Month: May 2019

By: Sophia , Jack , Colton

Proofread by:Remi, Asha, and Hannah

Monday: 5/20/19- Sophia

Today in Quest, we continued to work on our Global Challenge Project. The groups are in different places, so every group was doing something different. Some group tasks include finishing research, working on the visual aid, writing the pitch, practicing their presentation, or any other finishing touches. Tomorrow we have a practice presentation in front of the tenth-grade environmental science class for feedback before presenting to our assigned professional on Thursday.

My group is a global health group focused on outbreaks of pneumonia in India. Today, two out of the four of us worked on our solution, making a website and Instagram to promote the importance of getting vaccinated, especially for pneumonia in India. The other two of us worked on our poster, which will serve as our visual aid along with our website. Our group will continue to prepare for our presentations for homework.

Tuesday May 21, 2019- Colton

Today every group made their practice pitches to tenth-grade students. Before every group gave their pitch they had one class period to rehearse and make any needed adjustments to their projects. Every group made a 5-10 minute pitch then were given feedback on their overall project, solution, problem, and presentations. My group made our pitch to Mr. Kimberly and some of the students from the 10th-grade Environmental Science class. We got feedback on the cons of our project and how to make our case more sellable to the experts. After every group presented we got feedback from our own peers and teachers. In the following class periods, we used our feedback to make adjustments and improvements to our presentation and project.

My group is focusing on on the water crisis in Uganda. My group and I came up with a possible solution to the problem called the Omniprocessor. The Omniprocessor turns unclean water into clean drinking water for the people. The Omniprocessor evaporates the water and separates the sludge from the water. The steam is put through a cleaner and the sludge burned to create power. After the vapor is cleaned, it is bottled and handed out to the people in need. We presented our starting pitch and got good feedback for our final on Thursday.

Wednesday: 5/22/19- Sophia

Today in Quest, we are finishing up our Global Challenge Project. We continued to use the feedback from yesterday’s practice pitch to improve our projects. For some groups, the presentation to the expert is tomorrow, and for some, it’s Friday. This meant that most groups were finishing posters, (or other visual aids) adding information, or preparing and practicing their presentation. Everyone is making final touches to their project before the actual proposal to the professional arrives.

My group received lots of feedback from the tenth-graders, so we had a lot to do today. One piece of feedback was to directly state our problem and solution to ensure that it is clear to everyone. This encouraged our group to spend our first Quest period, making adjustments to what everyone said. We made it more clear what our problem and solution are and added more information to make our presentation longer. Now, all we have left to do before our pitch on Friday is finish our website (part of our solution) and practice a bunch.

Thursday 5-23-19 Colton

Today we presented our final pitch for the Global Project. Our expert in the topic was Alex Stark, a alumni of MFS 2006. Both of the water groups went to Mr. Greenberg’s room first period to present. The other group made their pitch on algae as a natural filtration. After they presented our group was up. We made our pitch about the Omniprocessor in Uganda. Mrs. Stark gave feedback to our idea and asked questions about it. I was really proud of both groups seeing what everyone’s hard work had turned into.

The following two Quest periods we spent filling out reflection sheets. There was a sheet on our group progress. The other sheet was an individual reflection sheet which asked us our opinion on the project and what we would do next time. The Global Project taught me to build an idea to a full scale project.

Friday 5-24-19 Jack

Today in quest our grade was finishing up the Global Challenge presentations. My groups topic was hunger. We specifically focused on Chad a country in Africa. Our solution was to make a protein bar so kids could get more nutrients. Our expert that we presented to was named  Katie, she was all the way out in Colorado. But my group went yesterday, today we were working on a Global Challenge wrap up packet.

This packet had group questions and individual questions. First my group did the individual questions were everyone answered the questions by themselves. These questions were mainly focused on what did you improve on during your time doing the Golabel Challenge and what was the hardest part about the Global Challenge. These questions took up our first quest period so in the second period we did the group question. These question were mainly focused on what feedback you got. So my group answered all of those question.

