Month: October 2018

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Columbus on Trial, Brown Girl Dreaming, and Density Labs (Oct 15- Oct19)

       10/15/18-  On Monday, it was very fun during the Quest classes. During Quest Science, we did a Current Events that concerned whether or not if it would be okay to clone your dog. We learned the process of making a clone, the price, and the pros and cons of it. Meanwhile, in Quest Humanities, we went through another round of Current Events and started preparing for the Christopher Columbus Trial. Many of the current events articles had very controversial ideas. Some of the most talked about in the classroom were Hurricane Michael, the missing writer in Saudi Arabia, and the shooting at a one-year-old’s birthday. The Christopher Columbus trial was made up of 5 groups. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Taino Indians, Columbus, Columbus’ men, and the System of Empire.  A jury was developed by the teachers, who would be the deciding factor of who was guilty and who was innocent. The guilt could be shared by a few groups. We had also started reading “Brown Girl Dreaming” which had lots of poems and history woven into the book.  -Alicia

10/16/18- Tuesday was a jam-packed day. In Science, we took more time to finish our Current Events. On the other hand, we started the trial of Christopher Columbus. The five groups wrote and said their pleas against the indictment, which was: “You are responsible for the murder and mistreatment of thousands, or maybe millions of Taino Indians.” Some groups called on witnesses to help speak about their reasons, while others admitted to their actions. During the English portion of Quest Humanities, we continued our talk and reading on “Brown Girl Dreaming” and were assigned to write a poem. The poem would be about all the familial, national, and personal events that happened during the time you were born.   -Alicia

10/17/18- On Wednesday during Quest Humanities, we read three chapters of “Brown Girl Dreaming,” which were called “A Girl Named Jack,” “The Woodsons of Ohio,” and “The Ghosts of the Nelsonville House.” These chapters, in summary, were about a young girl named Jacqueline Woodson and how she and her family grew up. During this period also, we received our study guides for the maps quiz on 10/23. For our next period of Quest, we conducted a trial debrief of the people against Columbus. We were asked discussion questions such as: Who’s more guilty; the person who gives the orders, or the people who carry out the orders? Does the system of empire (property over people) make violence inevitable? What should be the system’s sentence? And what is your biggest takeaway from this trial? These questions really struck thoughts in our minds and helped us to engage even more. In Quest Science, we did our Determining Density Lab. This lab that we did with our table partners allowed us to better understand density and what qualities of an object affect it. -Katie

10/18/18- During Quest Humanities on Thursday, we read the next five chapters of “Brown Girl Dreaming” (“It’ll be Scary Sometimes” through “How to Listen #1”). The rest of this period, and the other periods throughout the day were free to do self-directed work. We were able to work on map revisions if we had any, our “Brown Girl Dreaming” poems, grammar pages, maps quiz studying, log #8, or self-evaluation ( eval. for section Z.)  ~Katie

10/19/18- During Quest Humanities, we had a discussion on the Columbus Trial.  We reflected on how this type of activity  helped us learn easier or explain more. I thought that the trial helped us understand their thoughts and why everything happened.  Also thought that it gave us some idea of what court is like and how it works. I thought this project was overall really fun. We also had a time where we could work on anything that we needed to.  I feel this time is super important and helps us got a lot of work done so we don’t have hours of homework.

In Quest Science we worked on our labs.  I think doing labs our really fun because it is very hands on.  It helps you really see everything going on. It is very fun to get to experiment and work with your partner.  Overall it was very fun and hands on. -Asha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Determining Density Lab: students measure blocks (right) and talk to each other about the qualities of a certain object (left)

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Events in the Caribbean: Hurricanes and Encounters (Oct 9th-Oct 12th)

October 9th-12th was a very interesting week in Quest Science! In Quest Science, we had a lab about density. In the lab, we learned about determining density and measuring the densities of irregular objects. We had a great time with this lab about comparing the densities of different substances with our partners. For Quest Science homework, we received a packet about cloning and expressing our opinions about whether we should clone our pets or not. It is a very complicating process to clone things as said in the picture captions. We also learned about Hurricane Michael and how it greatly affected the coast of Florida.- Jonathan

On Tuesday, October 9th, our section had the triple period of Quest Humanities. We received our Current Events #1 with teacher comments. We were supposed to get them signed and return them by Thursday, 10/11. We then did a workshop where we edited our group’s first-person point of view island essays. We did this by everyone sending their essays to each other and us adding comments and fixing grammar or spelling errors. We did this for the first two periods. When we were finished with our editing, we had to go to Mr. Greenberg’s room. We received a paper where we had to label each country in Central America and the Caribbean. We also had to label the capital of the places too. We will do this with every continent throughout the year. We will take a quiz, labeling each region, and when we pass, we receive a stamp in our passport. If you collect all the stamps, you finish this project and you will be able to name all the regions in the world. -Matt

