What's happening in Unified Arts

Physical Education News

HANDSTANDS, PIROUETTES, AND TOUR JETES!

In Physical Education, Mrs. Downs’ classes are beginning the SPATIAL AWARENESS unit.  This unit involves moving across the mats in a variety of dance, ballet, gymnastics and tumbling moves.   Spatial awareness requires balance, coordination, flexibility and a positive attitude.  We begin with the easiest skills and progress at an individual level.  Seventh graders are required to demonstrate at least 5 skills of their choosing.  Eighth graders are required to create a unique floor exercise routine using the skills learned they last year!

Library Class

This month in library class, students are continuing to work on research of their internet safety topics.  We're discussing how to use the internet efficiently and safely for research.  Students learned how to conduct effective searches using good keywords and other search strategies like quotation marks and site indicators.  They played the Google Game to see who could get the fewest research results, and we had some groups get down to single digits.  Now that's some good searching!  We also talked about evaluating websites.  How do you know if you can trust what you find on the web?  It's easy - just evaluate the site using the Five W's.

Next up - putting all of the information we found together to make a fun and informative glog.

Family & Consumer Science 7

The last rotation of students wrapped up the class completing the Challenge Lab Unit and the Hunger Crisis Unit. For each lab, four teams compete. Their challenge is to take 3 random ingredients and turn them into a dish that is judged on their creativity, presentation, taste, group dynamics, and organization with minimal time to plan and execute.

The Hunger Crisis Unit focused on hunger in America and how we can be a help to those in need. The eight classes put together 16 casseroles. The casseroles will be delivered to Our Daily Bread Food Pantry in York, PA.

The new rotation of students have studied the “Food Plate” and are now focusing on food and kitchen safety.

8th Grade Art

Rotation 1 Animated Clay Vessels are complete and they look fantastic! After the first firing, students finished them with a coat of ceramic glaze that turns colorful and glossy when heated. Now that they’ve been fired a second time they are ready to be used.

Students in the new rotation have been hard at work preparing to begin their first project…Insect Drawings. We’ve discussed the importance of the elements and principles, practiced value techniques using different types of drawing materials, and explored the many areas of insect art. As we approach Christmas break, they will be focusing on using each of these things to create a detailed drawing of an insect of  their choice.

8th Grade Tech. Ed.

The new rotation of students is in the middle of working out the details of their product designs. Classes will begin construction of their prototypes in the next few classes. Look for pictures of their progress in the coming weeks.

7th Grade Music

Students are learning the elements of music.  Here, a student is drawing a picture representation of the meaning.  Students displayed their picture meanings and did a Gallery Walk to identify the elements.

Here are 3 up close. #4 is Tempo (speed of the beat) #5 is Tone-color (unique sound of an instrument) and #6 is Form (how the song is put together).

8th Grade Family Consumer Science

In 8th grade Family and Consumer Science with the new rotation of students we are currently working on completing our unit on our need for clothing.  We are getting ready to start our hand-sewing unit and will soon be able to correctly sew on buttons, do a hem and make seam repairs all by hand.

Team N students are looking for reasons we wear clothing, ask them the 5 reasons.