Then in the time we had reaming in the last quest period we proofread our work. I liked this project a lot, I think in the beginning when all the teachers were explains it it sounded a lot harder than it was. I improved on my writing and collaborative work skills.

Monday – 5/13/2019:

Section X’s first Quest period of the day, and week, was Quest:Science. We handed in our case about Sir Isaac Newton. After taking notes about Newton’s Dark Secret, we started writing a case. We were pretending to share our knowledge with a friend who knew nothing about Isaac Newton. This case was for Newton being one of the greatest scientist who ever lived. We had to include evidence from the film to support our claims. Also, in this writing assignment, we described his life. For example, his challenges and triumph. The requirements were two paragraphs minimum, each paragraph must be at least ten sentences, and one picture of Sir Isaac Newton. We could use any font, color and size. This writing assignment let us be creative.

Next, Section X had Quest:Humanities with Mr. Gornto. In Mr. Gornto’s class, we talked about a dystopian story. This story is called The Lottery. The other sections might have discussed it on different days, but 7X did it on Monday. We split into groups and answered questions about The Lottery and how it could relate to The Giver. After discussing with our group, we shared our answers with the class. Every group shared out.

Our last Quest class on the day was Quest:Humanities with Mr. Greenberg. During Mr. Greenberg’s class, we worked on our thematic maps. Some thematic maps are choropleth, isopleth and topographic. All the maps focus on different things. For example, choropleth maps contain areas that are shaded differently according to statistics, while an isopleth map is a contour map that shows smooth continuous information. On Tuesday, our thematic maps were due, so Mr. Greenberg gave us time in class to work on the map and map analysis.

-Katherine 7X

Tuesday – 5/14/2019: Hannah

Section Z’s first Quest period was, Quest Humanities. Over the weekend we had to read a dystopian story called, The Lottery. It was about a community who does the lottery. The civilian who “wins” gets stones thrown at her. We discussed our thoughts on the story and we connected it to the another book we read, The Giver. We discussed questions and comments. We also read over some discussion questions like, what historical events could have sparked the inspiration to write this story? Here are two quotes from students after reading The Lottery. Dinah said, “The lottery gave us insight on how tradition may be continued for many reasons, even though it may not be morally right.” Leah said, “I really enjoyed reading the Lottery because it was challenging to compare this story to events that occured in our history. It was interesting to go deeper into thought on the story and it’s true meaning and why the author chose to write it the way she did.”

Next, Section Z had Quest Science. In science we continued our lab on bubble gum chewing. During the lab we had to time ourselves and count how many chews we did in each interval of time. We tested it multiple times for consistency. After we got the numbers we calculated how fast we chewed in each interval. After we completed the lab, we watched a Bill Nye video on motion. When we completed the video we answered a series of questions about the laws of motions.

Section Z’s last Quest period was Quest Humanities. Our thematic maps were do this day. We discussed the information provided from the maps we researched. We talked about the analysis questions we had to answer. We discussed what we learned from each map, what kind of map it was and how other people can use this map. After our discussion, we reviewed and talked about everything we’ve done over this school year revolving around our geography portfolios. Then we wrote a log about our thoughts on our geography portfolio.

Wednesday – 5/15/2019:

   For the first Quest block of the day, the whole seventh grade met in the Dining Hall Commons and Mr. Greenberg explained to us more about what the global challenge was. The Global Challenge is where we pick a significant problem in the world like, hunger, and come up with a solution to end that problem using the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Two Eighth graders came in and told us what they did last year during the global challenge and told us their solutions to their problems. We were assigned our groups, topic, and what Quest classroom we will be working in for the next week. For the next two Quest Blocks we got to work on our Global Challenge.

