7th Grade October Newsletter

Language Arts

We are about to finish our Short Story Unit, and we will be starting our Night Unit. In this unit, all students are expected to have read Night by Elie Wiesel (which they can find in their Learning Ally) by September 30. The goal of this unit is to discuss resilience in the face of major obstacles. They will be given Lit Circle books (which they picked) that they will start reading on October 1. They will use these books and its main characters to create a mini documentary with their Lit Circle groups. 

Question to ask: Is resiliency something you are born with, or do people become resilient when they are faced with obstacles?

Math

We have just ended Unit 1 and the Kite PBL project, which was a huge success.  The next month will be spent learning proportions, rates and ratios.  We will be diving into various ways to look at proportional and non proportional relationships.  These comparisons include tables, graphs and equations and how to solve them in the real world.  

Be sure your student is keeping up with the Exit Tickets in Schoology and continue to build foundational skills with IXL.

Integrated I Math

In the month of October, students will learn about Linear Relationships and Functions. During the Linear Relationships unit, students will first review 7th grade level proportional relationships, and build toward slope and use of the equation form y = mx + b. Students will make comparisons between the variety of representations of linear relationships - a story, table, graph or equation

Science

In October, students are finishing up our first unit, Searching for Life in Space.  We’ve narrowed our investigation to focus on Mars and will analyze the most recent data collected by NASA scientists related to evidence of a biosphere.  Students will create physical models of the Martian landscape in order to determine what types of landforms rovers should examine in the future. They will  use the results of their findings, along with actual data collected from Mars rovers to create an end-of-unit constructed response summarizing their argument.

After finishing our first unit, we will zoom back to Earth to take a deep dive into Earth’s geosphere, where we will learn about the structure of our planet, events like earthquakes and tsunamis and how scientists study our planet over geologic time scale!

Social Studies

We are currently exploring the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. We’ll dig into the geography, religion, achievements, economics and social structure of each civilization. We’ll compare and contrast what they had in common and their differences while analyzing primary and secondary sources. Students will create a piece of art that represents the civilization’s legacy while also writing an augmentative paragraph on how this civilization has influenced our lives today. 

We’ll wrap up ancient civilizations in mid-October and move into how government systems impact citizens' lives around the world.