This week marks two important milestones. Firstly, the long-running "Create Your Country" project was due on Tuesday. We will spend the next several days assessing these. So far, we are impressed with our students' demonstration of their knowledge of political concepts.

We also began a short unit entitled "Technology and Globalization", we students will explore the causes/effects and pros/cons of humanity becoming increasingly connected. Many were shocked to find out that before 1492, there were no pineapples in Hawaii, no potatoes in Ireland, no tomatoes in Italy, and no chocolate in Switzerland. These cuisine cornerstones are the result of globalization!

It's Oratorical season!

"The Oratorical" has been one of the most memorable experiences of 7th grade for years. We are currently in our 15th year of completing this public-speaking and research project.

Students will choose a topic of interest that they are motivated to study and speak to their peers about. We will study note-taking styles; engaging audiences with hooks, leads, and transitions; public speaking skills; and strategies and games for building confidence.

We are looking forward to celebrating the results of this hard work in four or five weeks. More in next week's newsletter!

This week students used unit rates to solve proportional relationship questions involving tables, graphs, descriptions, or equations. We did this by putting puzzles together that shared the same unit rate. Students demonstrated their understanding both through a summative assessment and creating group posters where they came up with their own situation with a table, graph and equation to match. We also determined what makes a relationship proportional and non-proportional. We are excited to end the week with the celebration of Pi!

Students are polishing their ecology projects this week, which are due this Friday. There has been some great effort and research put into these projects, and students have a lot to be proud of! Please ask your child about their project… you’ll likely learn something new! We’ll end the projects with an in-class “gallery walk,” where students can learn about other topics and view the projects completed by their peers.

The countries students are creating are coming together! We are in workshop mode this week -- designing maps, building governments, and creating economic systems. Students have been receiving feedback on their written portions of their project and putting it all together with a technology tool of their choice. Some students will choose to build a website, while others might create online pamphlets, brochures, or infographics. These will be due after break on Tuesday, March 10th online in Google Classroom. Feel free to check on your student's progress!

The Short Story Library is under Construction! By the time we return from Winter Break, each student should have a revised creative writing project hanging on the wall with cover art to attract readers, and the 7th graders will be able to 'borrow' these stories from the library to read during SDR and ELO's.

Some years we have a sort-of Readers' Choice Awards celebration some time near Spring Break, after the library has been in place for a few weeks.

*Notice: Many students completed the final Ender's Game essays late, at the beginning of this week and those scores are still being updated now in Jumprope--I apologize for the delay there but they should be complete by Friday afternoon.

Creative Writing Feedback and Grades should be up during the week we return.*

There are many different ways to make comparisons. In this weeks Investigation, students isolate ratios and rates as being useful comparisons to use in a variety of situations. The situations in this Investigation motivate students to find and use unit rates. They then compare unit rates within a problem to decide which option is best. Students can use other strategies to solve problems as well, such as rate tables, equations, and graphs. Students also begin to see patterns in graphs and tables of proportional relationships.

This week began with class time devoted to work on summative ecology projects. Students made the choice to work alone, or with a partner, and identified a topic of interest that investigates changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem the affect on populations of plants and/or animals in that ecosystem. Students are required to construct an argument supported by evidence that explains how these changes are happening. We spent our second class time looking at climate, climate change science and impacts of climate change in Vermont. On Friday, the 7th grade team is viewing the movie Time to Choose, This is a film by Charles Ferguson, documenting and addressing worldwide climate change challenges and solutions. With footage from five continents, Time to Choose explores the scope of the climate change crisis and the power of solutions already available. Nick Gordon and I are designing a gallery walk that asks students to examine graphics and data about climate change, and respond to questions about ecological impacts, economy and globalization to be completed at the beginning and end of the film.

This week in Social Studies brought with it the continuation of our Government Unit. Students have been working on designing and revising maps for societies they have been tasked to design. Students were asked to consider the prompt: If the United States as we know it today did not exist, what kind of society would you make?

Then later this week we created Gummy Bear Government models for five forms of government observed in Ancient Greece: Anarchy, Monarchy, Oligarchy, Direct Democracy, and Representative Democracy. After identifying each government’s working definition, students worked in pairs to make their Gummy Bear Governments.

Wednesday before the snow day and Monday this week, our student teacher Ms. DeLade taught a lesson to the class! Students were really excited to experience this. This lesson was about short stories as we have began our Creative Writing unit. Students learned about "Show vs. Tell" by focusing on sensory description, character actions, and dialogue. Later this week students began creating their summative assignment where they are writing a short story of their own!