Proofreaders –  Ava , Tori

Thursday – 5/16/2019:

Today was the second day of the Global Challenge. We split into our groups for all three class periods. Some groups were in Mr. Gornto’s room, some were in Mr. Greenberg’s room and some were downstairs with Ms. Bruvik. We sat at a table with our group and discussed our workflow. After writing down our workflow, the teachers looked at it and approved it. We spent the rest of the periods working with our group. The groups made a lot of progress and continued making progress the next day. Our classmates were hard at work.

-Katherine 7X

Proofreader(s):

Friday – 5/17/2019: Hannah

Today was the third day of the Global Challenge. We worked for all morning in order to finalize our ideas for our final presentation. On Friday we worked on ideas on how to solve the problem we were focusing on. We researched who is already bringing awareness to the problem and their steps of action. The teachers rotated rooms so we got to hear different feedback from all three Quest teachers, and did a brief presentation of our problem and solution to them.

Proofreaders: Ava, Grace

Monday 5.6.19: Ryan

 On Monday, some students finished up their speeches in Mr. Greenberg’s class. Some of these were about cancer research and homelessness. There were also two students giving feedback to each presenter. In Mr. Gornto’s class, we discussed the Giver and the previous week’s readings. We also completed a log entry. In Mrs. Bruvik’s class, we read articles about baseball bats and strategies to help the environment. Some of us worked in groups to complete this.

Tuesday 5.7.19: Ryan

In Mrs. Bruvik’s, we continued our work in the science articles. In Greenberg, we discussed the problem with Koalas in Australia. They are underpopulated, and we went over some different maps to figure out how and why. We also went over some examples of words that we thought when we thought of Australia. Some of these included Crikey, Steve Irwin, and crocodiles. In Mr. Gornto’s class, we presented our Giver images. We had to find an image that, abstractavely, connected to the theme of the book. One example is this orange in a sea of apples.

Wednesday 5.8.19: Charlie

In Quest Humanities on Wednesday, (Mr. Greenberg’s class) we had to figure out where Koalas live in Australia. The activity called for a group of four people. Each group had to trace four maps of Australia. The individual maps were based on the rainfall, temperature, forestation, and geography. After the groups were done with that they tapped the maps together, and where everything would match up is where the Koalas live.

In Mr. Gornto’s class, we highlighted our literature circle essays, and discussed them individually with Mr. Gornto. There were four highlighting colors: Blue was for essay analysis, Green was for text evidence, Yellow was for your essay focus, and Pink was for spelling errors.   

In Ms. Bruvik’s class, we finished watching a movie on Sir Isaac Newton. The documentary was on Newton’s life and his greatest accomplishments. After that was over we filled out a worksheet about the upcoming global challenge.

Thursday 5.9.19: Nick J

In Mr. Gornto’s class, we highlighted key parts in our essay while we waited to conference with Mr. Gornto about it. In the conference, he reread our essay, we discussed it with him, and told us what we could improve on. In science, we did the Bubble Gum Lab. In this lab, we were chewing bubble gum and saw how many chews we could get in 30 seconds. Then we graphed it to see how many more chews we could get each time. In Mr. Greenberg’s class, we did the did Koala mapping. We traced certain maps on wax paper about topics such as the rainfall, temperature, or physical landforms in Australia. Then, we put all of them together to see where in Australia the Koalas lived.

Friday 5.10.19: Nick J

In Mr. Gornto’s class, we finished the up the essay conferences. After that, we got assigned a short story reading assignment. This story was named “The Lottery.” It was about a utopian society with a dark secret… Every year they would go through an event called The Lottery. One citizen would be chosen to be put to death.

Finally, in science, we wrote a short response about some questions regarding Sir Isaac Newton. One of these responses was, “Make a case about why you think that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists ever.” After watching a short movie about Isaac Newton’s life we answered the questions in class. In Mr. Greenberg’s class we started working on our thematic map project. We would choose a topic that we were interested in, and then chose a map that related to that topic. One student’s map was about the child mortality rate in India in 2015, another was about marine pollution, and yet another displayed asthma rates by city in the United States.