On Wednesday, October 10th we had a log question due. Log questions help us all review and think about different keys to Quest. Our log question was, “Describe your first workshop experience. What was it like to share your work? Did this inspire you to revise your work? If so, how? If not, why not. What challenged you as a creative writer?”.  During the past week or two our class has been working on a various amount of assignments. When we received our first Current Events assignment, we were not as sure about it as we are now. The second Current Events is going to be a lot easier for the grade because we all received feedback. We know what things we got wrong and will be able to fix all the problems. We also did our Christopher Columbus trial  project where we were selected into a group and read evidence about our group. The defendants included Columbus’ Men, Columbus, the Taino, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and the System of Empire. We had to do a make-believe court with our historical characters. -JJ.

On Thursday, certain sections completed their self-assessment. During the self-assessment, we evaluated ourselves on how we think we are doing in Quest, with different categories. We also must circle how we think we are doing on a rubric. When we return them we will get feedback from our Quest teachers. During Quest, we have a lot of self-directed time. The self-directed time slot on the self-evaluation is a huge part of Quest. Management of time, and getting work done is extremely important. During the review and reading the feedback, we all should take into consideration that the teacher and our parents are adults and respect our peers’ feedback. We also had to think about a painting. This painting was about segregation and we had to observe that painting and talk about it.  -JJ

  

Friday, 10/12

On Friday, our section worked on our mock trial about Christopher Columbus. We had to annotate a piece of paper that held information about your group. The indictments described what our group did that was good, and what our group did that was really bad. Our task was to a plea and include evidence. We had to plead guilty or innocent and could also try to figure out whether other groups shared guilt for the result of Columbus’ encounter with the Taino in 1492. By examining this case, we were able to talk about how the story of Columbus we may have learned when we were younger may not be complete. We worked on writing those things for the rest of this period. -Matt

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Smiles, Gummy Bears, and Islands (Oct 1-5)

10/1/18

Monday, October 1st, was a very active day for Quest Humanities and Quest science. In Quest Humanities, we started a new geography project. This project was a creative way to make a geographic 3-D island out of paper. The highest points are the mountains, lowest points are the flat lands and intermediate points of the island were hills. This helped us express our creativity and knowledge for geography. In Quest Science, we took a quiz on our knowledge for the important lab tools and the metric system. After the quiz, we spent time expanding on the metric system, in a fun way. By doing a smile lab, we measured our smiles in centimeters and millimeters, to get familiar using the traditional metric system in science, and to see who has the biggest smile in the class. – Moses 

 

10/2/18

Tuesday, October 2nd, was an extension of what we did on Monday. In Quest Humanities, we focused on adding more detail to our islands. Creating cities, transportation ports/roads, recreation, and choosing the location of our islands. This added more depth to our islands and gave us the opportunity to express our uniqueness and creativity. In Quest Science, we stuck with the metric system and worked on a pretty lengthy packet. This helped our class a lot get used to using the metric system. – Moses 

 

10/3/18

In Quest Humanities on Wednesday, October 3rd, we started working on our Island narrative. We have an assignment that is due next week on Tuesday where we start to build a story about a day in the life of one of our island residents. The story is supposed to give details about the island, following up on the physical islands we created in class on Monday and Tuesday. The story is supposed to follow a person who lives on the island and show detail about their everyday life, 

including specific details about the island geography, culture and climate. It is supposed to help us think about the details of our island and put them into a story format. – Skyla

10/4/18

  Today in quest humanities we had time to work on our island narrative. The island narrative is making a character and making a story about everyday life on your island. You would also use the geography, culture, and climate to create the life of your character on your island.  You would have to write this story either from a child or adult perspective. You would also have to include the geographical features of your island in your story. Students have already created their islands and they are currently working on these stories – Nicholas

10/5/18    

In science today we got to finish our gummy bear lab. The gummy bear lab was when we measured the length, width, thickness, volume, mass, and density of the gummy bear. We then put the gummy bear in the water for a few hours overnight. Mrs. Bruvik then drained the water surrounding the gummy bears. We then took the gummy bear out of the cup and recorded the measurements of the length, width, thickness, volume, mass, and density. This practices our knowledge of the metric system that we are going to use all year in science. – Nicholas 

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This week in Quest: Global Warming, Storyboards, and Pipettes (Sept 24-28)

 

