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