Monday, December 17, 2012

Weekly Update 12/14/12

Weekly Update by
Zombies
(From left to right) Paul, Michael K, Isabel, Charlie, Cassy, Emilia

Community Service Project Update:
The Sigma Community Project to collect clothing for the homeless was great! The girls--Cassandra, Annie, Jackie, Patrycja, and Emilia--collected many bags and boxes. Some things that we got from our donors here at Thomas were winter coats, bathing suits, shoes, and toiletries like shampoo and soap. Mr. Aho is going to drop our bags and boxes to 
Cornerstone Community Shelter this week.
We had a lot to give to the Chicago Shelter! 



"Lava Lamps" in Science
In science we put water, vegetable oil, alka-seltzer, and food coloring in a cup to see how they would react to each other.  When we put in the alka-seltzer it released some kind of gas and created bubbles and made a lava lamp.  When we added the tablets, the olive oil moved to the middle, and some of the food coloring moved to the top.  We observed that the food coloring didn't go through the oil very easily; it was very slow.   It was very cool to watch!
Nathan W. and Claire made this lava lamp, but they are not the ones singing this lava lamp song! 


Social Studies:  World Watcher Notes (current events) 
with Mr. Hillmer
The whole Sigma Team is reading about important current events that are happening in the same parts of the world we are learning about in social studies. Right now we are reading about current events in the Middle East and Egypt. Mr. Hillmer has been a lot of help with making a Scoop It with great articles and helping us to find good topics.

We learned about citing our sources and paraphrasing so that we don't plagiarize.

Mr. Hillmer helping Tyler and Connor

Mr. Hillmer helping Henry and Matt

Kraft Packaging Redesign Presentations 
We have been designing new Kraft packages for our assigned products.  We researched the history of the product and then looked at the primary and secondary packaging carefully to think of ways to improve it.  Now we are making presentations on what we are doing to change the packages and getting feedback from our classmates.  Three groups presented on Thursday.

Nathan W Devin, Alex and Jack explain how they are going to redesign the packaging of Kraft Singles. 
Nathan H., Tyler, Sean, and Alex Y have some good ideas for how to improve Cool Whip packaging.

Owen, Jack B, Ben, and William are designing new packaging for Taco Bell Dinner kits.

All-School Spelling Bee!
On Thursday, we had our all-school spelling bee.  There were 45 classroom winners in the bee, and lots of parents and friends came to cheer them on.  Morgan, Tyler, and Connor did a great job representing Sigma.  Tyler made it to the third round! After a lot of competitive rounds, a 7th grader won the bee.  We are very proud of all of our spellers!

The spellers with the crowd behind them

Tyler


Morgan

Connor


Snails in French Class
In French class we adopted our own pet snails so we can explain them in French. We named them, had an adoption ceremony, and some some of us even made them a new home.
Morgan with her snail Joel, and Annie with her snail Pierre.


LA:  Pronoun Song from period 7/8 
The pronoun song was hard to remember at first, but somehow we did it, and everyone did well on singing the song.  The song helped a lot of us on the test, too!

∑igma Celebrations:
12/12/12!!!!!
It was only 12/12/12 for only one period of time, and it will be a very long time until another twelve is upon us, so we celebrated during our LA block!

Claire took a screenshot with Mrs. Ziegenfuss's phone.

Everyone wanted to mark the moment!


12/12/12!!!

Duct Tape Club!
Jackie and Annie decorated one of Mr. Aho's chairs with lots of different colors and designs of duct tape.  Then they had everyone on Sigma sign it.

Jackie and Annie with their colorful chair design
 They added a Michigan State logo, the Sigma logo and some Bears logos, too.



7 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing all of this fun that you are having while learning. What a great combination of team achievements and individual successes. Rocco's younger sister, Bella, will enjoy trying the lava lamp experiment. Well done Team Sigma :) ~Mrs. Ronzio

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice job bloggers looks awesome. The duct-tape chair looks awesome. Nice try in the spelling bee guys.
    -Rocco

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey, looks like everyone is enjoying the time spent together. So many things we come up with, it's crazy! Keep having fun sigma! And have a great winter break.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like the chair design. Very creative use of duck tape.

    Taft

    ReplyDelete
  5. Cool chair. It is probably fun in duct tape club, I didn't go. I would have liked to be in that picture and eat people.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow the blog this week looks gret :-D I cant wait to see next weeks blogpost
    -Colin

    ReplyDelete