take 6 jobs (3 jobs each) from the cast of the movie The Hobbit and we have to explain their jobs and put it on a poster. We have also been working on Latin and Greek words and we learned how to figure out if a word is Latin or Greek. We have just recently done prefixes and suffix’s also, where we look at the beginning and ending of each word. We have also learned about the gold rush in a story in our textbook. We found out that The Hobbit and the Gold Rush are very similar.

We have been reading The Hobbit for a while and we are now done. It was an interesting story that I actually enjoyed. We also have to make a plot diagram and for every chapter and write a description of the chapter. We will be having a test soon which will bring an end to The Hobbit.

Social Studies

                In social studies we are rapping things up with the Egypt unit. With have a test next Wednesday and a big project due on the 29^th. For the project, we have to do a cinquain poem and a title poem that relates to Egypt.  A cinquain poem goes like this…

Line1: A noun

Line2: Two adjectives

Line 3: Three -ing words

Line 4: A phrase

Line 5: Another word for the noun

A title poem goes like this…

Powerful

Athletic

Tall

Rice is my best friend

Interesting

Cool…lol jk

Kind…Sike

After we have finished the poems, we have to make a mini structure thing that relates to the poems we done.  Ex: if you did a poem about a pyramid, then you make a pyramid out of lego blocks or something

Badminton! By: Kim

Badminton

            For badminton I am in girls doubles. My partner is Amy. We had our in-school tournament last week and Amy and I made the team! Only two doubles can make the team. The other team is Angelica and Sukhsagar. All the categories consist of Grade 7 girls doubles, girls’ singles, boys’ doubles, boys’ singles, and mixed doubles. For Grade 8 it is the same team categories.

            We have practices on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Each practices we begin with five minutes of running, and stretches. Our coach is Ms. Lantin who is the guidance counselor. The tournaments start off with round robin and go on to the finals. The winners get a media and if you make it to the finals you get a certificate.