Program Updates: Math and Science – March 2025
SCIENCE
Grade 6 (Kristin)
Our snowshoe unit has drawn to a close, following the final week of shelter-building. Over 31 adults from our community were directly involved in the success of this program - WOW!!
Recognizing and appreciating the generosity of others is something EW strives to instill in our students. One way we do that is by taking the time to thank the people who have given their time and expertise to help us. In science class we discussed what makes a meaningful thank you and took the time to share those thoughts with classroom volunteers and trip leaders.
Thank you to everyone who helped to make these trips possible! We couldn’t have done it without you!!
Grade 7 (Virgil)
Seventh graders are exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M’Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor. Her case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out which pathways and processes in M’Kenna’s body might be functioning differently than a healthy system and why.
Students investigate data specific to M’Kenna’s case in the form of doctor's notes, endoscopy images and reports, growth charts, and micrographs. They also draw from their results from laboratory experiments on the chemical changes involving the processing of food and from digital interactives to explore how food is transported, transformed, stored, and used across different body systems in all people.
Through this work of figuring out what is causing M’Kenna’s symptoms, the class discovers what happens to the food we eat after it enters our bodies and how M’Kenna’s different symptoms are connected.
Grade 8 (Kristin)
Messages are transported throughout our bodies via electrical impulses that need electrolytes to function. Picking up where we left off before Rome and mid-winter break, the 8th graders are learning about how electrolytes transfer electricity both in the body and in a circuit.
This week, students completed a lab comparing conductivity in fresh water and salt water. As access to fresh water becomes more challenging around the world, finding new methods for access are critical. The ocean is one such opportunity. Students will use their conductivity lab later when they design desalination systems and test to see if their system was successful.
MATH
Grade 6 (Scott)
February’s math focus was all about division. Your favorite 6th grade mathematician should be able to tell you what two questions every division problem asks. They should have a pretty good sense of how both long division and partial product (or Big Seven) division work. And there should be a growing understanding of decimals and fractions as dividends, divisors, and quotients.
We have also re-opened our exploration of factor trees and prime factorization as tools to get us to prime pools that allow for finding all of the factors of a given number, and most recently to intertwine two sets of factors in overlapping prime pools (or using double division) to find Greatest Common Factors and Lowest Common Multiples. A quiz is coming up at the end of the week to see how well we have secured those practical and analytical skills.
In appreciation of the native plants now adorning our campus, we will dabble in Fraction/Decimal/ Percent Gardens with a serious challenge component for those willing to “get into the weeds”. We’ll try to get to Circle Calculations by Pi Day (3/14), and then we’ll be dipping our toes in one- and two-step algebraic problem-solving.
Grade 7 (Virgil)
Seventh graders are learning about properties of equality as they draw, interpret, and write equations in one variable for balanced “hanger diagrams,” and write expressions for sequences of instructions. They use tape diagrams together with equations to represent situations with one unknown quantity. They will then learn algebraic methods for solving equations.
Grade 8 (Scott)
Algebra students worked with function notation and turned functions into their inverses (like when a function tells you the cost given the number of concert tickets purchased, it can be turned into a function that tells you the number of tickets purchased when given the cost.)
And what could be more fun than a trip to Rome? Well, how about returning to exponential growth and decay in math class? A magical fish offered us a doubling purse, and we have seen how bacteria populations can really take off. Better than the Borghese? Well… elegant in its own way, I suppose. We will be constructing, analyzing, evaluating, and graphing exponential functions, as we “March 4th” into Unit 6. Questions are already being asked about parabolas and quadratics, so stay tuned and ask for updates and explanations.