7th

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English w/ Mr. Rouse – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes-  Aimsweb wasn’t taken. We will do it Thursday of this week.
• Around this time each year, I start prepping 7th grade for 8th grade by reviewing the introductory paragraph format and generating introductory paragraphs built around the thesis statement.
• Their thesis paragraph was themed around whether Howl is actually evil or not.
• We peer reviewed our introductory/thesis paragraphs.

Deep Dive –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes- Exhibition – February 19th
• Students are preparing their presentations for the exhibition. They are encouraged to wear something that represents their “house” theme. For example, the house of Hades might wear black, while the house of Poseidon might wear beach garb.

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – none scheduled 

Social Studies w/ Mr. Jividen –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – No Tests or Quizzes Scheduled
• Seventh Grade students had an introductory lesson on Black History Month
• Students were responsible for researching and sharing information about a person or event
• The class will compile this information into a calendar that can be shared with others in the WCDS community.

Science w/ Mrs. Farris – 

Over the next eight weeks, students will collect data on pH, soil moisture, air and soil temperature, plant growth and more. They will also document their progress through pictures and time-lapse videos, to capture their experiment in action!

Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – no test or quiz scheduled 

This week, students brought their experimental designs to life! Each group set up their grow area and officially “planted the Moon!”

Despite challenges that required problem-solving and adaptations, students showcased great teamwork and collaboration. 

English w/ Mr. Rouse – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes- We will take Aimsweb on Tuesday, February 4th.
• We continued our reading, questions, and discussions for Howl’s Moving Castle
• We continued to work on dialogue (I’ve been doing it with most of my classes.), and I made 7th do a dialogue writing assignment following a conversation between two unlikely people.
• Did Unit #3 of vocabulary.
• Continued our warm-ups and studied sentence types.

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – none scheduled
• The students took a test on the Pythagorean Theorem, which included calculations and word problems. The test will be corrected and reviewed next week.
• The next skill is solving 1-step and 2-step algebraic equations. 

Math w/ Mrs. Howells –

• Reminder: Please check in with your student to see that they have working headphones that connect to their laptop. Thanks!
• Upcoming Test: Aimsweb next week 
• The students classified rational numbers this week.
• They also worked quite a bit on converting fractions to decimals and vice-versa.
• Next we will begin rounding decimals and then jump into decimal operations: adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals.

Social Studies w/ Mr. Jividen –

Students wrapped up the unit on ancient civilizations. They transitioned into the middle ages. We will focus on major events like the Rennaisance and the Black Plague.

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – No Tests or Quizzes Scheduled

Science w/ Mrs. Farris – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – no test or quiz scheduled 
• Teams finalized their experimental designs—a challenging task in preparation for our grow date next week.
• Students then compared Earth’s soil to the Moon’s “soil,” discovering that the Moon’s surface material is called regolith. 
• The regolith consists of fine dust, broken rock fragments, and tiny glass beads, all formed by constant meteorite impacts. 

Music w/ Mrs. Chelsey – 

• This week we focused more on matching pitch and controlling where our voice is when we sing, as well as energy and volume. We worked on a rhythmically challenging section of “California Girls” and continued to the next part of The National Anthem. 
• Our music journal entry this week was “Is there any style or kind of music that you don’t like?”

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Good Saturday morning to you! How about that weather these last few weeks? Anyway, I’d be remiss not to congratulate all of the brave middle school students who participated in last week’s spelling bee. A tip of the cap to Trennan and Telsa for earning the right to represent WCDS at the county level. They have already made us proud!

English w/ Mr. Rouse – Aimsweb on Tuesday.

• Started Howl’s Moving Castle.
• I had them practice summarizing their reading for their substitute teacher.
• We ended the week with dialogue prompts, an activity where they practiced writing dialogue scenes with proper formatting.
• Congrats to Trennan for winning the spelling bee this week, and congrats to Telsa on coming in second place.

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – Pythagorean Theorem and Triangles, Wed. January 29
• The students will take a quiz on using the Pythgorean Theorem next Wednesday, January 29.
• This week, they demonstrated their confidence with solving for a missing side of a triangle.
• Against much reluctance, we applied the Pythagorean Theorem to real world problems; AKA – Word Problems! Their challenge was drawing the picture. Once they understood how to draw out their triangle, they solved the problems with ease. These word problems will be on their quiz next week.

