One more day

It's been a whirlwind of a week leading up to Winter Break, but the students have been kept pretty busy this week to keep their minds occupied and not distracted by the coming vacation. Both the 7th and 8th-grade classes have been wrapping up some projects. Of course, there were still occurrences that drew their attention away from their work, but I have to say how proud of them I am that they were able to hold things together and be productive.
The 7th graders have been working on group projects related to natural hazards, in which they got to select a weather-related natural hazard to learn more about and then create a presentation. The students needed to research what causes the hazards, where the hazards are typically located, the frequency and strength of the hazards, the effects of the hazards, and what technologies have been developed to mitigate the effects. The students were given a few ideas for how they would like to give their presentations, and most of them chose to make slideshows. However, there were a handful of groups who chose to produce a video. This gave us the opportunity to work in the school's green-screen room, and the students were pretty excited! There were especially engaged in the editing process and "erasing" the green background to put in their own backgrounds. We have one more workday, and I have a feeling that they will turn out pretty well!
The 8th graders have been finishing up a semester-long self-guided project that we call Science Genius Time. At the beginning of the year, all the 8th-grade students identified an area of interest that they wanted to learn more about and develop a "product." Some of the students chose topics in which they wanted to raise awareness on issues, others developed prototypes to solve problems, and some created educational presentations. This has definitely been a "long haul," and the finish line is in sight. Of course, due to the fact that this was a semester-long project, some of the students struggled with time management and remembering that projects needed to be complete before the break so that they would be ready to present after the break (the weekly timeline reminders just didn't seem to sink in...) Nevertheless, the vast majority of them will be ready, and there is ONE more work session :-)

Mindfulness thought for the week: There are three solutions to every problem: accept it, change it, or leave it. If you can't accept it, change it. If you can't change it, leave it.  --Many thanks once again to Tom J Deters of the ProYou Podcast for this thought for my students!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a merry Christmas and happy holidays!

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