By Ryan, Nick, and Charlie

Proofread by: Laurence, Dhru, Sonia

By:Dinah, Kira, & Jewell

Monday, 4/29: Kira

Today in Humanities with Mr. Greenberg, we worked on our speeches using the organizers we had filled out to aid in our preparation. We all had to find a way to inspire our peers to get involved with the topic we had chosen prior to writing our essays. Before the three day weekend, we had to write an essay based on a change maker in a field of our choice. We have centered our speeches around the same topic as our essays. Today in Humanities with Mr. Gornto, we talked about the meaning and the message of the Giver, our current class book. We have all finished reading the Giver and are now trying to analyze the text and understand the deeper meanings that rest behind the words. We have started to take on the larger questions that partly are based on what the message of the book truly is and how much ethics comes into play. Today in Science, we have started a new unit on forces and motion. In class, we started a lab that includes six inquiries that will help us become more familiar with this new topic. They challenged us by making us think about what common actions use such important forces.

~Kira

This is a speech organizer that was filled out by one of the students in section Y.

~Kira

This was just one of the inquiries we had to complete in class.

~Kira Patel

Tuesday, 4/30: Dinah

Humanities with Mr. Gornto on Tuesday consisted of an open discussion about the narrative arc of the novel we are reading, The Giver. In other class periods we have meticulously gone over the main theme(s) of the book, characters, takeaways, and many other things within those categories. Section Z had this discussion for an hour, which gave us plenty of time to make a narrative arc and even have a deep conversation, (some classified it as a debate,) about what the climax of the novel is. Second, Section Z had Mr. Greenberg’s Humanities class, which we spent continuing to write our speeches that will start to be presented this coming Friday. Some topics being focused on are journalist rights, use of plastic straws, and animal abuse. Ethos, logos, and pathos have been staples of the speech-writing process; we have to include all three persuasive-language tools into our speeches. The handout given as a guide and a checklist for students evaluating others when giving their speeches is pictured below. Section Z had Quest: Science last period on Tuesday, where we started our “Forces and Motion” lab; (our start date was delayed a day because we didn’t have science on Monday). Aside from challenging each partnership to think critically, we also had to use teamwork skills to do all of the fun inquires successfully.

This is the sheet given to us that includes ways of how to include ethos, logos, and pathos in our speeches.

~Dinah

Wednesday, 5/1: Kira

Today in Humanities with Mr. Greenberg, we helped each other peer review our speeches. Our final speech is due Friday which is when we start our presentations. Each person’s presentation is about two minutes long, so we will most likely take two class periods to finish all of the speeches. Today in Humanities with Mr. Gornto, Section Y discussed the Giver and the most important parts of this book. While doing this, we reviewed and discussed the climax and structure of the narrative arc of the text. Today in Science, we learned about different forces and what they each do. During this discussion, we touched briefly on the history behind some of these forces as well. We also started a movie on Isaac Newton, and wrote down some of his more well-known accomplishments. He is just one of the scientists we are now studying.

~Kira

This is the CD case for the movie we watched in class.

~Kira

Thursday, 5/2: Dinah/Jewell

Today in Science, we continued the movie about Isaac Newton. We wrote down accomplishments and background information about Newton, and discussed them at the end of class. This movie revealed a lot of things about Newton that most of us didn’t know, along with restating important facts about him that showed that he was a pioneer in the world of science. In Humanities with Mr. Greenberg we listened to, timed, and proofread each other’s speeches in small groups . Classmates gave each other advice on how to make their speech stronger, maybe by adding emphasis on a certain word, or pausing after an important sentence to let the information stated sink in. In Humanities class with Mr. Gornto, Section Z was able to ask Mr. Gornto any questions they had regarding the final project for The Giver, and was given the rest of the period to work on the project itself. It was a beneficial work period, as many kids are on different stages of the project, and this was a chance for kids a little behind to get a good thirty minutes of working time.

