Merry Chrstmas!

Ask Your Child About...

• “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” Readers’ Theater
• Christmas Breakfast
• Christmas Party
• Secret Santa
• Christmas Chapel
• Letters to Santa
• “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”
• The Human Hurricane
• Making crystals
• Marbling paper

Ask Your Child About...

• Gift Wrapping
• Secret Santa
• How are plants and paramecia alike, yet different?
• 7th grade math test on Tuesday
• Final Research Paper Edits
• Mexico City
• Hurricanes

Ask Your Child About...

• New Applied Skills Class
• Group & Peer Editing
• Christmas Decorating
• Looking at microscopic organisms and structures
• Algebraic Expressions

Christmas Decorating

We had a great time on Tuesday morning decorating our classroom for Christmas! Check it out!

Snowflakes in the Window

Christmas Trees on the Board

Snowflake Making

The 7th Grade Mistle-Finger (No Mistletoe Allowed!)

7th Grade Loves Dance Parties! (Especially to Christmas Music!!)

The Nativity and Our Favorite Snowman

Dance Party

The lunchroom is getting some minor remodeling this week, so we are eating lunch in our classrooms. Today's lunch came with Christmas music on the radio (thanks, Harrison!) and an impromptu dance party. Even when we can't leave the room, we still manage to have a great time!

Ask Your Child About...

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie - how is it different from the book?
• What God made on the 6th day of creation
• Research Paper Rough Drafts
• National Park Podcasts
• Health Presentations

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

We have finished reading our first novel of the year! The students all seemed to enjoy this book. The skill folders they have been working on are due next Monday, November 23. On Wednesday, we will begin watching the recent Disney movie in class. A permission slip came home today for this. Please return it if you would like your child to participate in this culminating activity.

November & Holiday Book Orders!

The November and Holiday Book Orders are coming home today. They are due back on Monday, November 16. With Christmas approaching, if you would like to purchase books as gifts for your child, let me know, and I'll be sure to get the books directly to you rather than sending them home with your child. For the easiest ordering (and more options!) order online at www.scholastic.com. Our class code is MFP3G. You can also order by returning the book order form and payment to me.

Ask Your Child About...

• The key difference between Christianity and all other religions
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
• Microscopes
• National Parks Podcast
• Math Test

Don't Forget...

• Summary on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Chapters 5-8, Due Monday, November 2
• 25 Notecards, Due Tuesday, November 3
• Vocab, Unit 4, Due Wednesday, November 4
• Memory Quiz on Genesis 1:20-23, Thursday, November 5
• 100 Notecards, Due Friday, November 6
• Book Report, Due Thursday, November 12

Ask Your Child About...

• Attributes of God
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
• Urban Sprawl
• Focusing the Research Paper Topic
• Applied Skills
• Math - Test on Chapter 2
• Unknown materials, are they living?
• Characteristics of ALL life

Praying in Color

For our prayer journals this year, we will be using a system called Praying in Color, a system developed by Sybil MacBeth. She has published several books on the topic if you are interested in more information. I encourage you to click on the link and view the short video; this is how I introduced the idea to the 7th graders. We will spend time in prayer each day - as a whole group, individually, and sometimes in partners. Ask your child what they think of Praying in Color.

Ask Your Child About...

• LEST Sign-ups
• Creation Illustrations
• Potatoes, Eggs, Fire - Living or Nonliving?
• What book are you reading for your book report?
• The Great Lakes
• Integers and Order of Operations
• The Book Order

Scholastic Book Orders - Due Friday, October 16

This month is an exciting month to order books! Your child is bringing home three different book orders to peruse. You can also order online where there are even more choices than are in the flyers.

This month, if the total order for 7th & 8th grade combined is $125 or more, every student in those two classes will receive a free book! What an awesome opportunity! This breaks down to an order of roughly $5/student. Also with $125, I get to spend $15 on books for our classroom, and I also earn 1325 bonus points to purchase free books for the classroom (approximately $50 worth of books). This is a great month to order!!

Thank you for your support,

Kresha Schulze
Middle School Language Arts

•  VISIT scholastic.com/readingclub
•  ENTER the one-time Class Activation Code - MFP3G
•  SHOP from a carefully curated selection of the best books and value packs
•  SUBMIT your order and earn FREE Books for our classroom
•  All book orders will be shipped to our classroom so we can celebrate the joy of reading together!

Christian Studies - Creation

In our Christian Studies class we have been looking at the Creation Story in Genesis 1. We are memorizing it, writing it, answering questions about it, discussing it, illustrating it... Today I was able to show them a video that illustrates the magnitude of God's creation. It is a pretty cool video displaying the solar system to scale and just how amazing it is. I invite you to view it as well. Enjoy!

To Scale: The Solar System by Wiley Overstreet

Ask Your Child About...

