Deirdra Grode, Executive Director / Principal K-8

Sue Jain, Vice Principal Elementary & Middle School

713 Washington Street Hoboken, NJ 07030

Tel: 201-963-0222 Fax: 201-963-0880

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Chris Sell, Principal 9-12

High School 4th and Garden Streets, 4th floor

Hoboken, NJ 07030 Tel: 201-963-3280 Fax: 201-963-0695

THE HOBOKEN CHARTER SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Table of Contents 5th & 6th LA page 2 5th & 6th SS page 3 5th & 6th Science page 4 7th & 8th Science page 5 7th & 8th LA page 6 7th & 8th SS page 7 Middle School Math pages 8,9

Important Dates: Friday, December 20th– 1:00 p.m. dismissal. No afterschool activities Monday, December 23rd– Wednesday, January 1st- school closed for Winter Break Thursday, January 2– school re-opens Thursday, January 2– lottery application deadline Wednesday, January 8th– Board Meeting @ 7:00 p.m. @ 713 Washington Street Thursday, January 9th– 1:00 p.m. dismissal for students, Professional Development Thursday, January 9th– Lottery for 2014-2015 school year Monday, January 13th– Picture Re-take K-12 Thursday, January 16th– PA Meeting @ 8:30 a.m. @ 713 Washington Street Monday, January 20th– school closed for MLK Day

Reminder—Lottery Application Deadline is Thursday, January 2nd, 2014. For more info, please contact

Ms. Spinella, Lottery Coordinator at 201-963-0222,ext 217 or visit our website @ www.hobokencs.org.

REMINDER…. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20TH IS A 1:00 P.M. DISMISSAL.. THERE WILL NO AFTER SCHOOL ,ENRICHMENT CLUBS, OR SCHOOTORIAL. ALL FACULTY AND STAFF WILL BE DISMISSED PROMPTLY AT 1:00 P.M.

SUPER KIDS-SUPER SHARING HCS has teamed up with the National Football League, the New York Jets, New York Giants, NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee and Verizon to make a difference in the lives of local children this Super Bowl season. You can help! Bring your gently used or new items to school and place them in the Super Kids-Super Sharing collection box (in the foyer of the school). All types of sports equipment and school supplies are needed. Catch the Super Bowl spirit and join us as we help others in the local community. Thanks! Collection Dates: December 16-January 7

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Since our visit to Hoboken Public Li-brary to explore non-fiction options,

the 5thand 6th Graders have been reading informational texts, narrative non-fiction, and autobiographies. In their independent reading, both grades used characteris-tics of non-fiction such as text structure to make better sense of what they are reading. We will now be moving

on to close reading strategies of a whole-class non-fiction text and recent news articles. Students will interact with the text by coding and annotating as they read.

Both the 5th and 6th Grade classes recently participated in a workshop at the Hoboken Historical Museum called “Primary Source Investigation”. This en-riched our social studies curriculum by allowing the students to act like histo-rians to study artifacts from Hoboken. Both classes did an impressive job making observations and inferences about these artifacts (with the help of

their magnifying glasses).

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5th Grade Social Studies The 5th Grade is now studying the Ancient Egypt Civilization. While we learn about cool things like the mummification process and decoding hieroglyphics, we will answer essential questions such as how Ancient Egypt impacted other civilizations and how Egypt was able to flourish for 3,000 years. Topics include the geography of the Nile, fam-ily life, the structure of the social classes, development of writing, reli-gious beliefs, and the expansion of the Egyptian Empire.

6th Grade Social Studies

The 6th Grade has been learning about the caste system of ancient India. Imagine the luck of the draw to be born into a family of priests which are held in the highest regard, or conversely, into a family of grave dig-gers which are considered the “untouchables.” The latter group had to bang two sticks together while walking in public just to alert the unsus-pecting pedestrians they were approaching so they would not contami-nate the unsuspecting people. Fortunately, we don’t have a caste sys-tem in the U.S., but unfortunately, a strong precursor to wealth and suc-cess is determined by what socioeconomic class one is born into more so now than ever before. The students were able to compare and con-trast the current American wealth outcome with a caste system devel-oped 3,000 years ago. If you want to know what we, as a civilization, are up against in this oligarchic plutocracy known as the western world, please check out this link: http://www.utrend.tv/v/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact/. The students were not happy about this, but at least they are aware and know what needs to be done to prepare themselves for their future, and winning the Lottery is not on the list of options!

