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