Monday – 12/10/18 By Jack R
In today’s period of quest science, we did a very fun lab about melting ice. The main question of this lab was “What Causes Phase Change?” (Solid-Liquid-Gas) This was shown by putting a burner under a cup of ice and using a thermometer to measure temperature changes in the water. We recorded what was happening to the ice every thirty seconds. We wrote down the temperature and observations like, the ice is melting, or that our water is boiling. We would record this on a piece of paper and when we were all done recording this information we made a line graph using the data that we had gathered.
For our quest humanities periods, we learned about a new assignment we were getting called the Audio Archive project. This project comes from the poem in the book Brown Girl Dreaming called, “What I Believe”. In this poem, Jacqueline Woodson states everything that she believes in. In our quest periods, we learned what the requirements for the assignment were and it’s purpose. The requirements were to come up with an I believe statement, involving something that we believe in. Then we have to expand on this and incorporate a story from our own lives that match the I believe statement. Once finished the writing aspect you will read your paper into a microphone and then we will share our recording with the class.
Tuesday- 12/11/18 By Sophia
Quest Humanities- In the first Quest Humanities period today, we reflected on what we learned during our research project based on the African American History and Culture museum we visited while in Washington DC. We had to write a short response about what we learned during our research. Your answer could be your topic specific or big picture. After writing our responses we reviewed them and found the most common themes. We then discussed how we wanted to demonstrate these themes and our topics all together in a visual way. We decided to use a timeline ordered chronologically, using the themes struggle and perseverance and separation to unity. We also chose to use black and white pictures for events or people that represented struggle or separation and colored picture for events or people who represented perseverance and unity. Each event on the timeline will be represented by pictures and a short summary of the picture, person, or event. This was an excellent opportunity to understand how our topics overlap and think of creative and interesting ways to teach others about what we learned.
The second Quest Humanities period was more of a self-guided time. For most people, the majority of the period was spent working on our Audio Archive project. Once finished the writing aspect of the project we practiced by reading aloud, and peer edited each other’s stories. Once we finished that we could move on to mapping Canada’s territories, providences, and capitals. This was a good chance to be productive and improve on our audio archive stories before recording day.
In Quest Science last week we picked an article to read from Scholastic’s Science World. Today, we gathered with all of the people who read the same articles and wrote down everything we remembered from them without using the magazine. After we wrote down everything each person could remember we were given the article to ensure we didn’t leave anything out. Then we answered three questions about the article and we shared our answers with the class. This was a good opportunity to not only share what we learned from the article we read but to learn from the articles our peers decided to read.
Wednesday – 12/14/18 By Jack R
In our quest humanities periods, we came up with ideas for our timeline. Our timeline was inspired by our African American history project. We each put our person or event on the whiteboard and then thought of things that could visually represent them. These events/people ranged from the 1700s to the late 1990s. There was also a wide variety of topics, some being 1970’s TV shows or things like the Atlantic slave trade. I personally did Rodney King so I had the idea to put a newspaper headline of the beating. I did this because I did not want to show a gruesome picture of the attack.
In our science period, we finished up our packets for the ice melting lab. Though many people did not finish their labs and had to finish up, I personally had finished. But other sections were just starting their lab because they didn’t have enough time on Monday and Tuesday. Then when you were finished your packet we watched a BrainPop video about solids, liquids, and gasses. The phase change from solids to liquids to gases was the main topic of the lab because when we heated the ice it changed from a solid to a liquid and then a gas. This taught us how energy (heat) creates phase change.
Thursday- 12/13/18 By Sophia
We spent the first Quest Humanities period today either practicing reading our stories or taking turns recording our audio archive project. When it was your turn to record you had to go into a different room and read your story into a microphone. This would then be uploaded, and all the recordings would be put together to make one collection of everyone’s recording. This will be listened to at Quest night Monday, December 17th. Once you felt prepared enough or you’ve already recorded, you may begin working on all of the unit five sections in our vocab books except, “Words in Action.” I personally did not get the opportunity to record my story on Thursday, because of a lack of time.
In the second humanities period, we continued to work on the visual component of the African American History project, our timeline. Today, each person chose one to two pictures that represented their topic or event to put on the timeline and wrote a caption relating to each individual’s topic and their chosen pictures. We then proofread each person in our research group’s caption before going to print. I like this timeline project because we get to share what we spent so much time on with others.
Friday- 12/14/18 By Colton
The first Quest Humanities Period on Friday was a time to finish work and record your audio archive project. Students that had already recorded their project were in Mr. Greenberg’s room and students who did not record were in Mr. Gornto’s room. While students were waiting for their chance to record they could finish up things like Vocab, studying for the map quiz on Monday, and finding a picture for the visual timeline. When it was someone’s’ turn to record their audio archive, they went to Mrs. Day’s office and spoke into a microphone. When students were done recording they continued to find pictures in Mr. Greenberg’s room. The pictures that students come up with will go on the bulletin board for our timeline.
On the final block of Quest for the week, all students went to their assigned rooms to practice their projects and presentations for the Quest Evening. There are a lot of groups with all different topics in each room. Some examples are the Gestalt group, Q and A group, Tour guides, Geography, and labs. This was the last chance for each group to practice and plan a presentation for the evening. The main event will be held on Monday, December 17. This will be a time for students to show everything they have learned and created throughout this year in Quest.
Proofread by James and Remi