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
On Monday, in Quest Humanities, we had a lesson about plagiarism. We learned what is considered plagiarizing and were given some examples. Mr. Greenberg played a few songs that were plagiarized by others and asked if we could identify them. We listened to Vanilla Ice and Bruno Mars. Some of us knew most of the examples, but other times there were not many people that knew what song it was. For the past week in Quest Science, we have been working on “Scientist Wanted” posters. These posters are a unique and fun way to learn more about scientists we may not have heard of before. Today, most students in each section presented their posters in a short oral presentation in front of the class. I could tell that everyone was learning new, exciting information about scientists hat they picked. – Kayla, Dinah, and Jewell
I think all of us enjoy that aspect of Quest. Section X had a double period of Quest Science in the late afternoon. They worked on presenting their “Scientist Wanted Posters”. The posters were decorated with color and Famous Scientists from all over the world. Some of the scientists were new to us, so it was great for us to learn more. After the presentations were finished, the class watched an episode of 
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On Monday in Quest Science we got a chance to reflect on our trip to the African American Museum of Natural History and had a brief Meeting for Worship too. We wrote a reflection and described things we enjoyed and things that we wanted to do. In Quest Humanities we got to choose our event or person for our African-American essay. The essay must be 1200-2000 words at least and reflect multiple points of view on your selected person or event. We started the year off learning the “dirty truth” about Columbus and how the story can be told differently from different point of views. The point of the essay is to learn how stories are changed over time. Not only are we learning new material, but also practicing old skills. We will bring in the story analyzing skills so we can better understand articles on our subject. We were also able to practice annotating poems in Brown Girl Dreaming. We had to point out the tone, intent, and language. -Tori
Today in Quest Science we started watching a Titanic documentary on how the the Titanic really sank. You would think the Titanic sank because it hit the iceberg but there is so much more to it . I think this is very interesting because we learned a lot of new things about why the titanic sank. One reason it said the titanic said was because they were worried about cost and how the ship looked like. Also in quest humanities we got our person for our African-American project and we started doing our research. -Leo
Our newest quest humanities project is literature circles. In Quest Humanities today we got our literature circle groups and also annotated various poems. We get a group of three or four people and each group gets assigned a theme to find in the book
of a book about Christopher Columbus that were aimed towards children. In the analysis, that we wrote, we discussed what could be left out in a children’s book about Columbus, how he was portrayed, and how the book made us feel about him. 
Once we arrived in D.C., we went to the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. We saw three of the theaters, as well as many rooms filled with gifts from other countries. We also saw the president’s box and went up to the balcony and looked at the skyline of D.C. Then, we went to the National Mall and ate lunch outside.
We also saw things like the lynchings and the funeral of Emmett Till, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement, where we saw everything from the peaceful protests of MLK to the black power ways of Malcolm X. We finished the visit with a brief reflection in the contemplation court and even went to the gift shop. We also each searched for people or events that would serve as topics for our upcoming research project.
At the Korean War Memorial, we saw the German Shepherd carved on the wall, and the wall that says, “Freedom is not Free.” This quote is very meaningful, and really captures the essence of the conflict. At the Vietnam War memorial, we learned that the diamonds mean that the person was confirmed dead, the crosses mean missing in action (MIA), and the crosses that were drilled into means the person was missing, but was then found, dead or alive. Then we finally hopped back on the bus, and headed to the hotel, where we were told our rooms, given our key cards, and went to bed. – Maggie
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”
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. 
of Florida.- Jonathan
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.