October 15, 2007

 

Dear 7th Grade Parents,

 

This week begins the start of a crazy couple of weeks in my classes.  I will be gone this Friday (10/19), as I will be flying to Dallas to attend my brother’s graduation from the Firefighting Academy.  I will also be gone all of next week.  Monday-Tuesday (10/22-10/23) I am attending the annual W.A.L.T conference.  This is the Writing Assessment Leadership Team, which is composed of 50 teachers and administrators from across the state.  The conference is facilitated by the director of writing for Washington State and provides many resources for those of us who attend.  Wednesday-Friday (10/24-10/26) I will be participating on the accreditation committee/team for St. Edward’s school.  The archdiocese seeks out teachers and administrators to serve on these committees to help the school’s going through the accreditation process, just like St. Brendan did a few years ago. 

 

Therefore, the following newsletter will cover the next 2 weeks worth of information.  Mrs. McCloskey will be substituting for me all of next week.  Please keep in mind that these plans may be slightly adjusted according to the students’ needs and schedule changes.  It would be helpful for you to check with your student each night to be sure things are going smoothly.  Thank you!

 

Literature:  The 7th graders will have a vocabulary test this Thursday (10/18) which covers the terms in the first three short stories we have read this year.  Part of this week will be spent working on non-fiction reading skills with Scholastic Magazine.  We will also be reviewing how to identify the key information from the text and how to use it to take notes.  Later this week and into the next, they will be reading the story ‘Last Cover’ and completing the comprehension questions.  Depending on next week’s schedule, they should expect to have a quiz over this story on Wednesday or Thursday (10/25 or 10/26).  We have our normal spelling activities this week. 

 

Language Arts: This week the students will be using the WASL scoring guide/rubric to score several student papers (released sample papers from the state used in previous WASL tests).  Then they will be making revisions to one sample paper to improve its introduction and conclusion.  Next week, they will be concentrating on finishing up Unit 1 in our English text.  I’m planning on having the test over this sometime at the end of that week. 

 

Thank you,

Pam Schwartz

 

SUBJECT UPDATES

 

7th Grade Social Studies

11:30 – 12:15 M – F

Mrs. Christianson

annc@saintbrendan.org

 

10/15/07

Seventh graders will have a test over Chapter 9 (I had a typo last week – it IS Chapter 9) THIS Friday, October 19.  This test completes the cycle of assignments, quizzes and tests for each chapter of study.  The cycle is: homework assignments, quiz, project, chapter test.  What’s the biggest difference between a quiz and test? Quizzes ask students mainly for details; tests ask students to use details and examples to support answers to “big picture” questions.  You can best help your student by encouraging him or her to reread the Lessons in each chapter AND to organize the information in the categories on the study sheet I handed out in class.

 

Tomorrow I will hand out notes to any students who are interested in reviewing other people’s notes.  Today, we played Review Jeopardy to help prepare for Friday’s chapter test.

 

Students are writing a paragraph about their family flag.  A rough draft is due Tuesday, October 16.

 

 

Religion 7th Grade

Seventh graders prepare for their School Mass on Thursday. We will have a living Rosary as part of the introduction to Mass as we honor Mary and St. Luke.

 

Linda Haptonstall will visit the class on Tuesday to talk about Malawi. She has visited Malawi several times and has lots of information to share. Seventh graders did a great job researching Malawi and sharing some of that information with other students at last week’s cross-grade family meeting.

 

Next Friday, October 26th, there will be a Unit 1 Religion Test. This test covers Chapters 1 through 4. Your child will have a study guide next Monday.

 

Math

Students will be receiving progress reports this Wednesday.  The reports need to be signed and returned by Friday.

 

This week we will be working on the following

·        Writing equations

·        Order of operations

·        Evaluating expressions

·        Writing expressions with multiple operations.