Math w/ Mrs. Howells –

• Upcoming Test – Aimsweb on Monday, January 27
• Students took the Chapter 3 test on Inequalities. Their grades will be added to Google Classroom.
• We started some very preliminary work on our next topic: Rational Numbers.
• Next week, we will jump into this topic, classify rational numbers, and begin operations with rational numbers.

Science w/ Mrs. Farris – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – Environmental Design Quiz week of Jan 27th 
• Introducing our two teams and experiments – Ask your child what team they are a part of.
• Team Sprouts: Maximizing Resource Efficiency by Exploring the Benefits of Hydroponics with Lunar Regolith as a Growing Medium
• The Astro Alligators: Investigating Brassica’s Temperature Tolerance and Its Potential as a Nutritious Lunar Crop

Music w/ Mrs. Chelsey – 

• This week we continued working on the National Anthem and started working on another of our choral pieces. The students wanted to sing “California Girls” by Katy Perry, so that’s what we’re doing!! 
• Their music journal entry this week was “How does music influence your mood?”

CLICK HERE FOR UPCOMING WCDS EVENTS

English w/ Mr. Rouse – Aimsweb on Tuesday.

• Started Howl’s Moving Castle.
• I had them practice summarizing their reading for their substitute teacher.
• We ended the week with dialogue prompts, an activity where they practice writing dialogue scenes with proper formatting.
• Congrats to Tesla for winning the spelling bee this week, congrats to Trennan on coming in second place.

Deep Dive w/ Mrs. McFadden & Mr. K –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – No Tests or Quiz Scheduled

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – Pythagorean Theorem and Triangles, Wed. January 29
• We continued using the Pythagorean Theorem to solve for the hypotenuse of a triangle.
• The students also learned how to solve for a missing leg measurement.
• While they were given the chance to use calculators to calculate square roots, the students had to round their answers to the nearest hundredth. We reviewed rounding numbers, which is a skill they needed a refresher on.
• We’ll move on to measuring lengths of triangles next week.

Math w/ Mrs. Howells –

• Upcoming Test – Chapter 3 – Inequalities Test on Wednesday, January 22
• We continued with inequalities this week.
• Students solved one- and two-step inequalities using all operations. 
• We investigated why it is needed to flip the sign when multiplying or dividing both sides by a negative and then practiced this type of problem.
• Students were also challenged with solving word problems that really made us think!  
• Study material for Wednesday’s test is on our class website.

Science w/ Mrs. Farris – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – Environmental Design Quiz week of Jan 27th 
• We are excited to Plant the Moon! 
• This week, the “Plant the Moon” challenge kicked off as students were divided into two teams to brainstorm testable questions. 
• Teams narrowed down their ideas to form the basis of their initial experimental design.

Music w/ Mrs. Chelsey – 

• This week we continued working on the National Anthem and started working on another of our choral pieces. The students wanted to sing “California Girls” by Katy Perry, so that’s what we’re doing!! 
• Their music journal entry this week was “How does music influence your mood?”

CLICK HERE FOR UPCOMING WCDS EVENTS

Students are encouraged to participate in the Middle School Spelling Bee on Friday. Practice word lists were distributed and can be found here.

English w/ Mr. Rouse – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes- none.
• With a shorter week, we didn’t cover as much, but we did complete warm-ups. Our warm-ups covered title formatting, types of adjectives, and words using the root word, pyro.
• We did some pre-reading for the book, Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Students will need their copies by Monday!
• For creative writing, we fluffed sentences, an activity where I have the students turn simple sentences into descriptive sentences following the principle of show don’t tell.

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – none scheduled.
• The students reviewed simplifying radicals.
• We moved on to learning about the Pythagorean Theorem. I told them that they should be proud to show off their advanced math skills. They love saying Pythagorean Theorem!
• The students are can identify the hypotenuse, opposite, and adject sides of a right triangle.
• They are using their knowledge of square roots to solve for the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle.

Math w/ Mrs. Howells –

• No Upcoming Tests or Quizzes 
• We continued our introduction to inequalities that began before the holiday break.
• Our focus skill was graphing inequalities on a number line.
• Started solving inequalities with addition.
• The students picked up quickly on these since the process is the same as solving for the unknown in equations.

