As we work through week 2 Health teachers are putting a priority on classroom building and expectations. 

Chapter 1 starting next week includes students will begin learning about the importance of Mental and Emotional Health including: 

1.1- Learning about Health and Wellness

1.2- Recognizing Factors that affect health and wellness

1.3- Building Skills for Health and Wellness

We’re off to a really great start! This week we started our transition into the curriculum by exploring with the students what Social Studies actually is and hopefully help them recognize that there is much within this realm that allows us to gain a lot of insight into how the world works. We have gone over things like History, Geography, Civics, and Economics–all things that are going to be showing up in our learning this year. Next week we'll be introducing the students to historical thinking skills. These will be extremely important lessons to lay the foundation for our year as these skills will be the tools that we will continually be using as we dive deep into our lessons and inquiries. 

The 5 historical thinking skills:

1. sourcing

2. contextualization

3. multiple perspectives

4. corroboration

5. close reading

Where We’ve Been: Getting in the Zone

This past week was all about getting into a strong learning mindset for the quarter ahead. We focused on building curiosity and resilience as readers and thinkers. Students engaged in a series of activities and discussions centered around two thought-provoking videos. I encourage you to watch these short videos as they provide great insight into the learning environment we are building in our classroom.

• Embracing Personal Reading: We explored the power of finding books we truly love and how that passion can drive our learning.

• "The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain into Learning More": This video introduced the concepts of "life gamification" and using failure as a tool for learning, much like in a video game. I encourage you to watch these short videos with your student and discuss them. They provide great insight into the learning environment we are building in our classroom.

What's Coming Up Next Week: Notice & Note Signposts.

Next week, we will dive into a set of powerful reading strategies called the Notice & Note Signposts. These signposts are specific clues in a text that help readers dig deeper and understand the story on a new level. Learning to spot these signposts will provide students with the necessary tools to analyze the personal narratives we will be reading throughout the quarter.

Math 7: Students are working together in teams to solve problems that involve decimals, percentages and fractions with unlike denominators. We will also review how to find the perimeter and area of a variety of polygons. The Chapter 1 Test will take place on Friday, September 5th.

Math 7D: In this unit, students have been introduced to the big ideas of probability, algebra, integers and proportional relationships. The main goal of this chapter is to focus on teams, collaboration, building classroom community and setting the stage for the kind of thinking and learning students will do throughout the school year. The Unit A Test will take place on Friday, September 5th.

Upcoming: Math MAP testing is Sept 8-10

We have been working hard on establishing classroom norms and reviewing science safety! Starting Monday August 25th we will begin our first curriculum unit. Please see the link below for more information about our Plate Tectonics and Rock Cycling unit. 

Plate tectonics and Rock Cycling

Here is how you can help your student be successful in science:

-Remind them to charge their chromebook every night. We use digital notebooks and it is        important that their device is charged and ready to use. 

-If students are absent,  remind them  to  email myself or Miss Carter for anything they will have missed.

-If they have a missing assignment in the gradebook, encourage them to complete it! They can hand it in until the end of the quarter! 

-Help promote studying for test and quizzes. Our digital notebooks, flash cards, and online  review games  are great tools to use to prepare for assessments!

• In art class we have been busy going over classroom expectations and procedures. 

• We are learning the classroom space and where materials are stored.

• We also discussed symbolism and wrote down objects that personally     represent us. 

  1. Students chose 1 symbol to create using found objects in a 40 min task party.

  2. Students will use those 5 symbols to decorate their sketchbook covers.

In Contemporary Communication, we discussed WHY it’s good to greet people and practiced introducing ourselves and others.  This week we will begin our partner interview project which will help students practice skills such as breaking a big task into smaller parts, asking open ended and probing questions, listening, writing strong paragraphs with only one topic and lots of details, and speaking in a medium group using the microphone.    Please feel free to contact me at anytime if you have questions, concerns, or information you feel would be helpful for me to know.     skroenk@lps.org

Tips for Success in Contemporary Communications:

Charge your chromebook every night. 

When absent, check the Absentee Log on Google Classroom to find out what was missed.  

Turn in all assignments on time, but if one slips by, get it done as soon as possible and turn it in on the back counter in the late/missing/absent work box. 

We have been taking time to get to know each other, classroom expectations and procedures to make for a successful year! 

In both Rewards Plus and Secondary we are completing beginning of the year assessments to see where we are at in our reading and writing skills.  The beginning of the year assessments are a great way to look back mid year and end of the year to see how much growth has happened!  

***Reading MAP testing will be happening next week (August 25-27) during English classes*** Get lots of sleep and eat a good breakfast!

The orchestra is off to a wonderful start this year and sounds fantastic. With a big group, we start slow to focus on routine and structure in the classroom so that rehearsals can run smoothly. Students have grown on this front each day this week. Thank you for all the effort. 

Practice Cards: 

Students are expected to practice 60 or more minutes each week and record it on their blue practice card. Each week, the card will be due on Tuesday. Ideally, students will turn it in Monday, but it gives them a chance to forget, and bring it the next day if necessary. Practice can be on any music the student wishes to play, as long as they are accomplishing class assignments. That could include the music from class, music from private lessons (the actual lesson time does not count), music from other books/online, playing by ear, or playing along with recordings of music they like.