7th Grade Knights Team
New Mark Middle School, NKCSD
Announcements
Tuesday, October 22
- Attention ALL students: On October 22nd, New Mark will be having a fundraiser for Cancer Awareness on the blacktop, 1st hour. In order to attend, you must purchase a ticket for $1. Additionally, if you would like to flour bomb a teacher, pie a teacher in the face, cut hair for donation, shave head of male teacher, or escort a male teacher in a dress, you can purchase a raffle ticket for $1. The more tickets you buy, the better your chances are to participate. Most importantly, 100% of the proceeds go to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and leukemia research. Tickets will be on sale each morning in the commons or in room 410 anytime. Let's put a stop to this horrible disease and help fund more research!
- Future Falcon Concert @SHS 7:00pm
Wednesday, October 23
- 4 - 8pm McTeacher Night
Thursday, October 24
- Play assembly 1st hour.
- Fall Play 7:00pm
Friday, October 25
- No school staff/students
Retake Policy: As a reminder, unit tests have the opportunity for retakes within 2 weeks of the graded test being handed back to the student. Retakes are always on Wednesdays after school and a retake form must be completed by the student and signed by a parent before arrangements for a retake are made. Small daily quizzes or tests or quizzes where the option of using notes was given are not to be retaken. District Benchmark tests are also not to be retaken.
In Mr. Anwander's classroom he is putting together a bulletin board that has pictures of the students doing something that they enjoy outside of school. Sports, music, or any other activity they enjoy. He would appreciate the students bringing him a picture that he can keep of them to put on the board.
CORE Classes
English Language Arts (ELA)
We kicked off the new ELA unit this week. Students will be examining the central ideas of how people overcome the adversities that we are all faced with at varying degrees at sometime in our life. Students will be engaging in collaborative discussions with each other while examining the varied texts presented to them.
The guiding questions of this unit of study are:
- What truths do we learn about human nature when individuals face adversity?
- How can understanding multiple perspectives help us to better express our ideas and be open to other viewpoints?
- How can writing summaries help me to objectively look at other's experiences & help me to understand their responses?
This last week we began our instruction on writing informative paragraphs. We examined 5 different types of topic sentences and practiced writing a variety of sentences. Each student chose someone famous who has gone through some sort of adversity to practice writing informative paragraphs. This week students will continue their practice with paragraph writing but we will also be introducing Literature Circles and book talking the books that will be available. Students will be in Literature Circle groups of 4 and will be holding discussions once a week with their group about the book they are reading. Lit Circles work the best when students have choice in their book and in their group members; I will do my best to help make that happen!
I am attaching the ADVERSITY book list to this newsletter. Please read through the book titles and determine with your child if there is a topic or book that you would not like them to read. Most of the books chosen for our list are appropriate for grades 5 - 9 but there are a couple books on the list that are grades 8-12 because of the topics dealt with in the book. Parents always have the right to decide what books they want their children to read, as you know them best. Please have this discussion with your child before Wednesday, October 23rd as this is the day they will be making their book selection. If you have any concerns or questions please don't hesitate to email me.
Social Studies: World Geography
Students are continuing their study of the regions of the United States and its government. We've already taken 2 of our regional quizzes (southwest and west) and the other 3 regions (midwest, southeast & northeast) will be this week. We will wrap up our study of the United States with a unit test on Thursday, October 24. A study guide was handed out on Friday. Retakes on the regional quizzes will include all of North America and will only be offered this Wednesday, October 23 and next Wednesday October 30, after school from 3:00 - 4:00.
Math
In math we are working with rational numbers in the form of fractions and decimals. Continuing to develop our skills when it comes to the rules for addition/subtraction/multiplication/division. We will soon be moving into multiplying and dividing fractions.
Science
We have about finished up our unit on energy. We will be taking the unit test next week, but before that we will take a couple of days to review. Our next unit will be over weather.
As we are moving into Fall, the night sky may be clearer and make for a good opportunity to spot the International Space Station. Here is a link that will give you dates and times for possible viewing of the I.S.S. as it flies over at around 17,500 mph. If you follow the time, direction, and angle above the horizon then you should be able to see it fly over on a clear night. It will look like a fairly bright star moving generally from west to east. It is really kind of cool to see. Go to http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings and enter your location for a chart of dates and times. Next Friday through Sunday look like especially good times for a longer viewing of around 4 – 6 minutes.