• The guest speaker in geography
• Positive & Negative Integers
• Their science journal
• Language Arts Interactive Notebooks
• Peacemakers Test
• Applied Skills

Ask Your Child About...

• Grandparents Day
• Canada
• Lizard Point
• The "Skinny Student" Project
• Language Arts Interactive Notebook
• Peacemakers & the 5 A's
• Next week's memory work - Genesis 1:6-8

Reminder!

Vocab Unit 2 is due Wednesday!

Scholastic Book Order - Due 9/14

Encouraging reading is one of the most important things we can do to help your child succeed. It can be tough finding the right books to keep them interested, which is why I am so excited that our class will be participating in Scholastic Reading Club this school year.

With Scholastic Reading Club:

• Every book you buy earns FREE Books for our classroom library
• You can choose from handpicked, grade- and reading-level-specific books for your child
• You'll find the best values on a variety of formats

Each month, your child will bring home Reading Club flyers. Together you can choose from books hand-selected by teachers and experts, and then order online or send your order form and payment to me.

I'd also love some help growing our classroom Reading Club. If you'd like to help out, please let me know or check out our Wish List when you're ordering! I'm excited to get our class reading!

Thank you for your support,

Kresha Schulze
Middle School Language Arts

•  VISIT scholastic.com/readingclub
•  ENTER the one-time Class Activation Code - MFP3G
•  SHOP from a carefully curated selection of the best books and value packs
•  SUBMIT your order and earn FREE Books for our classroom
•  All book orders will be shipped to our classroom so we can celebrate the joy of reading together!

Vocabulary Has Begun!

The much anticipated (and often feared) Vocabulary Workshop began today for 7th graders. This book can be daunting, but never fear - it gets easier with time! (Which means it should be a little easier this year - and I already noticed this in class today! Yay!)

7th grade has one vocab class each week during which they will work on their vocabulary. The class time this year, on days when a new unit is assigned, will be primarily self-study. As always, Mrs. Schulze will be available to answer questions and work with individuals or small groups that might need more guidance. We will continue to review together for our quizzes.

The book focuses on 20 words every two weeks. Our goal is three-fold:

1. To know how to spell the words
2. To know what the words mean
3. To know how to use the words

The activities in the book are designed to help each student accomplish all three goals with each of the 20 words. Look through their book with them this week to see what the different activities are. The activities are the same for each chapter, with only the word list changing.

The rule of thumb I encourage the students to use is: 

If you complete one activity each day, it shouldn't be too overwhelming to complete the chapter.

Here's the general schedule for vocabulary:

• Week One: Work on a unit
• If they choose to do one activity each night, it might look like this:
• Tuesday Night: Choosing the Right Word
• Wednesday Night: Synonyms
• Thursday Night: Antonyms
• Weekend: Completing the Sentence
• Monday Night: Vocabulary in Context
• Week Two: Review the unit for spelling and vocabulary quizzes

Unit 1 was assigned today. It is due next Wednesday, September 9. The quizzes for Unit 1 will be on September 16. Unit 2 will be assigned that day after we've completed the quizzes.

Units will nearly always be due on Wednesdays, and quizzes will nearly always be the following Wednesday (unless the school schedule prevents it).

Students can access vocabularyworkshop.com for learning activities and games related to the words.

Welcome!

Welcome 7th Grade Families! I am so excited to have you in my homeroom this year! We've already had a great time getting to know each other, creating a classroom culture of respect and team work, sharing pictures and art work, and a myriad of other fun things. If they haven't been filling you in, ask about all the happenings of the week. It's been awesome!
This blog will be one point of communication that we have this year. If there's an announcement or assignment that pertains to the whole middle school, you'll see it on the main Middle School page. If it's specific to 7th grade, it'll be on the 7th Grade page. Be sure to check both pages periodically.
As always, if you have any questions you are always welcome to email me or any of the middle school teachers.
Here's to the beginning of a great year!

Subject Update: Geography - 8/27

As an introduction to Geography, today we took a look at the importance of good map making.  To accomplish this, we took a virtual trip to snowy Siberia in search of gold.  Half the class entered the classroom as cartographers, mapping out the location of different gold deposits located around the classroom while the rest of the class were designated as geologists, waiting in the common area for their maps to be made to find their treasure.

(some of the maps our 7th graders drew)

When the geologists entered, they saw a very different classroom than the cartographers had mapped, as a "snowstorm" had blown through Siberia, covering up where the gold deposits were and moving much of the classroom furniture.  They had to rely on their maps to find where the gold was located.  Some were more successful than others, but it definitely proved the point of how important good maps are to navigation.

Ask your 7th graders about this activity and how successful they were at finding the gold!

With the Chromebooks being handed out today, tomorrow we will start to work with our online Geography textbook.  Our book is provided through TCI (the link is posted here and also available under the "Quick Links" tab).  This weekend, your 7th grader should be able to show you all the many features this online book provides.