November Greetings!
The flu hit Molly hard this past week, so it has been tough for me to get to the computer in my "spare" time to report on the classroom progress.

6th graders learned about Newton's 3 laws of motion last week, and also made some parachutes to experience the beauty of air resistance. The students picked out their parachute materials from a pile of resources that I provided. A popular choice was birthday balloons to attach their string and weight to. Those students who chose to use plastic bags with their parachutes landed much softer! We'll be discussing why tomorrow.

7/8th grade science students have made very nice posters illustrating the rock cycle. The students were quizzed on 10 samples of the 3 main types of rocks last week and most scored very well on it. Small quizzes will frequently find their way into our lessons from day to day, in holding the students accountable for the information presented to them. We will also be choosing famous landforms, such as the Black Hills and Carlsbad Caverns to make power-point presentations, travel brochures, or video commercials on their rock formations and story of origination. Students will have time to research this project on Thursday.

7th grade math students have started working on solving equations. They have been using negative and positive integers with their equation sums,products,differences and quotients as well.

8th graders have been solving tricky story problems involving mixed numbers with uncommon denominators, and remembering how to borrow from a fraction or mixed number in subtraction problems, as well as getting correct unit measurements and simplifying to lowest terms. We are moving on to solving two-step equations that will also use rational numbers within.

Religion 6/7 has focused on the virtue of charity this past week. Students learned about several non-profit agencies that exist entirely for the welfare of specific target groups, such as Native American Tribe Preservation, Empowerment of Women, Direction and homes for troubled teens,etc. I asked the class why they thought that so many charities currently exist. Some students realized that people are inspired to help others after they have gone through a hard time and they don't want others to have to endure what they did. Also, perhaps someone special helped the founder of that charity when they were in despair, so they are returning the favor for thousands of people experiencing the same hardships. I have been stressing the point that all of God's children deserve to have their needs met, no matter how different they are from us.

I'm looking forward to a healthier week ahead! Hope you are all doing well!

Mrs. M

Religion 6/7: Liturgy
Great job singing and reading, students! Thank you Jacob Berlin for playing your trumpet for one of the songs.

Math 7: Adding and subtracting integers
p. 85, 46-52 and 55, and start on p. 90 1-20

Math 8: Dividing Rational Numbers
odds 1-23 and evens 24-46

Science 6: Friction demonstration results and Newton's 3 laws of motion; no work assigned today.

Mrs. Marita

back at it!

Hello! This is my second day back, so I'll tell you what is going down....

Religion 6/7: We are hosting liturgy for the next two weeks. Please come join us tomorrow! Also, the students decided what 5 commandments teenagers should absolutely obey. Some were not directly out of the 10 commandments, but ones that the students thought affected teenagers. We also decided one out of the 5 was the most important for us, personally. Then, we wrote the one that we struggle with the most, personally, and why it was so hard for us to follow.
Yesterday we attended Eucharistic Adoration in the church, and offered thanks, asked for forgiveness and prayed for those people in our lives who need extra prayers.

Math 7: Students are learning how to use a number line to add and subtract integers. We are learning how to think of negative numbers as in a debt and positive numbers as in a deposit in our checking account. We make a check ledger today and completed some debit and deposit transactions.
We also worked on 13-28 on page 84 to be corrected tomorrow morning.

Math 8: We corrected the 15 odds chosen at random by students from p. 78 that was on multiplying rational numbers. This means that we multipied fractions, whole numbers and mixed numbers that had both positive and negative signs.

Science 7/8: We looked at rock samples and decided which ones fell under the sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous categories and the characteristics that helped us to assign their type.

Science 6: Students played tug of war yesterday, trying to create balanced forces with no movement of the rope and unbalanced forces with one team pulling hard enough to get the other team across the victory line. The most balanced force we could create was with Jackson opposing Matthew! What strong guys!
Today the kids designed demonstrations of how friction slows down objects, in which they used various object like marbles, tennis balls or toy cars on different textured surfaces. They are supposed to state how the surfaces affected the speed of the object and how much of that speed reduction was due to the friction forces at work.

Thanks for all the donations for the Halloween party for Friday! We appreciate all of your support and help!
Good to be back!

Mrs. M

School is underway!

School has started and looks to be going well already! Molly is excited about her year as a Kindergartener! Junior high kids, you have grown over the summer, that's fun to see! Keep in touch and let me know how things are going for you. Making two trips into town each day is not very practical, but at least I get a chance to see all of you and feel like I'm still connected!
Hoping that your learning (and playing) is fun and rewarding!

Love,
Mrs. Marita

Wishing you well

Dear School Families,
One week left of your summer before school starts! As I take care of our newborn son, Samuel, I am thinking of all of you and hoping that you are gearing up for a positive school year.
I will not be starting out the school year in the classroom, as I continue to be on maternity leave until the 26th of October. I will be available for calls and e-mails though, and you will see me around school, as our daughter Molly will be attending Kindergarten.
My maternity sub is Andrea Haugo. She has been busy these last few weeks, preparing for a good start to the year in the jr. high. Please maintain good communication with her during her long-term sub position as the 7th grade homeroom teacher. Please contact her with any concerns that you have, or if you are able to help or volunteer in some way. I will also be checking in with her to stay in tune with the students and their progress.
Thank you for your support. Wishing you all the best at the start of this 2009-2010 school year!

Mrs. Marita

Molly and her brother, Samuel Christopher

End of a school year

Thank you for a good year, parents and students!
We are in our last week of school, with many things to get done before the end.

Congratulations to the 8th grade class at OLL, who will be having their special grad liturgy and ceremony/dinner on Wednesday, June 10th.

Congrats also to the preschoolers who will be entering Kindergarten in the Fall. Molly will be among the preschoolers graduating on Tuesday morning in our social hall.

We end this year with changes on the horizon. Our dear friend and teacher, Mrs. Ellis will not be returning in the Fall. It will be hard to see her go. We wish her well and are proud of her for all she has done at OLL and all she will continue to do as a daughter, a mother, a wife, a grandma, and a friend to so many.

Many thanks for all the volunteering from our school parents! We depend on you so much, and are so thankful that you come through time and time again for us. Thank you for all the extra work you put into being a parent at OLL, and your deep commitment to your child and their education and faith.

I will be available by phone/e-mail and will be stopping in to visit our school at various times throughout the beginning of the school year, but will be on maternity leave until the end of the first quarter/beginning of second quarter. We are currently looking for a long term substitute to take my place for the first two months of school. I have confidence that the sub selected will do well in my place. Please pray for our whole school over the summer. There will be other changes in addition to Mrs. Ellis leaving and my maternity leave, and we could use some extra prayers.

Take care and God Bless your family,
Mrs. Marita

P.S. Many thanks for the baby shower given by the junior high kids, teachers and parents!
I am so grateful for our OLL school family!