1ST GRADERS WANT TO KNOW "HOW DOES A SEED GROW?

Over the last three weeks, first grade has been anxiously awaiting their sunflower seeds to sprout. Every few days, they took their magnifying glasses and observed their seeds for any signs of sprouting. Students discovered that some seeds sprouted faster than others. Once the sprouts grew into small seedlings, they were ready to plant! Instead of using new plant pots, students reused the bottom parts of plastic water bottles as pots. By reusing water bottles, first grade helped the planet by reducing the amount of gas and oil used in creating plastic bottles, and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, ground and water pollution and the volume of municipal waste. First grade is doing their part to be kind to Mother Earth!

6TH GRADE STUDENTS EXPERIMENT TO FIND SOURCES OF WATER POLLUTION

We all live in a watershed with water pollution coming from many sources. Nonpoint sources contribute a great deal to the pollution in our water bodies. The sources of nonpoint pollutants are not readily and specifically identifiable such as water runoff. The combined effect of pollution from many small sources can have a real impact on the quality of our water resources.

Terry Porter, Environmental Educator for the City of Alpharetta, visited with 6^th grade students on Thursday February 21^st. She brought in the Enviroscape Watershed, Nonpoint Source, Stormwater Pollution and Prevention interactive model. Mrs. Porter led students through a variety of hands-on experiments to better understand the sources and prevention of water pollution. Students tracked pollution from point and nonpoint sources. These experiments help students make the connection between what we do on Earth and how it impacts our environment.

Robotics Team Sweet Success Party

Robotics Teams  have completed all the tournaments this year. After  a wonderful FLL year, our students deserved a sweet success party. The party was on Wednesday, February 20, 2013 at 3.30pm in the school cafeteria. 

Even though all competitions are done for this year for FLL , it does not mean we quit studying. We have already started to work for next year's FLL Challenge called "Nature's Fury Challenge".

Additionally, our robotic teams will work on their building and programing skills preparing for a school wide sumo-bot competition. We will create 5 teams from our robotics members and they will compete to find out the best sumo-bot.

What is Sumobot Competition

Robotic sumo is a competition where two robots, known as sumo-bots, push each other out of an arena using mechanisms, cunning, and brute force. The goal is to create sumo-bots that can push its opponent out of the arena before being pushed out of the arena by the competing sumo-bots.

All participating robots, known as sumo-bots, shall be only constructed with unmodified LEGO construction components. They must also be completely autonomous — that is, acting independently of humans.

Congratulations to all robotics  students and  their parents for this wonderful year.

Fulton Science Academy Cultural Cafe

We hope that everyone enjoyed our first "FSA Cultural Cafe" family event on Sunday evening. We had great participation, wonderful performances and delicious food from around the world. It was nice to have dinner in the main hallway with families, listening to student performances and to see the eagerness of students answering trivia questions. :) Our families also had a chance to meet with our new/returning music teacher, Mr. Reed during the event. A big THANK YOU goes to our wonderful Parent Volunteer Organization for this great event. Special thanks to Mrs.Muralidhar and Mrs. Pederson for setting up the event for us on Sunday.

FSA Puzzle Club

This Club has been building Jigsaw puzzles, is been probe that Working on puzzles and solving them provides us with very many helpful benefits. First of all it makes us alert, increases our concentration, expand our creativity. On the other hand, looking at the images constantly helps us practice visualization, which is again good aid for any physical activity that succeeds mental activity. It also affects our physical health by lowering our breath rate, reducing heart rate and blood pressure too. For all these reasons, kids who are good at puzzles will find their ability to gather information, assess a situation, and find a quick solution to a problem greatly sharpened. This club is open to everyone!

See a picture of the puzzles the students had done.

6th Grade Science Classes Enjoyed Cookie Mining Activity

6TH GRADE EARTH SCIENCE - "COOKIE MINING"

The mining of our country’s natural resources is not just finding the coal ore we need for energy and digging it up. As part of our energy unit, 6^th grade Earth Science students conducted a lab to become aware of the important economic and environmental considerations involved in a coal mining venture. These include property costs, mining equipment costs, operational costs, and land reclamation costs. To make a profit, the income from the recovered ore must be greater than the total mining costs plus any environmental fines.  