~Jewell & Dinah

Friday, 5/3: Dinah/Jewell

Today in Science, for Section X, we continued our discussion on the Isaac Newton Movie. For Section Z, we had a double science period. These made all of the students happy, especially since Section Z missed science for Meeting for Worship on Thursday. For the first science period, we worked on our 4th quarter Quest self-reflections. Students assess themselves in different categories, then give it to one of the three Quest teachers who gives the student feedback, and returns it to and conferences with the student. For the second science period, Section Z worked on a “Different Types of Scientists” crossword puzzle. This seemed like it would be easy at first, but every student can tell you that it was no small feat to complete. Do you know the name of the scientist who, “studies blood and its diseases”? In Humanities with Mr. Gornto, we talked about our final project for The Giver, which is due on the coming Tuesday. We have to find or create an image and describe how the image connects with a theme of the book. Today in Humanities with Mr. Greenberg we presented our Spotlight speeches to the class. Each of us was assigned a number earlier in the week and we went in the order of the numbers we had received. Each section got through about ten speeches and each person was assigned someone to critique. The people who went got assigned a log due on Monday and the people who will go on Monday will have the same log due on Tuesday.

~Dinah & Jewell

Proofread by: James, Bella D, Elise

BY: Kailyn, Makayla P, and Noah

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Monday  4/22

We had a rough draft of our research paper due on this day. We all got partners and we peer edited each others papers. Then we planned our nexts steps moving on in this paper. We then moved onto Mr. Gornto’s room. We went over the book that we are reading, The Giver. We have to annotate and then discuss what we read for the day. In Mrs. Bruvik’s room, we had a substitute teacher. We just had a productive silent study. In other classes they did periodic puns because we were currently working on our periodic table project.

– Kailyn

Tuesday 4/23

In Mr. Gornto’s classroom, we got to work on anything that had to do with The Giver. We were assigned vocabulary words for the book. Some students worked on that while others read more of the story and annotated. We also had some time to work on a log response. The question for Log #5 was, “Why isn’t there pain in Jonas’ community? Do you think this is a good idea?” After this, we had time to work on corrections for our spotlight essays. The essay was due the next day, so this time was very useful. For the hour block, we got to choose which humanities classroom we wanted to be in. If students wanted to work on their research essays, they worked in Mr. Greenberg’s room. The rest of us worked on assignments related to The Giver in Mr. Gornto’s room. These three periods were very useful and productive. In science we had to finish up our periodic table boxes. Everybody helped each other to get the job done.

-Noah

Wednesday 4/24

On Wednesday we put on the finishing touches to our Spotlight project essays and learned about Ethos, Logos and Pathos. In Mr. Gorntos class we continued with the discussions and reading of the giver. Then, during our Quest science periods, we finished up any periodic table elements that weren’t done. After that, we set up the periodic table in the gym for SEE on Thursday.

-Makayla

Thursday 4/25

On thursday we had something called SEE. SEE stands for Science and Engineering Expo. Every grade from 5th-12th makes different science projects. It is for half the day and each class has a period to walk around and another period to present their projects. There were many interesting projects. Some people did escape rooms, while others presented research they did on eye color. Our jumbo periodic table was set up against the wall in one of the gyms. We all had the chance to show off our elements. We did not have a lot of class time this day. Each section had one class of quest. This period was a silent quest work period. Once SEE was over, we all had to clean up our projects. After clean-up, we went on to our next class.

-Kailyn and Noah

Friday 4/26

On Friday we had a guided study hall in the quest period with Mr. Gornto. In the Quest period with Mr. Greenberg we reviewed our packet about Ethos, Logos, and Pathos which are all Greek words. Ethos means character, logos means logic, and pathos means emotion. In our Quest Science blocks, we did an engineering challenge about cup stacking, resilience, and persistence. The challenge pushed everyone to their limits by giving us a specific amount of cups to build the highest tower. We only had a specific amount of minutes to do so. It made us all learn team building skills and persistence to keep trying after your tower fell.

-Makayla

Proofread by: Tori, Dinah, Makayla , Katherine