7th Grade Knights Team
New Mark Middle School, NKCSD
Announcements
Parent Teacher Conferences will be held this week, Wednesday October 9th. As a reminder these are student led conferences and we only have a short time (10 minutes) with each parent so please be on time. If you need to reschedule please email Mr. Anwander. All conferences will be in room 304 (Mr. Anwander's room.) Encore teachers are available for drop in visits on those nights as well.
Due to a death in my family (my 93 year old grandmother!) I will be driving to South East Texas with my family after school on Tuesday. I will be gone Wednesday - Friday of this week. Mr. Anwander will have copies of ELA and SS grades and any notes from me that need to be given. If you feel like you would personally like to meet with me to discuss your child's progress I will be available after school Monday, October 14 - Friday, October 18 from 3:00 - 4:30, please just let me know. Thank you for your understanding and flexibility as I travel to be with my family at this time.
- Aimee Patterson
Team Day - On Friday our team had a team "building" activity. Students were given a bag of random supplies such as pop-scicle sticks, rubber bands, paperclips, straws etc and were given 40 minutes to build a bridge that would span 12" and be at least 3" wide. The winning bridge was able to hold 450 pennies! Students had fun working together in collaborative groups designing and restructuring their bridge as they worked through the building process. Pictures can be seen below!
Monday, October 7
No School - staff development
Tuesday, October 8
New Mark Home Volleyball & District Cross Country Meet (4:00)
Wednesday, October 9
Parent teacher conferences 3:30 - 8:30
Thursday, October 10
First BASA Session Ends
Friday, October 11
First Quarter Ends
Thursday, October 17
Renaissance Skate Night at River Roll (7:30-10:30)
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.
This week the retake night has been moved to Tuesday, October 8th due to PTC.
CORE Classes
English Language Arts (ELA)
This week in ELA we have been writing our letters to a national park of our choice. Students have written rough drafts, revised, edited and wrote final copies on Thursday and Friday. I have learned that the art of letter writing has almost disappeared as I was asked by many students "where do I put the stamp on the envelope?"
One student was ingenious enough to bring in an extra book of stamps and taught our students a "hands-on" example of supply and demand! (I think she got top dollar for stamps that day!) Letters were mailed off to the parks on Friday! There is a handful of students that still need to bring in their stamps and finish up their letters.
Many students have been finishing books and have had their reading log signed off on... very exciting and encouraging to see motivated students at work every day! Keep it up!
Social Studies: World Geography
Math
In math we have continued working with converting between fractions and percents. We will soon have a quiz over this material before we move on to other operations with fractions.
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.
Science
In Science, we have been studying thermal energy and the students designed their own solar ovens. We were able to go out and test our solar ovens on Friday. The outside air temperature was around 85 degrees, and some of the ovens reached a temperature over 200 degrees. Pretty impressive! We also had the opportunity to work with dry ice this week. This helped to see that everything has thermal energy, not just hot things. It is always fun to experiment with dry ice!