December 2016

7th Grade Badger News

General Announcements It is imperative for scholars to arrive at school on time. They should be in homeroom by 8:00am. Remember, high schools will look at 7th grade attendance data when making enrollment decisions. Scholars must be in full school uniform daily. Sweaters that are not black may be worn under their uniform shirts.

Frequently check JupiterEd.com for updated academic and behavioral performance. We have started emailing the daily homework assignments to parents. Email Ms. Grief if you would like to be added to our mailing list.

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ICED Scholars of the Month

Integrity Kerry W. - Stony Brook

Manuel L. - Baruch

Courage Camron B. - Spelman Sasha N. - Morehouse

Excellence Joshua P. - Spelman

Keana W. - Stony Brook

Determination Jesus D. - Baruch

Nyisha E. - Morehouse

Content Corner

“Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.”

- Mahatma Ghandi English/Language Arts

After having completed the first Interim Assessment of the academic year, scholars will be exposed to targeted work that focuses specifically on the standards we need additional support with, in addition to strengthening the standards we did well on. We will be explicitly reviewing PLORES as a strategy to dissect our texts and RACIE as a strategy to construct answers to short-response prompts. We will align the work we are doing with the 2-point rubric used to score the state exam to ensure that scholars internalize the requirements needed to earn full credit on the brief constructed responses (BCR). Additionally, there will be a heavy focus on mastering skills such as citing textual evidence, making inferences, and writing a coherent BCR in preparation for our second IA in January. We will continue our work with our mentor text, A Long Walk to Water, by delving into the text and identifying critical content vocabulary to build our academic vocabularies.

Mathematics November was a busy month! The first marking period came to a close, students completed their Integer Survival Guide projects, and we conducted our first round of Interim Assessments. For the Integer Survival Guide, we created themed books showing the rules for operations when working with integers. Many of us showed our creativity and depth of knowledge in creating our books for this project. Based on the results of the Interim Assessment, we conducted an intensive week of reteaching so that we would have strong foundational skills that we can successfully apply the rest of the school year. As we move into December, we will begin our work with ratios and proportional relationships. This is a power standard for seventh grade that will be heavily emphasized. We will develop an understanding of how to identify these relationships when presented in graphs, tables, and equations. Based upon the data, we will make inferences as to the type of relationship that is represented and we will learn how to use these concepts in real world situations.

History Greetings families! It is befitting that we end our second unit, “European Exploration and Settlement,” and begin our third unit, “The English Colonies in North America,” with the story of the first Thanksgiving in North America. In this unit, we will research the similarities and differences amongst the colonies in North America. This unit will be far more interactive as we will be working with Google classroom and incorporating more technology into our everyday classroom lessons. Expect to receive the logins and passwords to our History Alive! curriculum. This will allow scholars to access our readings and lessons at home as well as allow parents to view what we are learning. In class, we continue to incorporate Common Core ELA standards into our lessons as a means of providing additional ELA support using informational texts.

Science The seventh grade Science classes recently finished learning about the different states of matter and the process that each state goes through when it changes from one state to another. We were able to observe demonstrations involving dry ice to better understand sublimation. Now, we are learning about the atomic theory. We will be studying the different parts of an atom and how each part was discovered. We are going to build our own models of an atom in science lab. We will also learn about the different elements and the Periodic Table. We will conduct labs that will further our knowledge of the Periodic Table and its elements.

December 5: Picture Day December 13: Parent Leadership Team Meeting, 6:30pm - 8:00pm December 13-22: Mid-Year Diagnostic Assessments December 16: Progress Reports Distributed December 20: Board Meeting, 6:00pm - 7:30pm December 23: Half Day - 12:30 Dismissal December 26 - January 3: No School - Winter Recess

Jibon R. - 12/01 Angel R. - 12/01

Nehemiah W. - 12/01 Delique F. - 12/10 Jared A. - 12/17

Trevon G. - 12/17 Camron B. - 12/20 Danico P. - 12/20 Kayla M. - 12/25

Madison G. - 12/27

Coach classes have started and are an excellent opportunity for students to make up assignments or get clarity on a topic/skill being taught in class.

Monday Tuesday Thursday

Lunch: ELA (Mr. A) Math (Mr. Dorschuck) After School: ELA (Mr. Bhagwandeen) Math (Ms. Grief)

Lunch: Math (Mr. Dorschuck) After School: Science (Mr. Doorn)

Lunch: Math (Mr. Dorschuck) After School: ELA (Mr. A) Math (Ms. Grief) History (Ms. Branch)

Mr. Agaronov - ELA/Student Support

agaronov@invictusprep.org Mr. Bhagwandeen - ELA

sbhagwandeen@invictusprep.org Ms. Branch - History

lbranch@invictusprep.org Mr. Doorn - Science

jdoorn@invictusprep.org Mr. Dorschuck - Math

cdorschuck@invictusprep.org Ms. Fay - ELA/Student Support

franjit@invictusprep.org Ms. Grief - Math/Student Support

lgrief@invictusprep.org Ms. Martin - Math Intervention

cmartin@invictusprep.org Ms. Patrick - Math Intervention

aapatrick@invictusprep.org Ms. Payne - Math Intervention

tpayne@invictusprep.org Ms. Smalls - ELA Intervention

dsmalls@invictusprep.org