Who has shaped your beliefs? - DUE TOMORROW

Homework due tomorrow. See last Friday's post for specifics.

Today in class, 7A finished their portfolio work. If it is not finished, students should work on it in advisory or at home. It needs to be done by Portfolio Exhibition Night, May 12.

7B received an outline of what's coming our way throughout our This I Believe project for the rest of the year. Click here to check it out.

We started work on the first component of that: Big Ideas, Small Books. These presentations will be due next Monday. They should meet the requirements attached and should be practiced and polished for a communication grade.

Portfolios cont.

Today we continued working on portfolios. 7B should be finished and won't have any more class time to work on this. There work has been passed on to their advisor where they will continue this process of preparing for exhibitions on May 12.

7A will finish this tomorrow.

Students who want to/can bring in their own binder to store their portfolio are highly encouraged to do so! Thanks!

Both classes need to have a discussion with an important adult and write two paragraphs about it by Thursday. That's all for homework this week.

Portfolios

Happy end of testing! Hooray for that being OVER!

Today in 7B we started looking at the end of year portfolio process. Students will choose one piece of work from Language Arts or Social Studies to represent their accomplishments in each of 5 skill areas this year: Reading, Writing, Communication, Research, and Cultural & Historical Understanding.

7A will start to look at this tomorrow.

Don't forget: Students have homework to speak with an adult who influenced their beliefs and write 2 paragraphs about that (see guidelines posted Friday). This is due on Thursday.

Science CRCT and Down with Puppy Mills!

Everyday Leaders presented this video along with a petition this morning. Please see a member of Everyday Leaders at school or at the Inman Park Festival this weekend to sign the petition! Share the video with friends to help raise awareness!

Don't forget - there's one more CRCT to go! Social Studies on Monday!

In our continuing work on This I Believe, 7B listened to the song by I Remember, I Believe by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Over the next week, students need to work on this assignment to discuss beliefs with someone who has been important in their lives. They will complete 2 paragraphs detailing their discussion and present to the class by next Thursday.

Why is it important to believe?

Today we continued our discussion of beliefs with a conversation on the following questions:

Why should we have beliefs?

Why talk about them?

Why is it important to know what you believe?

We looked at these quotes from others about beliefs to help us get started thinking. We will continue this discussion tomorrow after the Science CRCT. Looking forward to it.

This I Believe

Today we started work on something that will carry us through the rest of the year.

This I Believe - a project where students can write about what's important to them in a format of their choosing. More details soon.

To get us started brainstorming, we listened to the beliefs of two individuals, Tarak McLain and Howard White. Feel free to listen and discuss them at home.

No homework.

CRCT starts tomorrow.

Remember to get a good night's sleep, eat a good breakfast, and get to school on time - CRCT starts tomorrow.
Students did an awesome job with our review game today. I have full confidence that they will do a great job when they take the Reading test tomorrow and the English/Language Arts exam on Wednesday.
We won't have much HW this week, but it will be a regular week of school (after 10:45 that is). Students should bring their backpacks as well as mints, gum, and a fiction book for during the test. See you tomorrow!

More CRCT prep

7A:

We worked on sentence types - introduced the Compound - Complex Sentence.

Please complete this homework tonight in which students will use the definitions on the attached website to label if each sentence is Compound, Complex, Compound-Complex, or none of the above.

7B:

Had a guest teacher today. They worked on perspective and point of view. Tonight for HW, students need to write at least one paragraph from the perspective of the fly in the story. We will vote on the best one tomorrow.

How parents can help us get ready for the CRCT

Next week is the CRCT. We will be testing next Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and the following Monday.

Students should get lots of rest each night, eat a full breakfast, arrive at school on time, and try really hard not to be absent.

To make things easier, students can bring the following things to school:

• Gum or mints to chew if that helps them stay relaxed
• A FICTION book to read when they finish
• A snack to eat during the break

If anyone would like to donate a box of granola bars to share with students who don't have a snack, that would be fantastic!

We have talked about the upcoming CRCT in class and we will discuss it at morning meeting this week. If you have any more questions, feel free to be in touch with me or Mr Underwood.

Prepping for CRCT

In 7A today we discussed the details of the upcoming CRCT tests, seen here. We looked at these test taking strategies and practiced them on a passage from the benchmark assessment. For homework, students need to show evidence of using these strategies on another sample passage, Writing and the Pen. When I collect them tomorrow, I will be looking for students to underline information that helped them answer the questions, use the process of elimination, and explain why they chose the answer they chose.

7B spent the day looking at topic sentences. No homework.

CRCT coming up!

Today we did some work to prep for the upcoming CRCT.

In 7A we worked on topic sentences and the meaning of paragraphs. Then, students got back their essays from before break. They worked in teams to revise their papers to include better topic sentences and more focused paragraphs.

7B had a special guest, Ms Porter, teaching a reading comprehension strategy called VISA. They were fabulous to our guest and did a great job with this strategy. They should get essays back tomorrow.

Excellent essays!

I am so excited to read the fantastic essays students turned in today. Can't wait to read the final drafts of what they have been working so hard on!

As we talked about yesterday, students have no homework but do have the opportunity for extra credit over Spring Break.

Stay safe, have fun, and enjoy the sun!

Essays due tomorrow

Three paragraphs essays are due at the start of class tomorrow.

Also, students were given an up to date print out of their grades today. They have the opportunity to complete one of these extra credit options over Spring Break if they would like to improve grades.