7th Grade Knights Team
New Mark Middle School, NKCSD
Announcements
Northland Christmas Store Food Drive: Nov. 12 - 15
Remember to bring in your green beans, corn, and mac and cheese to help the Northland Christmas Store. These items will go to help those in need in Clay County. For every $1 donated, it counts as 3 cans. Checks should be made out to Northland Christmas Store. Please send cans and count sheets to room 113 before the end of each day. The team with the most giving percentage will receive a $100 prize from NJHS. Thanks for giving!
Volunteers that signed up to help after school, for the food drive, we will stay Tuesday through Friday to count and box. If you have any questions, please see Mrs. McCarthy in room 113.
Nov 20 - 2nd Quarter Progress Report grades go home
The Gems, Dragons, and Knights teams are completing a unit on adversity in our ELA classes. As part of our culminating activity we are exploring the idea of either bringing in some guest speakers or hosting a round table event. We wanted to see if we have any New Mark parents, friends or family members that would be willing to talk to our kids about a personal adversity that you have faced in your own life, or if you know of someone who may be interested in being a part of this. We would like to have the speakers come in between Thanksgiving and Winter Break. Please email Mrs. Patterson apatters@nkcschools.org if this sounds like something you can help us with!
SAVE THE DATE!!! Friday, December 6, 2013: Barnes & Noble Book Signing Party 6:00 - 9:00pm All 7th grade ELA students (Gems, Dragons & Knights) will have the opportunity to present their writings to family and friends at the Barnes & Noble Book Store at Zona Rosa. This is also a fundraising opportunity for our department... so the more family and friends you invite the better! More details will be coming soon.
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. All investment work must be turned in before a retake can be taken. 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)
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?
We are continuing our instruction on writing informative paragraphs. We examined 5 different types of topic sentences and practiced writing a variety of sentences. Students will be having their final Literature Circle discussion this Friday. All students have shown a tremendous amount of participation and engagement with this round of books. Our last discussion group we had 100% completion of their role sheets and reader response paragraphs!! (I'm sure having food on discussion day has been a motivating factor!) Thank you to all parents for supporting the reading we are doing this year!
Writing project deadline is Friday, Nov 22. 2013
Social Studies: World Geography
We have finished up our unit of study over North America, United States and Canada, and will be working on a joint ELA & SS project studying a national park of their choice. Most students have received brochures, maps, flyers and personal letters from park rangers. We will be working on this writing activity this week in class. The final due date for this project is Nov. 19.
Math
Last week we took a chapter test over our work with rational numbers and being able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with them. The average score was not as high as I would have liked and several of the students are planning on retaking the test. The retakes can be completed during the next two Wednesday after school retake days (11/13, 11/20). I need a signed retake form from the student and a completed review sheet that I have for them, that will show me the extra work that they have done to be prepared to retake the test.
We are now moving into including variables in our equations and starting our with substituting values for variables.
Science
In science we have started discussing the atmosphere. So far, we have looked at the different layers that it contains (Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, and Thermosphere) and some of the differences between them. The past few days we have been working on making hot air balloons, and will hopefully be able to go outside and launch them one day next week, depending on the weather. This is a demonstration in differences in air pressure and buoyancy. Hopefully it will be a lot of fun for them!