December came and went really fast! The accelerated ELA classes studied S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. We read the novel in class and completed numerous activities related to the topics studied. Throughout this unit, we focused on citing text evidence (RL. 8.1) and analyzing point of view (RL. 8.6). Then,we had Officer Castro come speak to us about gangs and violence, and answered any questions that we had! Finally, we finished the unit off by watching the 1983 film version of the novel. We sure ended 2014 on a high note! Can't wait to see what 2015 brings!
⅓ gone…… ⅔ to go!
Can you believe it?! The first part of the year has come and gone! Although it feels like a short amount of time, us 7th graders have learned countless amounts of information and participated many in school wide events. My personal favorites include participating in Cross Country, getting to know new classmates of mine and also, the table group competitions. First and foremost, in the beginning of the school year, we jumped right into our first close reads. This technique is to help us to be better readers and analyze higher-level articles that we are given. In addition, during the middle of September, all of the students took their Fall NWEA testing. This determined what we need to improve on in certain academic standards. Now switching gears, my favorite stories that we read in Language Arts were “Old Ben” by Jesse Stewart and “Fox Hunt” by Lensey Namioka. The one subject that I remember the most were the Cornell Note taking. (I never said they were fun) Mrs. Smith stressed that the notes would help us to organize the information that we read and help us answer questions that we had more efficiently. We did the cornell notes in Social Studies as well to further analyze the textbook pages. Further into the trimester, we started to work on paragraph structure and narrative structure essays. In addition, we perfected our summarizing skills by writing objective summaries for summative grades at first and eventually, formative grades. All in all, our Accelerated Language Arts class looks forward to gaining more knowledge and succeeding in everything that we do. Give me a “J”. Give me a “S”. Because Jay Stream Cheerleaders are the best! This week at Jay Stream has been jam packed with tryouts galore! The jayhawks are definitely showing off their skills and talents. The girls cheerleading teams for 7th and 8th graders are complete as well as the 7th and 8th grade teams for boys basketball! In addition, the wrestling season has began on Wednesday as Mr. Doyle, Mr. Fruehe and Mr. Ohlinger (coaches) lead our team to victory! Go Jayhawks! One of my favorite events this year was the Jayhawk Jaunt which is a fundraiser where students raise money for the school so we can have more fun events! In addition, the 7th grade pod ball games were a riot! Each of the 7th grade advisories must play with Mr. Fruehe’s advisory (the creator of the game) I loved pod ball equally as much as the Jayhawk Jaunt. Although Jay Stream Middle School has had a blast during the first trimester of the 2014-15 school year, we still have exciting things to come! Until next time! -Anneliese _______________________________________________________________________________ This was best best 1st trimester i have ever had! I learned all kinds of stuff in LA. I learned how to close read, do objective summaries, and finally how to take Cornell notes. I Learned a lot in LA! some of my favorite experiences are that PBIS celebrations and that I made the Jay Stream basketball team! I really am looking forward to facing our rivals, Stratford Middle School. I heard that they had a good team but I think our 7th grade can easily beat them with some really tall guys we have on our team. Another thing I am really looking forward to reading The Outsiders. Mrs. Smith told our class that the Outsiders is an amazing book. Some of my goals for second trimester is to get exceeding grades in at least one of my subjects. To do that I am going to try to exceed on everything I can Another one is that to get all exceeding grades in the lifelong learning skills section. I will by being a good role model for my peers. - Mihir ___________________________________________________________________________________ TRIMESTER 1 REFLECTION!!!!! The first trimester of 7th grade was awesome. We did so many great activities that were so cool and fun. Not just in L.A but in every subject. Like just yesterday we watched a Bill Nye video on the phases of matter. Also in math we watched a video on finding the volume of triangular prisms which was really funny. But this is only the end of the beginning, we still have the rest of the trimester to talk about. Starting off with L.A, we did so many different kinds of activities. We read some awesome stories like “Fox Hunt” and “Old Ben”. I can definitely tell there will be many more stories to come. We had some really long tests specifically we had a stems test that had 125 stems in it and we had to learn them all. - Sean _________________________________________________________________________________ In L.A there is a new class in the lead for table groups, this means that we have to try harder to beat the other classes. The trimester is ending and we have learned a lot this year, we have learned how to take Cornell notes which is a note taking system customized to our short cuts and studying skills. We also learned how to do a close read, which is when we get a short passage or article and read it about three times, taking notes and making comments. Mrs. Smith even taught us how to interpret proverbs and let us share and solve riddles. Every day we get a warm up to help us get ready for class and to get us excited for L.A. The warm ups tend to consist of proverbs and quotes to interpret or to