7th Grade MP3 Campus

School Data is open on the 1st for parent reviews. These are due by the 5th. We hope the cut and paste grade level newsletter will be helpful to supplement your remote learning plan reviews. Thank you for submitting in a timely manner and if you need help, please reach out to your SLPC.

Topics: i-ready diagnostic and Number Sense

Activities: After our heroic efforts on the i-ready diagnostic, we have started our first unit, expanding our number sense abilities. In this unit, students will be reviewing order of operations, distribution and factoring, using negative numbers, and converting between fractions, decimals, and percentages. This month we focused on reviewing order of operations, using it to solve 7th-grade standard expressions. We played a game in groups of three answering questions about solving multiple-step expressions. Our next stop in the unit is reviewing adding and subtracting using positive and negative numbers before learning about multiplying and dividing rules with negative numbers.

Teacher Tip:

Teacher Info: Mrs. Alexander, halexander@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: About Me writing, acrostic poetry, journaling, Book Project introduction, creative writing, conferencing, writing stations, iReady testing

Activities: Language Arts is off to a great start! We spent our first day talking about classroom routines - emphasizing our overarching goals for the year to BE BRAVE and BE KIND. We did a fun movement activity to demonstrate both goals with 100% participation! Our first writing project was called About Me. This was a fun way to share about ourselves and learn more about our classmates. Next we created acrostic poems with our names as the focus word and made class banners to adorn the room. Two days were spent on the iReady diagnostic test. Students worked hard and now their future iReady lessons will target the skills they need to learn. Journaling and group discussions play an important role in our writing practice and group engagement - and both are successfully underway. Book projects were introduced and students are excited about creatively sharing what they are reading at home. One day was spent on writing stations around the room where students demonstrated a variety of writing skills. In addition, students drafted their first creative writing stories and then conferenced one-on-one with me to create individual goals for improvement. Whew - it’s been a busy month but we are off and running in this new school year!

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Teacher info: Mrs. Oscarson, roscarson@meridian.wednet.edu

WSH

Topics: 5 Regions of WA, Early Industries in WA, Tragedy at the Whitman Mission, Coastal and Plateau Tribes

Activities: We have gotten off to a strong start in WSH. Students have created a Google Doc that they use to record answers to each of the lesson reviews in the Washington Journey text. This doc will provide an detailed record of the most important people, events and ideas covered in the text. We have been working slowly through the ch. 1 lessons and students built a solid understanding of how Washington's geography has affected the history and culture of the people who call the place home. We created maps of the 5 regions of WA and students used symbols to represent industries and geographic features found throughout the state. We learned about the Native People in the region and compared coastal and plateau tribes. Using lessons from the textbook, we covered the early industries that drew people to WA, which were all based on the environment. Fur traders and missionaries were among the first white people to settle in the region and they were met with mixed reactions from the Native People. Fur traders managed to maintain a positive working relationship with the tribes until the market for fur collapsed. Missionaries had limited success with their mission work but their arrival, coupled with the belief in "Manifest Destiny," led to major changes in the PNW. The settlers brought diseases and new ideas about land ownership that often interfered with Native traditions. We used a terrific series of documentary clips to examine a flashpoint in the culture clash that was taking place, the tragic events surrounding the Whitman Mission. Using info from the video, the text and a reading passage, students were asked to record a series of short term causes and long term causes that led to the massacre at the mission. Examining cause and effect relationships is central to understanding history and in this case it helped us develop an understanding of the attitudes and beliefs that were common amongst early settlers and the Native People in the region.

As we move into ch. 2, students will build a deep understanding of the treaties that were signed with the Tribal People of WA and the mixed legacy of the treaty-making period. Students will gain a sense for how the Native way of life was changed as a result of white settlement.

Teacher Tip: Topics and work we do are shared in Google Classroom. Feel free to ask your student for a peek at what we have done so far.

Teacher Info: Let me know if you have any questions!

Mr. Caraco, jcaraco@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Review classroom routines, keyboarding, Google Slides, Google Sheets pre-assessment & review

Activities: We were able to quickly re-establish classroom routines, including daily keyboarding and expectations. This allowed us to begin the first challenge which was a new introduction poster, either created in Google Docs or Slides, that included images, shapes, word art, and layering. I was highly impressed with the outcome! Last week the students took a Google Sheets pre-assessment and we are now reviewing basic skills before we begin our Food Truck/Google Sheets unit.

Teacher Tip: All assignments and keyboarding links are available in Google Classroom. Students are welcome to continue to work on class projects or practice keyboarding skills when they are not at MP3. Students who did not complete an avatar slide have been asked to finish at home.

Teacher Info: Mrs. Montgomery, rmontgomery@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Elements of Art: Line & Shape; Principles of Design: Pattern; Techniques: Collage

Activities: Welcome to a new year of art! We began our semester talking about what we want our class to look, sound, and feel like. Each class created a class agreement and each student created a bird with their name as a signature for what our “flock” agreed to. Next, we learned how to draw Zentangles - various patterns with specific lines and shapes. Students filled a square with the patterns they liked and gave it a pop of color with a tissue paper shape. These have been combined with the other 3 classes to create a mural for our classroom. Our first individual project was inspired by the book, In a Jar by Deborah Marcero. In the book, the characters collect things that bring them joy - from a colorful sunset to the sounds of the city. Students drew their own jars and filled them with magazine images of the things that bring them joy. It has been fun learning about each other by looking at everyone’s jars!

Reflection Questions: Ask your student what they included in their jar!

Teacher Info: Mrs. Warnock, swarnock@meridian.wednet.edu