See you in 2020!

Well that's a wrap on the first part of the 2019/2020 school year!

Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and generosity. I'm feeling really fortunate to get to spend most of my days in a wee bit of chaos with a great group of students.

Enjoy your break! Regardless of the holiday you celebrate, make sure you also take some time to appreciate your awesomeness and celebrate your 2019 successes.

I can't wait to see you in the new year. (well okay...I can wait a couple of weeks)


Merry Christmas to you and your families!
Mrs. C

Quick Note: PowerSchool is going to be down for maintenance as of this afternoon until January 5th, so Mr. Ibbitson and I will be unable to update any marks until we are back after the break.

Merry Christmas

Just wanted to put up a quick post to say that it has been a great first half of the year!  I'm really looking forward to jumping back into the Renaissance in January.  Have a wonderful Christmas, Yuel, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus, Winter Solstice, or whatever you happen to celebrate!

Evelyn wishes you all happy holidays too.

Welcome to the Madhouse

The construction of Rube Goldberg Machines is well under way.  Many shenanigans were had.

Science in the news - Week 2

Just a reminder that our second Science in the News was due last Monday. For those of you that have not yet submitted it, I have attached the article here if you need to refer to it. You can add this write below your Seabin submission or create a new document.

Reminder - 100-150 words - summary of the key points of the article.
                   100-150 words - personal response to the topic.

Health Risks of Vaping

Great 8 Design Challenge

Hello 8-3 and 8-4!

Here is the link to the slides for the Design Challenge! Make sure to bring in any materials you need for building your Rube Goldberg on Monday.  You will be showcasing your completed design on Tuesday afternoon.

Grade 8 Design Challenge

Have fun! We can't wait to see what you come up with.

Unit Review for Squares, Square Roots and Pythagorean theorem

Hello!! I posted a link below to the unit review and practice test for Squares, Square Roots and Pythagorean theorem.  We will go through the Practice Test in our review session tomorrow. I will offer an additional lunch Homework Support session Wednesday if you would like extra support before Thursday's test .


Pythagorean Unit Review and Practice Test

Dec 6 Hums Update

So we have spent most of the week working on our modern interpretations of traditional folk tales.  Just remember to make sure everything is in the shared folder on your Google Drive.  We don't have the computers next week so class time will be dedicated to the artistic portion of the assignment where you guys will produce the illuminated manuscript 'cover' page for the first page of the folk tale.  Remember the final due date for the whole kit-and-kaboodle is December 19th but we are unlikely to have any class time in the last week before Winter Break.

Dad Joke of the Week:
Why did the old man fall down the well?
Because he couldn't see that well.

How is it December 5th already? SMATH update

This week we have continued working on using the Pythagorean Theorem to solve for unknown side lengths of right triangles. We will work on word problems and another pile up on Monday and that will pretty much wrap up this unit. 

In Science, we started Complex machines today and are brainstorming ideas to build a Rube Goldberg Machine! We will need supplies brought in by Friday, December 14th (watch for an email about that). All the grade 8s will participate in this design challenge the last week before the break. 

Reminders: Square/Square Root/Pythagorean Test on Thursday Dec 12. 

                    Pythagorean Pile Up #2 is due on Monday. 

                    Science in the News - 2nd write up is due Monday, December 9th. 

December 1st Hums Update

Sorry for the late update.  Ended up down at the stampede grounds yesterday for the Comic Expo Christmas Market which led to this:

Gotta start em young I guess.  And yes, that is a Chewbacca Christmas shirt I'm wearing.


Anyhow, we got started working on our modern folk tales task last week.  We'll have the laptops this week to finish up the written portions, and then we can start working on our Illuminated Manuscript front pages.

I've made the task sheet available on the blog earlier this week.  In the interest of taking care of our pennies at the school I've decided to start minimizing how much photocopying I'm doing so I won't be printing out class sets anymore.  I'm still more than happy to print copies on request, but it's pretty mindboggling just how big the photocopying budget for a school like TMC can be.  I remember an old principal of mine (at a much smaller school) telling us that we typically spent close to 10,000 dollars a year on paper, toner, and maintenance.

Doing things electronically is also significantly better for the environment, so this is a pretty good kick in the pants to do something positive that way too.

As an important FYI: Because we use Google Classroom and most of my task sheets will be in Google Docs I will just mention that in order to access them please make sure you are logged in using your school Gmail account.  It only lets me share links within the CBE, so if you are trying to log in with your personal account it will start pinging my phone with messages, and manual approval only works like 50% of the time.

Dad Joke of the Week (Star Wars themed this time)
Why did the movies come out 4-5-6-1-2-3-7-8?
In charge of scheduling, Yoda was.