With another full week in the books and Labor Day weekend fast approaching, it amazes me how quickly the beginning of school has gone so far! With a new schedule, new off campus adventures and new cross curricular projects, these middle schoolers are adapting and thriving to all the wonderful things going on here. It is amazing to see first hand just how well everyone is doing and how hard they are working on being the best they can be. Though I am looking forward to enjoying the long weekend (as I am sure many of you are!) I cannot help but express my excitement for this school year, because if it is anything like the start we have had, this is going to be one special year!
-KH
Upcoming Dates:
- Off Campus: Sixth – Wednesday, Sept 2nd
- Labor Day (No School) – Monday, September 7th
- Cooper Cluster Lunch – Wednesday, September 9th
- Middle School Curriculum Night – Wednesday, September 9th 5:30pm-6:30pm
James Island County Park Challenge Course Pics:
ELA: This week in 7th grade ELA, we continued researching to support arguments for a school improvement proposal to Mr. Jason. Researchers organized their findings and sources on notecards, going beyond AI overviews to read and judge the available information themselves. We discussed how to organize and assess research, leading us towards a concrete thesis to build our letter essays around. On Thursday, 7th grade was tested for vocabulary. Be sure to check out their grade in their take home folders. Test corrections can be made on all ELA tests that are below a 90 for partial credit back by the following Monday!
Next week, writers will begin drafting and redrafting arguments using essay structure and rhetorical skills. We will also begin our first grammar unit of the year with a test planned for 9/10.
Science: This week in Science, 7th graders refined their ideas about the mystery mixture by using evaporation as a tool for investigation. Students added water to different mixtures and left them overnight, then compared what remained to the original mystery mixture. By observing patterns and using evidence, students narrowed down the possible components of the unknown mixture.
Students then transitioned to exploring the periodic table, identifying the elements found in the chemicals they have been using in class and even discovering which elements can be found in some of their favorite snacks. These connections helped students see how the elements they study are all around them.
Next week, students will review what they have learned so far and take a quiz on Friday, September 4th. Students will also begin investigating what happens during chemical reactions and how matter is conserved as substances interact and change.
Social Studies: This week the seventh graders finished our unit on human migration into the Americas’ and began learning about the Native American tribes and their cultures. This led to the students working on their first project in which each student chose an individual tribe to research and will be doing a project on the tribe of their choice. We will finish these projects next week and move into the Latin and South American empires and cultural groups.
Math: This week in math, 7th graders continued to practice using rotations, reflections, and translations as a method to create both parallel and perpendicular lines. We used these lines to create transversals, and studied the angles within them and learned how to find missing angle measures (alternate interior, alternate exterior, and vertical angles are a few examples). They’ll take a quiz over the first half of this unit on Monday, before we move into the second half where we’ll learn a new transformation – dilations. We’ll learn to use scale factor to either make a shape larger or smaller, but still similar.
