GKMS 7th Grade Weekly Newsletter
Week of August 29th, 2022
Important Dates/Things to Know:
Wednesday 8/31 - Picture Day
Friday 9/2 - Back to School Dance 3-5 pm
Mrs. Ewald’s and Mrs. Fowler’s Reading and Language Arts
This week, we will discuss goal setting and whole-class learning strategies. Students will also read and analyze the first whole-class text, “Two Kinds.” We will begin discussing the unit 1 essential question “what can generations learn from each other?” Students are off to an excellent start in ELA!
Mrs. Boyer's Reading Advancement Program
This past week, we started using our Reading program called Achieve 3000. Students took their LevelSet assessment to see where their Lexile currently is, and now the articles will be pushed out at their level. I am excited to see their Lexile reading level climb throughout the year! Next week, we are going to continue reading some articles on roller coasters. We are going to review synonyms and antonyms and how to determine the meaning of unknown words using context clues. It’s going to be a great week!
MATH
This week students became recruits into S.H.I.E.L.D. If you were at Open House, this is the "year long game" that I was referring to. This is something that will run in the background of our class while we do our normal day to day math. Students will each have the opportunity to earn experience (XP) in order to level up and earn special abilities in our math class and also within our world of S.H.I.E.L.D. Students will earn XP by performing tasks outside of our normal curriculum. This allows for more enrichment within our math program that we normally would not be able to cover as an entire class.
***HOW MUCH EACH STUDENT PARTICIPATES IS COMPLETELY UP TO THAT STUDENT. XP IS NOT TIED TO A STUDENTS' GRADE AT ALL. A STUDENT COULD EARN ZERO XP AND STILL GET AN A+ IN MATH.***
Students did a great job completing their Math MAP tests this week. While students worked on SuccessMaker, I sat down with each student and set some goals for the first half of the school year based on their MAP score.
We officially kick off Topic 1 in math class by diving into Rational Numbers. Our focus to begin will be with Integers and Their Opposites as well as Writing Rational Numbers as Decimals.
If you have any questions about how our "year long game" works, please feel free to contact me at: dkolb@gkschools.org.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Students did a great job this week as we started Chapter 1! We will continue this chapter next week. Students will be looking at pictures of Native American artifacts, and decide which cultural region the artifact was from. We will be focusing on the clothing, food, and shelter used in each region.
SCIENCE
This week we will be finishing up chapter 1 of our Microbiome Unit which focuses on the concept of scale and discovering just how small living organisms can really be. In addition to drawing some scale models of microorganisms students will also have the opportunity to make their very own cell they will be able to keep.