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Overall, the 5th Grade Science Cass did a magnificent job on their very first Trimester Science Project. The mobiles were very creative and expressed the individual topics quite well. The students have been enveloped in the photosynthesis process of generating food in plants in the form of glucose, or sugar. These sugars, when not in use by the plant, are stored in the plant’s roots. Vascular plants have, in a sense, a freight elevator system. Water, nutrients and minerals go up the xylem in the plant’s roots towards the leaves for photosynthesis processing, after which the sugars produced, travel down the phloem to nourish the plant, while the excess is stored in the roots to be utilized later. An easy way to remember this is via the sweet potato. A sweet potato and a common spud potato are actually quite different in their manifestation. A spud is actually an underground stem, but a sweet potato is a root, and it is sweet because of the sugars stored. Further, regard-ing photosynthesis and the green chemical chlorophyll which gives the plant leaf its green color, it should be noted that the actual color of a leaf is not truly revealed until autumn when the photosynthesis process is curtailed and the brilliant colors of orange, yellow, brown, deep purple, and red radiate until the leaves fall gracefully to the ground ending one of life’s most visual cycles! The students also differentiated the three venation con-figurations of leaves. The palm, which is exemplified in the maple leaf, branched which is probably the most common vein pattern, as in a philodendron, and parallel which is like the husk of an ear of corn. And finally, the students are looking at the relationship be-tween the carbon dioxide and oxygen exchange between plants and animals. Disrupt that exchange and the result is climate change…Results to date are rather smoldering with CO2 levels reaching past 400 parts per million, the highest ratio in several million years. Such an outcome might leave many sweating the details, indeed! The 6th grade is trying to figure out what’s the matter with matter! An often misconcep-tion is that mass and weight are interchangeable. Actually, mass has to do with how much stuff is in an object. Weight deals with gravity’s pull upon an object. Thus, our mass remains constant, yet our weight fluctuates based on where we are. Our weight is less on the Moon because the mass and size of the Moon is less than that of the Earth. Conversely, our weight would be far greater on the surface of Jupiter, as the size of the fifth planet is huge. A 98 pound 6th grader on Earth would weigh 16.268 pounds on the Moon and 231.672 pounds on Jupiter. Thinking of going on a diet to lose weight? You could go to the Moon where you would weigh less, but unfortunately, you would look the same, and then of course there is that lack of oxygen caveat, not to mention a lack of food to eat…Ahh, perhaps there’s an angle there, after all! Now all you need is a spaceship!

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Middle School Science We are currently studying cell division and the cell cycle in 7th grade science. We learned that the cell has 3 main phases in its lifecycle. They are interphase, mitosis and cytokinesis. We made a pie chart, similar to the one below, to represent the percentage of time various cells spend in each phase. We studied the 4 phases of mitosis, or

nuclear division, as well as cytokinesis. Next up is meiosis, or the production of gamete cells.

Eighth grade is currently wrapping up a unit on earthquakes and volcanoes. They have completed a rather complex project on earthquake architecture and earthquake preparedness. They all did a fabulous job designing and recreating structures built in earthquake prone areas. They are all experts on the structure of a volcano. They have learned about the types of volcanoes and their many forms of lava. Each student completed an elaborate mini project on a volcano of their choice. We put Google Earth to good use, by searching the globe for specific vol-canoes, and witnessing their eruptions in real time. Next unit up is on geologic time and the fossil record.

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7th Grade Language Arts The seventh grade is now reading Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, which revolves around a young girl named Esperanza, and the poor Latino community she lives in. The House on Mango Street is told as a series of vignettes, and ex-plores such themes as coming of age, gender roles, power, and poverty. As we read this intensely poetic book, the 7th grade class has been discussing author’s craft - the conscious and unconscious decisions authors make when they write. We are also discovering and practicing the steps in-volved in close readings, for which students concentrate on small passages and draw out deep meanings which reveal a great deal about the book as a whole. 8th Grade Language Arts The eighth grade class is reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. This novel is about a Native American boy who decides to go to high school outside of the reservation he grew up on; as a result, many of his community members on the reservation treat him as a traitor, and as he spends more time at the white high school, Rearden, he feels more and more like a “part-time” Indian. Alexie’s novel brings up themes such as the creation of identity and coming of age. Alongside the class novel, the eighth graders are working in book clubs and comparing a variety of other novels to themes and craft decisions in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Book club books in-clude Catcher in the Rye, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Lord of the Flies, and Persepolis.

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7th Grade Social Studies   

The 7th graders have started their study of the Renaissance this week.  Over the next few weeks, students will be learning meth‐ods for critiquing Renaissance Art, and studying the artistic inno‐vations of the time period.  Additionally, we will examine the major improve‐

ments in math, science, philosophy, architecture and sculpting that helped shape our modern world. The students are all tracking one important Renaissance fig‐ure who they will dress up as during our Renaissance Soiree and celebration next month.  Appearances will be made by  Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Nicholas 

Copernicus and Johann Gutenberg among others!      

8th Grade Social Studies  

The 8th graders have nearly completed their study of the United States Govern‐ment and Constitution.  After a careful examination of the Constitution, students formed a class congress to draft and pass a bill.  The bill went through multiple amendment periods, and eventually passed through both chambers of our Con‐gress.  The law will go into effect in the new year.  Also, the 8th graders have all been assigned an important political figure to follow over the course of this unit.  At the Presidential Gala this year, students will dress as their characters and get 

to know some of their political allies.  

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Middle School Mathematics

5th GRADE: The 5th grade learning about simple algebraic equations and finding patterns with numbers. Here is an example: A skateboarding park charges $10 a month for membership fees and $5 a day to skate. A table of input‐output values for the functional relationship is: 

10 + 5X = Y, x = number of days, y = total cost  

6TH GRADE: The 6th grade is beginning Chapter 5 this week. In Chapter 5 students will re‐view multiplying and dividing fractions and learn how to solve fraction equations using these operations. They will also review the Customary System and converting between units.  

        

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Middle School Mathematics

     7TH GRADE: The 7th grade is beginning Chapter 6 this week. Chapter 6 is all about ratios, proportions, and probability.  Students will learn how to find ratios, write and solve proportions, identify similar and congruent figures, and find probabilities.    Challenge Question: The Path Train leaves every 15 in the mornings from the Hoboken Terminal. You arrive at the train station without consulting the train’s time schedule. What is the probability that you will wait more than 10 minutes for the train??      8TH GRADE: The 8th grade is beginning Chapter 6 this week. Chapter 6 focuses on solving and graphing linear inequalities. Students will use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to solve and graph multi‐step and compound inequalities.