Science w/ Mrs. Farris – Experimental design quiz week of Jan 20th 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – no test or quiz scheduled 
• Our myth-buster detectives are on the case, investigating the steps in an experimental design! 
• We then put it into action by asking the testable question – How many times can you fold a piece of paper? 
• While some students were eager to start folding, we first worked through each step—developing a hypothesis, identifying controls and variables, and outlining our instructions—before diving into the experiment!

Music w/ Mrs. Chelsey – 

It was great to see the students again!! We jumped back into choral warm-ups and breath work, and we played one of our favorite rhythm games, “Pass the beat around the room”. We will be starting to learn “The National Anthem” in preparation for singing at a Nailers game at the end of March. There will be information going home about this in the next few weeks. We will also be starting to learn a couple of other choral pieces to do a short virtual choral video of “Spring Songs”. 

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English w/ Mr. Rouse – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes- none.
• As always, we covered many topics in class with our weekly warm-ups, but one particular topic we went in depth on was coordinate vs. cumulative adjectives.
• We wrapped up the last unit of vocab before the break.
• We finished Maze Runner and will be doing an outline as the final project of the book.
• Next week, I will be showing the Maze Runner movie. It is PG-13, so if you don’t want your child watching the movie, please have them tell me so. 

Deep Dive w/ Mrs. McFadden & Mr. K –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – No Tests or Quiz Scheduled

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – Square Roots (radicals) Quiz, Tuesday, December 17
• Students are working on simplifying square roots using the product and quotient properties of square roots. 
• They took a quick “quiz” on perfect squares and square roots on Thursday. It is important that they know perfect squares to 20 with fluency.
• Next Tuesday, they will take a quiz that covers perfect squares and simplifying radicals. We will review it on Monday.

Math w/ Mrs. Howells –

• No Upcoming Tests or Quizzes 
• This week we reviewed expressions and equations.
• Students are to be commended for their hard work and perseverance through many practice tasks! They are showing greater and greater fluency with integer operations and solving equations.
• On Friday, they completed the Chapter 2 test. Grades will be available on Google Classroom.
• Next, we begin Chapter 3: Inequalities.

Social Studies w/ Mr. Jividen –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – No Tests or Quizzes Scheduled
• Students continued to look at Rule of Law as they explored the Tang Code
• We explored the ideas from ancient law that are present in modern day laws across the world
• Students wrote a reflection about the rule of law

Science w/ Mrs. Farris – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – no test or quiz scheduled 
• Students presented their Extremophile Alien Project to the class, showcasing their creativity and scientific knowledge. (A few will share theirs next week!) 
• Seeing them take actual scientific facts and imagine alien life forms that could survive on their chosen planets was exciting. 
• This project captured the fun and curiosity of science as students explored the unknown and imagined the possibilities of life beyond Earth, reminding us that science is as much about exploring mysteries as it is about what we already know.

Music w/ Mrs. Chelsey – 

• We are ready and excited to share our “Winter Concert” with you!!! I am so very proud of all of the work the students put into this. They have come together as a choir and ensemble in many different ways and it shows!! We hope you enjoy the show!
• Our music journal prompt this week was: Please reflect upon the music you have made for our winter concert!

Elective

• Adulting 101- 
• Design with Mrs. Boldrick and Mr. Hill – Design – Set and prop building continues as the deadline looms.  Projects are coming together nicely and we are impressed with how all the kids stepped up to this challenge.

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Where do I even begin? There are no adequate words to describe the appreciation I have for 7th grade families being the second class schoolwide to reach 100 percent participation during 29 hours. Your investment. Nothing we do can be accomplished without your support.

English w/ Mr. Rouse – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes- none.
• We are entering the students into an MLK essay contest with the following prompt: write about a time you influenced someone’s happiness in a positive way. We are sending home a media consent form for the contest, if you don’t have any objection to the form, please fill it out and send it back with your child. It’s due on Monday.
• Students continued their reading and discussion of Maze Runner.
• Their warm-ups covered dangling participles, prepositional phrases, and active /passive voice. 

Deep Dive w/ Mr. K and Mrs. McFadden –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – No Tests or Quiz Scheduled
• Wrote an original myth to explain a natural phenomenon
• Used the wheel of fortune to pick “cabins” as in Percy Jackson
• Reserached the god/goddess associated with that cabin. Next week we are building the cabins!