research. Sometimes she even gives us a activity to do like to solve the riddles on a sheet or to talk with a partner about things you have done in class. I have gotten excited for the novel we will be reading The Outsider which Mrs. Smith talks fondly of. In her words she says “It is the seventh grade book, and no matter what class you are in you should get to read it.” This makes it sound crazy exciting. But beyond that grades will be coming in and I am sure that parents as well as students will be very anxious. That wraps up what we've been doing in L.A! -Alex Trimester 1 ends on November 7th and we have a few more summative assessments coming up. Students just wrapped up their Narrative Structure Comparison essays (Reading Literature 8.5 and Writing 8.2), took the Unit 1 District Assessment (Reading Literature 8.2) and will begin an argument-based group speaking & listening presentation (Speaking & Listening 8.4). Students will put into groups, be assigned an argument-based article, create a presentation to identify both sides of an issue, and decide which one they support. These presentations will take place next week (November 3rd-5th).
After the conclusion of these presentations, we will begin Unit 2: Short Stories! As you can see, we've been VERY busy. We hope to have the students back to blogging soon! This week, students are working on comparing the narrative structure of two stories we have read in class. "Old Ben" and "Fox Hunt" have narrative structures that stray from the traditional chronological order. Students are writing a comparison essay in which they analyze the structure of each text and explain how the structure effects the reader. These essays are due Monday 10/27/2014 and assess RL. 8.5 (Literature) and W. 8.2 (Writing).
Please be sure to sign up for a parent-teacher conference on PTC Wizard (see district webpage). Conferences will take place November 24th & 25th from 12-8pm. Please sign up with your child's ELA teacher (for those in my accelerated LA class, that would be me - Mrs. Smith) and then you will rotate through to see the other subject areas as well. Hope to see you there!
In LA we’ve been taking notes on the differences and similarities of fiction and nonfiction by taking Cornell notes. We also just finished a close read on a story called “The 11:59” by: Patricia Mckissack which sometime takes place in 1960-80s. “The 11:59” by: Patricia Mckissack is a story about a retired train worker who tells people about a train called 11:59 which has a strange trait about it… no one can escape a ride on it! So, a close read is when you read the story and take notes and answer questions that have to do about the main idea or theme. People are still taking NWEA so the library is still closed for now. Oh yeah, we finally got FOLDERS!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!! I’m so excited because we didn’t get them until the 25th and everyone else got them on the beginning of the month.
The Walk-A-Thon will take place Oct. 3rd. The 7th and 8th grade bands will play during the run. Oct. 16th is a choir performance with the 8th grade band. Finally, on Oct. 30th that is the first band concert for 6th and 7th grade band. That is all for now, bye! -Jarred ___________________________________________________________________________________ In Accelerated Language Arts for the week of 9/26/2014, we have done a close read on the story of “The 11:59”, continued on our reading logs, and got our new folders. This year, the entire 7th grade gets nice, hard folders that we can use for the rest of the year. Mrs. Smith’s class got them a little later than the rest of the LA classes did, but we got them. There is one for each subject, LA, Science, Math, Social Science, Exploratory, and our other class. There is World Languages, Study Skills, and Spanish. We are already into our 3rd reading log. We have to fill out what book we read, what page numbers we read and how many, how many minutes we read, and then get a parent to initial it. This week we also have to find and define 6 new great words and find two examples of figurative language. Lastly we read a close read of “The 11:59”, written by Patricia Mckissack. It was a spooky story and had a lot of symbols. It is about a guy named Lester who thinks he’s really smart. There is this train that once you board it there is no coming back. Lester tries to avoid it but can’t and his destiny isn’t good. Other school activities, Girl’s Volleyball is 3-1 and doing a phenomenal job. Cross country had a competition and did really well. Choir and band have their first concerts coming up in October. Soccer club and student council have also started. -Sydney So far from the past two weeks in LA, we have been learning so much stuff! The class has read stories and we have written objective summaries for those books. We have been learning how objective summaries are written and the steps that we need to take to write it correctly. We have also been close reading articles. There are three steps that need to be taken to analyze the article and understand what it is telling us. Marking up the article and writing comments to help us understand it is very important as well. Every day we do a warm-up in class. This warm-up is usually something fun that helps us understand what we are doing for the day or just for joy. A lot of times our warm ups use our stems. This helps us remember what the stems mean. On 9/11 we learned about the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers and the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. We all wrote a RAFT on the subject. Classmates wrote poems, letters, and news articles, as if they were at the scene themselves. Our class loves to read, so we have a reading log that we need to fill out every night. Recently we have also tested our brains in NWEA.
