The Middle School Math Team is a group of 18 dedicated students in grades 6-8 who meet twice a week in the early mornings before school begins. We have concluded competitions for this season, with great results to share!

 

Last fall, the team competed in an exciting national online tournament, Math Madness. They played against different schools each week in math matches. They played schools from all over the country in both collaborative and individual rounds, where they worked hard to problem solve very challenging math questions. Our Cougar mathletes started the season with an impressive win streak, made it to the FINAL FOUR round of the tournament bracket, and ended with a decisive winning record! 

 

 

Let's hear it for our MathCounts school MVP Angela Z. (7th), who scored in the top 20% of competitors overall!

 

Eighth graders have been studying the four forces of flight in science class. They built kites with different length tails to investigate the impact of turbulence on drag, and then they invited the PK students to test the kites too. The PK students cut paper strips to use as the tails, and the 8th graders helped them test three tail lengths to determine which ones flew highest and with the most stability. Thank you to the 8th grade students for their enthusiasm and patience with the PK students, and thank you to the PK students for being good listeners and being ready to learn!

We welcomed Brother Yusef this week to honor Black History Month. He is a professional self-taught blues musician who performs at various blues and music festivals as well as social dance events. He currently lives in Altadena, California. He is an amazing guitarist and shared how spirituality and community have shaped his personality and music. He is passionate about making music because it helps bond different communities together.

 

 

Brother Yusef’s guitars all have special names. Can you guess the name of one of his guitars? When he was traveling on a plane with one of his guitars, a flight attendant went out of her way to make sure the guitar was safely stowed in the captain’s closet. After the flight, Brother Yusef thanked her for her extra courtesy and asked her name. Her name was Joy, and so the guitar was named after her. When asked if he ever faced challenges because of his ethnicity, he shared a story from when he was young of overhearing someone in a store describing how a customer looked by saying they were American, which made young Brother Yusef wonder if the only way to look American was to be white. Brother Yusef advised to never let discrimination stop you from doing what you love.

 

For this month’s Drop Everything & Build, the Middle School students were challenged to build a free-standing device that could hit a golf ball off a tee the farthest distance. There were a variety of creative design solutions to this challenge, including swings, ramps, a lever, and wonderfully creative uses of rubber bands. There was also a bit of luck involved, which amateur golf players might say is also involved in their game sometimes.

 

Here are the results: In eighth grade, the runners-up were Melody and Sima, and the golf ball was hit farthest by the device built by Fiona and Ruby. In sixth grade, the runners-up were Naveen and Kaitlin, and the farthest distance was achieved by the machine built by Nicole and Mars. The runners-up in seventh grade were Keira and Warren, and the device that hit the golf ball farthest in the entire middle school was built by Hins and Eric.

 

 

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