This week students have been developing their stories to match the five-part story arc we've been studying...and the works-in-progress look AMAZING! We can't wait for students to start sharing their work next week when we build the Short Story Wall.

We spent this week in math continuing our conversation around proportional reasoning through ratios, fractions and percentages. We looked at finding a missing value in a proportion and focused on several different strategies to get us there. The "Math Habit" that we exercised was JUSTIFICATION, showing our work and reasoning through evidence, evidence, evidence! Our practice took full form during a game of Proportions BINGO and a final exit ticket.

Students are just beginning to work on the ecology final projects, based on the skill of “Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.” Students were given the option to work alone, or with a partner. I guided the partner selection, with input from each student about whom they felt they would work well with. Students are embracing the opportunity to connect this assignment to a topic of interest, and there are a wide variety of project ideas. I will be giving students daily recommended tasks, to help them pace their work and achieve a final product by March 13th. Additionally, I found 4 different nation-wide contests that connect well with the targeted learning for this project: The Really Great Outdoors, Plant Mash-UP, 2020 NPR Student Podcast Challenge, and the 2020 US Fish & Wildlife Junior Duck Stamp Contest. I'm really excited that many students are choosing to create a piece of work for entry into these contests!

As we dig deeper into to the concepts of government and democracy, we have been introduced to the unit's summative learning opportunity. For this “Create Your Country” project, students will map out a new country within the bounds of the United States (in a hypothetical world where there is no United States). After, students will map out their plan for government based on human nature (John Locke and Thomas Hobbes), an analysis of the various forms of government (monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy), and their case study of Ancient Greece.

After holding several Harkness discussions and a "Write-to-Learn" activity during the Ender's Game Unit, students are finishing a final writing about we they see as themes in the book.

A theme is a message about life or the world that is implied by the characters, events, and ideas in the story.

Ender’s Game has been a popular but highly controversial novel read by young adults for years. The book presents many ethical dilemmas and answers some of them in ways that not everyone agrees with. Was Ender's treatment at Battle School unfair? Is Ender guilty of genocide? Did Colonel Graff commit criminal negligence or abuse at Battle School?

Each student will look for 'signposts', clues they can use to support what they see as an important theme of the novel.

In math we worked on finding patterns with a group problem where we looked at dipping a 2x2x2, 3x3x3, 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cube in paint and determined how many sides would be painted if we took the cube apart into individual smaller cubes. Groups were encouraged to look for similarities and patterns within their tables and work effectively and collaboratively in a group.

This week, students graphed their results from the fox & rabbit lab and interpreted the data to analyze population trends of predator/prey relationships. After watching a short video about black bear populations in southern Vermont, we investigated carrying capacity, by playing a game to simulate how available resources impacts a bear population. Students are also having a good time creating memes that represent interactions between organisms in an environment. Next week, students will be introduced to a final project for the ecology unit.

The students have worked together to create their “constitutions” for their hypothetical space colonies. While many groups have created rules and laws for their colonies that are silly (example: everyone must eat pickles), most have referred to laws they’ve grown up with (no murder, freedom of speech, etc.). Now that we have created our own governments with this hypothetical context, we will now shift to the democracy of ancient Greece, the product of its own context, namely the geography and culture of the region. As we discuss the world’s first full-scale democracy, we will look at it in the context of our own and think about the following questions: What’s good about democracy? What isn’t? Can the will of the people be trusted? Can democracy survive indefinitely?

"Writing to Learn" is a little like the writing version of our Harkness Dialogues.

We are seeking complex ideas and a deep understanding of the books we read, so students are asking questions and making connections between ideas that sometimes seem diverse. In many instances we seek the themes of a book or story, its messages about life or the world outside the book. We also read and reflect with curiosity, making meaning from the text as individuals and as a community.

Writing to Learn is a demanding activity in which students write continuously on a variety of prompts, often generating more questions and connections as they go.

Students have been observing the changes our trout are undergoing, from egg to “alevin,” which is a newly hatched trout still attached to the yolk sac. In addition to our observations of the tank, we are continuing to explore the ways in which organisms interact in the environment. We have been doing a lab to simulate a predator/prey relationship and how the relationship is affected by limiting factors. Next week, students will graph their results and interpret the data to analyze population trends. Later in the week, we will investigate carrying capacity, by playing a game to simulate how available resources impacts a bear population.