Cluster 2 News

Hello Parents, Guardians, and Caregivers,

Have a good Thanksgiving!

Yours,
Cluster 2 Team

Hello and welcome!

We are reading our first whole class novel, Red, White, and Whole and practicing active reading skills with signposts. We also are learning some valuable vocabulary that we see in the book. Students will have their final vocabulary quiz for this unit next week. Please remind your student to do their reading for each week.

Thanks,
Ziza Soares

ziza.soares@watertown.k12.ma.us

Unit 6.1 Human Origins

Essential Question

What were the most important turning points in early human history?

Enduring Understandings

Students will begin to understand that:

1. Modern human beings (Homo sapiens) developed from hominids, shaped by the forces of evolution and shifts in the climate. In turn, they shaped their environment through foraging and hunting, the use of fire, migration, plant and animal domestication, metallurgy, and the building of permanent settlements.

1. Humans experienced many transformations on the way to becoming Homo sapiens, not least physical changes to nearly every part of the body and an increase in the size and cognitive complexity of the brain. The latter led to a capacity for symbolic language and expression through music and art, and greater possibilities for learning and cooperation, distinguishing features of modern human minds.

1. Spread across many thousands of millennia, the turning points of the Paleolithic Era created modern human beings, while the innovations of the Neolithic Era, condensed into the past 12,000 years, created the conditions for complex societies to emerge.

Learning Targets:

I can practice creating timelines to illustrate how these tools are used to measure and represent the past.

I can apply knowledge about the work of different social scientists to a reading about prehistory.

I can apply knowledge about the work of different social scientists through an exercise in archaeological thinking.

I can argue a conclusion about how toolmaking was a turning point for hominins.

I can draw evidence from texts to describe and analyze the effects of changes to the human body and brain during the Paleolithic Era.

I can identify the effects of fire on human development

I can explain how cave art illustrates changes of the Paleolithic Cognitive Revolution.
I can form a conclusion about how Paleolithic artmaking represented a turning point in human activities.

I can accurately characterize elements of the Paleolithic lifestyle and argue which turning point of the era was most important.

Core Grade-Specific History/Social Science Practices for the Unit

Key Practice Standards

(3) Organize information and data from multiple primary and secondary sources using timelines, categorization, and notes.

(6) Argue or explain conclusions in the form of claims, cause-effect statements, and persuasive arguments, using valid reasoning and evidence.

Key Literacy Standards

(R2) Determine the central ideas or information of a source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.

(R7) Integrate visual with other information in print and digital texts.

(W9) Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, interpretation, reflection, and research.

christopher.mcdermott@watertown.k12.ma.us

Helpful Links: Cluster 2 Math Grading Policy, Unit 3 Family Resource (in Spanish), Unit 3 Family Resource (in Spanish)

In math, we’ve been using ratios and unit rate to convert between different units of measurement. Students were also introduced to the concept of percent. They started by breaking down the word “percent” into “per” (for every) and “cent” (100) and identifying where they’ve seen “%” in their life. We’re now solving all kinds of percent problems. Students are identifying information in word problems as “part” or “whole” and “percent” or “quantity”.

In December, we’ll start working on our diving fractions unit. The key idea of division is “breaking a total into equal groups”. Students will practice drawing diagrams to show the total and the equal groups. The point of these is to build more efficient strategies with a strong conceptual understanding so they can be applied to more complicated problems later in their math career.

Have a good break!

Ms. Tammaro

alison.tammaro@watertown.k12.ma.us

Make no bones about it! Students will be dissecting owl pellets next week to determine what ravenous raptors (owls) eat for dinner. Owls eat their prey whole. Hours later, they cough up a pellet containing the parts they can’t digest (bones, feathers, etc.). Sixth Grade Scientists will make observations about the shapes of the bones they find. Then, they will use various diagrams to recreate the skeletons of the owl’s prey. Through this, students will make inferences about predator-prey relationships in an ecosystem. Please see the Owl Pellet Opt-Out Permission Slip for more information.

This week, court was in session! We recreated a town meeting near Yellowstone National Park to hold a debate about whether wolves, a keystone species, should be reintroduced to the area or not. Students took the perspective of various town members. Various opinions were expressed and considered. Ask your student about it!

Standards

LS2. Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

7.MS-LS2-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of periods of abundant and scarce resources on the growth of organisms and the size of populations in an ecosystem.

7.MS-LS2-2. Describe how relationships among and between organisms in an ecosystem can be competitive, predatory, parasitic, and mutually beneficial and that these interactions are found across multiple ecosystems.

7.MS-LS2-3. Develop a model to describe that matter and energy are transferred among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem and that both matter and energy are conserved through these processes.

margaret.fergusonmaltzman@watertown.k12.ma.us

aine.dirrane@watertown.k12.ma.us