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Welcome to 7th Grade English
Guide to Conquering the Year
“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.” ~James Baldwin’s The Creative Process (Creative America, Ridge Press, 1962)
Miss Jenna Massicotte
TEAM WEBSITE WITH MATH, SCIENCE, and SOCIAL STUDIES https://sites.google.com/whps.org/team-7-1/home
Objective:
As the school year moves forward, we will celebrate our own learning and growth together as a classroom through a variety of activities and platforms. We will be tinkering with our reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills and hold ourselves to high expectations to not only reach, but exceed! How you succeed in my classroom is based on communication, advocacy, open-mindedness, creativity, and hardwork.
Overview:
The English/ Language Arts Department of West Hartford teaches a curriculum based on the Connecticut Common Core State Standards. This curriculum and these lessons are designed to reflect the status of our current world, and incorporate knowledge students need for secondary school, college, careers, and beyond. Students will be reading both fiction and nonfiction texts that will expand in complexity as the year marches forward, and students will learn how to draw evidence and analyze these texts in a variety of methods.
Each teacher at Sedgwick is working towards perfecting the West Hartford Public School’s Vision for Equity and Anti-Racism. This class will examine the diversity of our community in multiple modes of learning, with texts that will expose views, new experiences, and challenging ideas from many perspectives. Every book we read encourages debate and discussion, and balanced perspectives representing aesthetics, literary, critical, and ethical, to create social value. The characters we study will allow us to connect, and discover, and understand new experiences from different perspectives. My goal is to help students understand three principles:
Creativity is a muscle that is able to be worked and strengthened with determination and effort
Some books act like a mirror, where we see ourselves and our own experiences, and connect with what we read from our own lives
And other books act like windows, where we can see new perspectives, new ideas, and new experiences, and learn from others
And no matter what we do, and where our lives take us, each student has the potential to positively impact the world in large and small ways.
Grading Rationale:
Students are expected to always put effort and passion into their assignments. Good tips include being proactive, communicating, asking questions, and working as a team. Always ask questions on assignments before the due date!
Late work will be taken, but with reduced credit, which varies on assignment weight.
Grades will be recorded in powerschool are determined by the amount of skills being measured on a given assignment. This is also determined by proficiency at said skills as created and analyzed by a common grade level wide rubric.
For example, if one assignment is analyzing 3 skills, those 3 skills are each worth 10 points, for a grand total of 30 points earnable on that assignment.
Rubrics, exemplars, models, and greater detail can be found on google classroom.
Assessments include writing assignments, projects, tests, quizzes, independent reading, homework, classwork, participation are all factors in assessing student progress. Detailed instructions for all major assignments will be provided.
Note: I will post missing work as a 0%. This is to keep your attention to turn in missing assignments. Once turned in, the grade will be updated.
Supplies:
Green: necessary
Yellow: nonessential supplies but good to have!
Pens
Pencils
Independent reading novel
School chromebook/ mac/ laptop/ and charger
Headphones to be used with device
folder
notebook
highlighters
Sticky notes
Index cards
binder
Extra Help and Parent Communication:
Miss Massicotte is available for any extra help during the learning lab and by appointment. Please contact Miss Massicotte to schedule an appointment if necessary at least one day in advance. The most effective way to reach Miss Massicotte is by email: jenna_massicotte@whps.org .
Stance on Equity
When introducing a new unit that contains a text that may be viewed as challenging:
As English/ Language Arts teachers seeking to have students understand their own experiences and those of others in new, deeper ways, we are committed to supporting the district’s vision for equity and anti-racism through deliberate lesson planning and the offering of a literary experience representative of the rich diversity of our community.
To this end, West Hartford English/ Language Arts teachers, reading specialists, and library media specialists are committed to the thoughtful introduction of diverse, new voices in fiction and non-fiction including novels, short stories, speeches, and essays that address racism and bias in our world. Across the district, teachers are working to establish classrooms that further the goal of having racism understood, addressed, and ultimately uprooted, and, as English teachers, we recognize the ways in which our classrooms are uniquely positioned to engender empathy.
We recognize elements within the text may be challenging to some students and/or their parent(s) or guardian(s). As your student explores this text, all related social issues will be approached with sensitivity, and students will be given the appropriate context and background information necessary to understand the text as a work of literature that will help them grow as learners, not only academically, but also socially and emotionally. It is our hope that all students will be able to say that they have read a work by an author or were introduced to a character to whom they connected, as well as one or more who helped them discover a new point of view.
We celebrate the diverse identities of our students and appreciate that they come to our classes with a variety of perspectives just as we expect them to come to understand and appreciate the perspectives of others. We invite you to have a discussion with your student about the issues within the text and their understanding of characters, events, and themes as we read. If you have any further questions or concerns about the text, please feel free to reach out to me directly at the contacts below.
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