7th Grade Team October Newsletter

Staying connected to our families is important to our teachers. In addition to the front page of our Canvas courses, we are excited to share this monthly newsletter with our families to keep you aware of upcoming events, activities, lessons, units, and materials from our classes! The 7th Grade Team has compiled this newsletter to share some of the upcoming experiences your student will be having with us. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child's teachers! As a reminder, 1st Quarter ends on Thursday, October 19th and printed report cards will be sent home with students on Friday, October 27th.

The 7th Grade band is working on repertoire for their Winter Concert. We will be learning the Concert E-flat scale, as well as rhythmic literacy.

The 7th grade choir is working on their first batch of repertoire and practicing sight-reading. Some selections include “Allelluia Canon” by Mozart, “Mornin’ Glory” by Rollo Dilworth, and “Country Roads, Take Me Home” by John Denver. Students are also preparing for JAMFest to take place on October 28th.

Students just finished the egg drop project and are excited to be starting the “Design Processes” unit moving forward. Within this unit, students will work on the “radio tower” project, where they must design a solution–on a budget!

October is a busy month for seventh grade students! They begin by finishing their commercials in the video editing unit from September. After that, they’re going to work on creating their own music with the program Mixcraft. Finally, we’ll be discussing some aspects of Digital Citizenship and creating podcasts with professional audio editing software to express our ideas about it.

Mrs. Danner's and Mrs. Kline's Classes:

Students are working their way through their realistic fiction novels and meeting weekly with their Book Clubs. We are excited by the progress they are making and still encourage adults to talk to their students about what they are reading. Young adult literature is really good! You might be missing out on something you would enjoy reading yourself! We have also been discussing sentence style and how authors use language to share their stories with us.

Mrs. Heinig's Classes

We are wrapping up our Biographical unit with a gallery walk, enjoying and observing our fellow students’ memoirs. Looking forward, Unit #2 is Realistic Fiction. Your kids will be finding independent RF novels of their own choosing. We will take a deep dive into characterization, plot analysis, and elements of story--learning to read it and write it. In addition, we are becoming Word Wizards who enjoy learning new words through Greek and Latin roots and figurative language.

Students are finishing up Module 2 over percents. They did an awesome job applying their knowledge of percents to real-life scenarios like tax, tip, commission, etc. We will be moving on to Module 3 next week. In this module, Operations with Integers, students will draw on their prior knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and apply it to operations with both positive and negative integers. Reminders: we give out a study guide before our weekly assessments, so be on the lookout for those! Students can earn group points for doing these AND they are extremely helpful in preparing for quizzes and tests!

Math 7+

Students are finishing up Module 2 over percents. They did an awesome job applying their knowledge of percents to real life scenarios like tax, tip, commission, etc. We will be moving on to Module 3 next week. In this module, Operations with Integers, students will draw on their prior knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division and apply it to operations with both positive and negative integers. They will also use their knowledge of rational numbers (fractions, decimals, and integers) to understand repeating and terminating decimals and to build fluency in calculating with fractions, mixed numbers, and decimals, especially as they occur in combination. Our module 3 assessment is scheduled for Thursday, October 19th.

This week the students finished our unit on Ecology. We “captured the wild beads” in an estimating population lab, created a biome poster, and observed microorganisms in pond water samples using microscopes. We are now turning our attention to physical science and will be learning about heat and heat transfer. Students will be building a homemade thermometer, testing metal samples for heat conduction, and attempting to save a helpless ice cube from melting using an understanding of insulators.

7th Grade social studies is deep into our unit on Ancient Greece. We have learned about several different types of governments used by the Greeks and are moving into our study of Athens and Sparta, two city-states in Greece that couldn’t be more different. Next week, we will begin our classroom Olympics in honor of the Ancient Greeks and begin our study of the Persian War. Students will be utilizing brand-new Z-Space technology to analyze the armor and weapons of Greek Hoplite soldiers and create illustrated timelines of the Persian Wars. To finish our unit, we will study the legacy of the Greeks, the Peloponnesian War, Greek Mythology, and even write our own Greek myths!

Common Sense Media is an online tool that can help parents and students make informed decisions regarding media use. This tool can be used for many types of media, including books, movies, video games, and apps. Additionally, the “Parent Tips and FAQ” section can provide families with valuable support on facilitating social media, cell phone, and screen time use with their child.