The first frost, paired with Daylight Savings, always kickstarts my urges to move more slowly, choose the cozier evenings, and rest when I could keep going. It’s hard to keep moving full steam ahead – especially during the busy holiday season – when the early darkness and chill in the air calls you home. A frequent saying I use with the kids is “let’s finish what we started” – whether it’s something small like circling the answer to a math problem, or something a bit bigger when we need to have a peace table with a friend. In August, the kiddos set some pretty big goals for themselves as middle schoolers – and will do so again in January. Now is the time to hunker down and make sure we finish strong over the next five weeks, while still leaving room for the cozy nights and self-care we all desperately crave this time of year. With Thanksgiving Break right around the corner, we’ll (hopefully) be able to give ourselves the rest we need to finish what we started before our loooong Winter Break!
-Allison
Upcoming Dates:
- November 21 – Harvest Feast (Half Day)
- November 22 – November 30 – Thanksgiving Break
- December 10 – Cluster Lunch
- December 19 – Holiday Extravaganza & PJ Day (Half Day)
- December 20 – January 5 – Winter break
ELA- 7th graders began a new reading unit this week. In our study of The Diary of Anne Frank we considered the background behind the holocaust and Anne’s story. Readers began a reflective reading project titled “Dear Anne’ in which they respond to Anne’s own writing in their very own diaries. We hope this is to be an exercise in historic preservation and empathy! Readers also began vocabulary unit 4.
Next week, 7th graders will continue their Anne Frank entries as they read. They will test for vocabulary on 11/20, so be sure to begin studying now.
Science- This week in science 7th graders started their unit on populations and ecosystems. We discussed what makes up an ecosystem and the different organization levels that ecologists use within an ecosystem. Next week students will be assigned a type of ecosystem to research over the next couple of weeks as we explore the interactions between organisms and their environment.
Social Studies- We are continuing to get ready for our test next Wednesday on Spanish colonization. We have created and finished the study guide. A copy is on google classroom and I have given them the notes and paper copy as well. Once we are done we will be going into English colonization, leading into the American Revolution.
Math- This week, the 7th graders dove back into our math curriculum with unit 3 – which covers solving multi-step equations, inequalities, and systems. We started off with understanding what variables are, analyzing proportional relationships we can represent with equations, and deriving equations from graphs. We also explored one-step equations and combining like terms. Next week, we’ll wrap up this very short unit with graphing and solving inequalities before taking our assessment on Thursday. This test will assess their mastery of solving mutli-step equations before moving on to Unit 4 – where we will apply these skills to real-life scenarios.