In their lab they mined chocolate chip cookies to remove the chocolate chip “ore.” They had to make decisions about what type of mine (cookie) they would purchase, and tools they would purchase because students were not allowed to touch their cookie with their hands. There were operational costs for the number of minutes they mined and time was given for reclamation. In this case, all of the crumbs had to be back into a circle the same area as the original cookie otherwise there were fines.

Students seemed to enjoy this activity even if their mining company operated at a loss because at the end all students were allowed to eat the remains of their cookie!

Students Enjoyed Indirect Measurement Activity in Math Class

7TH GRADE MATH INDIRECT MEASUREMENT ACTIVITY

Students in Math class enjoyed a Math activity called "Indirect Measurement" and practiced measuring various objects. This specific topic that they had been learning about was called, "similar triangles" Instead of solving dull geometry questions on a worksheet, the students used an interactive method of measurement that was brought to us by the ancient Greek mathematicians. The method was dubbed “indirect measurement”, as stated above and it gave the ancient Greeks the capability to measure things that were too difficult or impossible to measure with almost pinpoint accuracy. When a Greek philosopher named Thales of Miletus, (who has been hailed as the Father of Mathematics), pondered the height of the Great Pyramid. Thales noticed that the shadows in the desert create triangles that were to scale with one another. He also took note that the sun’s shadows fell from every object in the desert at the same angle. Since this is true, the sun’s shadows create similar triangles from every object in the desert. Therefore the height of the Great Pyramid could be easily determined by the length of its shadow relative to the length of Thales’s own shadow. Students applied this technique to measure small class items, (including their math book, a binder, etc.). By measuring these shadows and creating similar triangles, they found the missing sides.  Besides being a fun way of learning “similar figures’ it also answers the typical questions like “when am I going to use this stuff?”

8th Grade Language Arts Class Connected Poetry with Music

8TH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSES HAD GREAT TIME CONNECTING POETRY WITH MUSIC! 

In Mrs. Bragg's English Language Arts classes, students have been studying poetry.  Students spent the entire poetry unit learning about poetic devices, figurative language, sound devices, and the different types of poetry  As a culminating, and hands-on activity, students participated in a musical poetry project last week!  They brought in music of their choice, and analyzed the song lyrics for various pieces of figurative language.  The students then presented their projects to the class, and they played the music for each of their songs as they helped their other classmates understand the different devices in the lyrics.  Students really had a great time connecting poetry with music, especially when it applied to their favorite songs!

LOOK TO THIS DAY!

Look to this day
for it is life
the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all
the realities and truths of existence
the joy of growth
the splendor of action
the glory of power.

For yesterday is but a memory
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived
makes every yesterday a memory
of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

 

Look well, therefore, to this day....

~ ancient Sanskrit poem ~

Elementary Grade Valentine's Day Celebration

ELEMENTARY STUDENTS ENJOYED 

VALENTINE'S DAY CELEBRATION

Love is in the air! On February 14, Our elementary students enjoyed an exciting afternoon of treats, Valentine's Day cards, two crafts, BINGO, jewelry making, a Valentine’s Day themed cozy reading center, prizes, cookie decorating, and a LOVE-ly candy heart graphing activity!

A big THANK YOU to our event coordinator, Ms. Fichter, elementary teachers and volunteer parents for organizing this event so well for our elementary students. Please see more pictures from this wonderful event in our reading room.

Science Olympiad Party

SCIENCE OLYMPIAD TEAM STUDENTS, COACHES AND PARENTS ENJOYED A GREAT PARTY!

FSA Science Olympiad Team students, coaches and parents had a great party last Thursday to celebrate their recent achievements. A big THANK YOU to our wonderful head coaches Mrs. Stathos and Mrs. Walsh for organizing this wonderful party. Please see pictures from the party here.