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes: None
• We spent Monday and Tuesday reviewing the laws of the exponents test. 
• Wednesday, the students started the test but were unable to finish. Due to absences, we continued the test on Thursday. All students finished on Friday.
• Next week, we’ll review the order of operations and move on to square roots.

Math w/ Mrs. Howells –

• No Upcoming Tests or Quizzes 
• We worked through solving equations with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division!
• We had a quiz on those skills on Friday. You can check our Google Classroom to see your child’s score.
• Next week we begin two-step equations.
• There are practice games and activities on our class website: mhowells.weebly.com
• Please encourage your students to email me if they are struggling with homework, and I can set up a time to help them.

Social Studies w/ Mr. Jividen –

In 7th grade, we discussed the presidential transition period. We compared and contrasted past transition periods in order to understand what makes a transition successful.

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – No Tests or Quizzes Scheduled

Science w/ Mrs. Farris – 

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – None scheduled 
• We identified what all living things “wants” to survive and discussed whether organisms could adapt to survive without these needs.
• Students were introduced to extremophiles, breaking down the term into extrem- (extreme) and -phile (to love). Trennan offered a spot-on definition: an organism that loves extreme environments.
• Each student received an extremophile card and searched the room for a potential location on Mars where their extremophile might survive. This activity encouraged critical thinking and showed students the value of making well-reasoned choices without a single right or wrong answer.

Elective

• Coding – Nutcracker Ballet – An email was sent to all parents regarding sign-ups for the Nutcracker Ballet. Please sign up for a performance here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n9zMbqkHVC5MWuLtX2m6IShSoMvbeayohNxEuY101kg/edit?usp=sharing
• Adulting 101 – We have started a new trimester and we all know what that means, new elective! Mr. Jividen and I are excited to have our kiddos for Adulting 101.  During this elective we will be taking a look at everything from changing tires to how to budget for a meal. We will also be taking a look at how to write a professional email and learning about stocks and how they work.  We hope that the students will learn alot in this elective and we can help them navigate their way to becoming an “Adult”.  
• Design- We dove right in on day one and had each student create a table using only a few objects- paper, pipe cleaners, tape and straws.  Logan Huffs table won the “most weight” contest and there were some pretty interesting designs.  We spent a class period learning about the design process.  Ask your child the 5 steps in the design process and ask them about their groups idea for improving our middle school campus classrooms.

 Cultural Cooking/Chopped – We learned about traditional Japanese dishes and gtried our hand at sushi, miso soup, and ramen.

• Movie making- The students worked hard all trimester writing, filming and editing their movies and now you can enjoy them at home

This is the link to the final project- https://youtu.be/E14gfX2uIz0

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Man, what a week. Who else is going to miss the political commercials? Anyway, Please mark your calendars for the “Middle School Winter Concert”, which will be held on Monday, December 16th at 6:00 on Main Campus. We will have a rehearsal on Friday, December 13th, at Main Campus from 1-3 pm. Students will be bussed over to Main Campus and will need to be picked up at Main Campus.

English w/ Mr. Rouse – 

• Upcoming Test/Quizzes: none
• Continued our reading of Maze Runner. We started listening on audible during class time to make up for some of the time we’ve missed this week and last week.
• Our Warm-Ups covered parts of speech and how different words move between verb, noun, and even adjective form.
• We all put various pieces of information together to make a writing prompt on Friday.

Deep Dive w/ Mrs. Ochap and Mr. Jividen –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – None
• Wow! These kids really did an amazing job at exhibition.  Their knowledge of the subject and their confidence while speaking to families was outstanding.  I loved watching them get excited about their topic and engage with parents about questions they had.  We hope that they can continue to enjoy riding and gain the confidence to ride even further one day.  
• Next trimester the 6th-8th graders will will move on to their Mythology Deep Dive with Mrs. McFadden and Mr. K.

Math w/ Mrs. Boldrick –

• Upcoming Tests/Quizzes – Exponents Test, Wednesday, November 13
• The last two laws of exponents were introduced this week – Power of a Power, and Power of a Quotient.
• I require each step to to written down to receive full credit for each problem. I remind them that writing each step gives a visual representation, which makes solving the problem much easier.
• The students will review for the test by taking a practice test on Monday. We will review this practice test and answer any questions about the processes on Tuesday.