7th Grade Team December 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, the end of the 2nd Quarter is Friday, January 6th.

7th & 8th Grade Holiday Choir Concert

Tuesday, December 13th @ 6:30 p.m.

in the Jonathan Alder High School Auditeria

This is a dress-up occasion.

Guys: Nice Shirt (preferably collared), Nice Pants and Nice Shoes.

Girls: Nice Shirt, Nice Skirt/Dress of modest length or Pants, and Nice Shoes.

**No Flip-flops, Shorts, T-shirts, or Jeans***

Doors will open by 6:00 pm

Choir should show up to the HS Choir Room by 5:30 PM

This concert is a required event and is a large portion of the student’s grade for this 9-weeks.

We look forward to performing for you and seeing you there!

7th & 8th Grade Band Winter Concert

Tuesday, December 6th @ 7:00 p.m.

in the Jonathan Alder High School Auditeria

This is a dress-up occasion.

Guys: Nice Shirt (preferably collared), Nice Pants and Nice Shoes.

Girls: Nice Shirt, Nice Skirt/Dress of modest length or Pants, and Nice Shoes.

**No Flip-flops, Shorts, T-shirts, or Jeans***

Doors will open by 6:00 pm

7th Grade Band should report to the Band Room by 6:15pm.

This concert is a required event and is a large portion of the student’s grade for this 9-weeks.

We look forward to performing for you and seeing you there!

7th grade engineers had a lot of fun with our egg drop projects earlier this month, and we learned a lot of physics (force, stress, kinetic & potential energy) in the process! Now, we are hard at work using industry-standard 3d modeling software in SolidWorks. Students have already completed 3 tutorials, and have 2 more to go before they get the opportunity to design their own open-ended projects!

As we go into December, students in PE will be participating in floor hockey, basketball, and working more on cardiovascular goals. In wellness, students will be learning about mental illnesses and ways to improve their well-being in and outside of school.

Students have just started to dive into the final, cumulative assignment for the class, Rap It Up! In Rap It Up, students are a band who must use all of the year’s skills–presentation creation, audio editing, video editing, image manipulation, and mapping skills–in order to create a song and music video and plan a national US tour! In the end, they will have a digital product to show friends and family members.

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

We are currently deep into an exploration and investigation of the Lincoln assassination. Our classroom text is Chasing Lincoln’s Killer By James Swanson. Students are digging deep into the history using primary and secondary sources. Ultimately, students will retry some of the Lincoln conspirators using their own research and acting as judge and jury. Will our verdicts be the same as those in 1865, or will evidence that was not available at the time of the original trial make all the difference?

As we read our classroom text, students are practicing those skills on their independent nonfiction texts. Additionally, students are working through our new vocabulary program. InferCabulary allows teachers to use predetermined sets of grade-level words or create their own lists of words based on class units. The program challenges students to take risks, think critically, and sharpen their inference skills. Learning involves images, audio, games, and challenges to help students master new vocabulary. Students enjoy the program and the challenges it presents as they learn. There’s a link to the program on our classroom Canvas site located in Modules.

Mrs. Heinig's Classes

This week we started ELA Unit #3, which is our Nonfiction Research unit. The kids have chosen personal passion projects and are gathering research materials now. We will cover a boatload of standards and the kids will learn so much:

• Perform research using primary and secondary sources, multiple books, and online resources
• Analyze how two authors writing about the same topic shape their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence or by advancing different interpretations of facts.
• Synthesize and summarize what they are reading
• Develop organizational structures and text features in a piece of writing
• Think critically about the topic and become expert sources of information
• Create a presentation designed to teach their classmates
• Learn to speak in front of a group using talking points

Students in Math 7 have just finished their module on simplifying algebraic expressions. This included using the distributive property and factoring expressions. Our next module is titled “Write and Solve Equations.” In this module, students will apply their prior knowledge of solving one-step equations to solving two-step equations and their prior knowledge of operations with fractions to solving equations with rational numbers. They will use both algebraic and arithmetic solving strategies and compare the structure of the two methods.

Accelerated Math

Students in Mrs. Garner’s Math 7 Accelerated class have just finished their modules on exponent properties, scientific notation, and square and cube roots. Though these were 8th grade standards, the students did a great job and displayed perseverance in mastering these learning targets. This week we started our module on simplifying expressions. Students added and subtracted linear expressions. Later in this unit they will also use the distributive property and factor expressions. This is the first module of three that will focus on the algebra standards. The students have been excited and anxious to start working with algebraic expressions and equations!

Students in seventh grade science are studying waves. They have made both transverse and longitudinal waves and are studying how waves interact. After we finish waves, we will be studying the periodic table.

We’ve officially started our unit on Ancient Rome! In the next few weeks, students will be learning about the Roman Republic, empire, culture, and daily life! Students will be participating in a competitive empire-building game, a Julius Caesar-themed escape room, and become gladiators for a day! (figuratively, of course!) We are looking forward to many fun activities and lessons as we dive deeper into our Rome unit! When we return from Christmas break, we will begin our argumentative writing unit focused on the fall of the Roman Empire!