This week in Quest Humanities, our class has done multiple activities involving our writing prompts for the week, geography, vocabulary, and learning about coordinates and why they are important. In geography, we answered our 5th question for our log book which was, “If, as we like to say, ‘geography is the place where history happens’ then we should also recognize that ‘physical geography is the place where cultural geography happens.” -Muncel Chang. We analyzed and discussed this quote in class. I took many notes about what I didn’t include in my analysis from other students, which is one of the main focuses in Quest (Learning from your mistakes and asking for feedback from your peers). I really enjoyed responding to this quote as well as our next question for our log book which was #6. The quote was, “Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.” I think that this was an important quote and also a very meaningful life-lesson. The quote is saying that people need to have perseverance when there is an obstacle in front of them, instead of quitting. Life throws many difficulties at people and they need to be ready, because life is not always perfect.

In geography, our class has been discussing how the geography where a place is located can affect their culture and the ways people live in that area. For example, if someone lived in an area with large mountains, people there would have appropriate clothing for the cold. Their religion can be based on the nature around them and they might use trees and stones to make  warm houses. So my conclusion from this is that geography can affect many things such as culture, which I agreed upon. We have also been learning about the different climate zones and latitude and longitude. I learned an interesting fact that surprised me which was people who live in the Tropic Climate Zone, have only two seasons which are wet and dry in parts of Africa and South America. The reason why our class is currently discussing latitude and longitude is because coordinates help people navigate when traveling and also for pilots to locate where planes should alight from. For Quest Humanities, we also had our first vocabulary unit and quiz this week. We have learned many vocab words from this unit and next week hopefully we will learn more vocabulary words for Unit 2. Overall, this was a very active week with assignments but thanks to our teachers, they gave us time to do some of our Quest work in class, so we had less to do at home. – Jayden Flores

This week, in Quest Science, we did many labs on Monday and Tuesday. The first lab that we did consisted of a balloon and a soda bottle. First, we had to place the balloon over the bottle where the cap would go. Second, we needed a container of hot water and another one to hold cold water. When we were done gathering the objects, we placed the bottle in the pot of hot water for two minutes and observed the balloon’s behavior. After the time was up, we put the bottle in the cold water. When we finished, we recorded our observations on a sheet of paper. The second lab included a rock and salt. We used a magnifying glass to get a closer look at the rock and salt. Next, we had to identify whether the rock or salt was a pure substance. We used our own definition of a pure substance to answer the question. Some people said a pure substance is something only made of one thing. Others said a pure substance is something that is natural and is not man-made. For the third lab, we had two different test tubes. One test tube contained lime water and the other contained regular water. We were instructed to exhale into both tubes for two minutes. After we exhaled, we recorded our observations on paper and repeated the test. We noticed that the lime water was really foggy when we started. After we finished exhaling, the lime water was clearer. The water was clear when we started but as we exhaled the water became foggier.

For the fourth lab, we were given a circular top that had a division down the middle. We had to measure a certain amount of salt on one side and the same amount of sand on the other. After measuring, we took the pipette, a tool used to measure small amounts of water, and used it to pour the same amount of water into both sides. We recorded our observations of what it looked like before and after the water was poured into it. Some people said that the sand was all spread out while the salt was all clumped together in chunks. – Isabella

In Quest Humanities, we also have been researching current event articles about various topics in today’s society. On Monday, we got to discuss the topics we have been researching is small groups of four. Some examples of topics we were discussing include Hurricane Florence, school shootings, flash floods, greenhouse emissions, plastic pollution, the Colin Kaepernick controversy, and drug use in Philadelphia. We had to write a short 3-5 sentence summary about the topic and sum up its main points. We wrote a longer 2-3 paragraph analysis about the main points, and if the author was biased or not, and if so what side did they take. We also had to annotate the article, and highlight the basis and the main points that the author was trying to make. One of my classmates thoughts and comments on this assignment was, “ Current events are important situations in life that people should take action in, know about, and understand. My experience with our current events project was a way for me to learn about the causes of greenhouse emissions, and now I know how important and dangerous Hurricane Florence is, and what we are doing to help.”

During this week, we continued analyzing, annotating, and highlighting main points in two short stories. One of the short stories we read is  “Thank You Ma’am.”The other short story is called “Old Man Under The Bridge.”

In class, we made a storyboard, picking one of the stories. We had to draw six different pictures, and write a short description telling whether each scene was part of the rising action, climax, or falling action. We also had to identify what or who was the protagonist and the antagonist in each story. A lesson that was learned by one of my classmates is “The two stories we read in class, Thank You Ma’am and Old Man Under The Bridge, have taught me that the antagonist and the protagonist don’t have to be the people. It could be the theme or the setting of the story, it doesn’t always have to be the characters.” – Brandon