Post date: Nov 17, 2013 6:54:7 AM
Dear Parents and Kids,
Four more school days now behind us in our little 7th grade utopia and things continue to go well as the learning, laughing, and discovering continues.
I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with the kids on Monday, detailing the "kinds of things that deplete my energy, attitude, and enthusiasm each day" and since then, things have been really much better. I love how well most of the kids can respond to/with honesty and maturity.
On to the good stuff... here is a quick summary of the week:
Social Studies: The unit on Muslim culture and the growth of Islam has concluded now, and next we head towards Africa for the next few weeks. As I have been learning the material along side the kids, I'm gaining insights into a whole new area of curriculum for me. I've never "gotten into" history and global cultures much before, but I certainly can sense that changing. Between the readings, the videos, and the presentations by people, I hope that the kids are also coming to new and deeper understandings of cultures and events far beyond the relatively small world in which we live. My thanks to the parents who have been reading the material along with us and helping me add as much objectivity as possible to the student's responses to short-answer questions on the tests (the notes and questions ahead of time for this one).
English: This was the last week dealing with Ender's Game. At the risk of sounding negative, I have to say that it has been like pulling teeth to get some of the kids to go beyond even the most superficial levels of literary analysis this year. While some of them have chosen essay topics of appropriate (grade level) challenge and are living up to the potential that written analysis provides, most are not. Parents, I humbly your help in this area -- writing is best learned through focussed 1:1 tutelage. Please read the outline that your kids has created (it was due Friday) and help them to develop their ideas and write them well. Writing is a hard and demanding process, but probably the most important one to develop this year! No matter how intelligent, insightful, creative, innovative, caring, or charismatic a person may be, without the ability to write and communicate extremely well, those skills and talents will all-too-often go unnoticed and unrealized.
Science: The current unit on the diversity and organization of life has involved some activities that the kids have hopefully enjoyed, including developing their own attribute activity, sorting various objects, using and developing their own classification charts and identification keys for some very odd creatures. Next unit: simple organisms, including bacteria, protists, fungi, and viruses. In addition to this, we are now at the conclusion of the Fall science experiments. Although the pacing of the students experiments has been extremely varied, it is time to come to pull them back together and finalize their final publishing. The experiences that the students had have been great, and I've been impressed by their autonomy.
Grades: Some students are really suffering from an ongoing bout of acute zero-itis -- a pesky (but correctable) condition in which small round characters begin to appear in larger-than-normal numbers on the students grades. Please take a look at PowerSchool to see if the infection has hit you(r student). The remedy is simple, but not always easy -- details are on the "assignments", QAR, and "procedures" pages of my website. Seriously, although the DCS philosophy and community doesn't put much emphasis on grades, they also shouldn't be ignored and the information that I post on PowerSchool can simply provide you (parents and students) with information about what assignments are missing or have scores below student potential. As I have said ad nauseum this year, nightly attention to the assignments document and weekly visits to the parent portal to PowerSchool will certainly keep us all on the same page regarding expectations, responsibility, and accountability.
On a positive ending note, I have seen great growth in many of the kids in the class and continue to become more and more invested, attached, and appreciative of all. As we approach the holiday season as well as the half way point in the year, lets be sure to get the most out of our time together. We should be laughing and learning constantly each day, exploring and traveling at least once a month, and making sure that this whole year is a great worthy adventure.
Chris