Next week, we are going to learn about fiction and nonfiction stories. We will compare them both and see the differences between the two genres. In the future there is also a poetry unit that I am very excited to do. We will also continue to close read articles and summarize stories. My favorite thing about LA so far is close reading articles. I like marking up the paper and learning about things that I didn’t even know! I like writing comments and answering questions about the articles. I think it’s interesting to read about how baby carrots are soaked in chlorine or how a new magnet zipper is helping out people in the world. There are also some new events going on at Jay Stream. Girls volleyball has started! The 7th grade team is rockin’ it with 3-0. The 8th grade team has a score of 2-1. The volleyball teams have played the schools Franklin, Stratford, and Marquardt. Choir also started recently this year. Their voices are great! Along with singing we also have band. The 6th, 7th, and 8th grade bands have started practicing for their first concert. Jazz band is also included within 7th grade. Another sport that has started is cross country. Cross country has won the Cross-Town Classic for the 14th year in a row. They have beaten Stratford for 14 years, go Jayhawks! Cross country has had their first quadrant meet and Jay Stream will continue to play sports and have fun. As Mr. LaChance says, “If we don’t sweat, we stink.” -Ada F. Thanks to the editor, Emily C. __________________________________________________________________________________ We are in the 4th week of school and things are just getting started. It is turning out to be a good school year so far. In LA we are getting word stems for trimester one and studying them on Quizlet. Also we have reading goals to go along with our logs. Last week we did objective summaries and this week we practiced close reads.We are going to be starting our first unit fiction vs. nonfiction. I am excited to do our many different units like drama and poetry. Maybe in drama we will get to put on a play, that would be so exciting! My favorite thing about LA so far is warm-ups because we have a different topic every day and they are so much fun to do. Like on some Fridays we do a creative writing activity. There are so many things going on in school so far. Choir started and the musical is going to be Legally Blonde. Volleyball started and the Jay Stream girls are 3-0. They have a game next Tuesday. Cross country has also started and the team has beaten our cross-town rivals for the 14th year in a row. -Elizabeth P. ______________________________________________________________________________ This week is language arts, we have been practicing objective summaries. First we read Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree and practiced writing an objective summary together. Then, we each practiced writing one using a different children's book. We also read an article on what happened on September 11th, 2001 and wrote a RAFT reflection. Each person got to choose a reason, audience, and format for this topic. We read examples of these beautiful pieces to the class. We have NWEA testing on Tuesday, September 16th! Make sure to eat a good breakfast and get a good night sleep!
So far 7th grade is going well. It is a big change from 6th grade in many ways, we change classes more often and we have lockers this year. In LA this week we made a few projects. The first was a list of things we did this summer but each had to have a different noun and verb. Then we wrote an autobiographical poem about ourselves. I am very excited for everything we are learning in LA this year.
We are learning many other fun things this year in other classes too. In science we will start working on our solar catchers and in math we are working with decimals. This week, runners started cross country and and the girls had a volleyball informational meeting, tryouts will be next week. I can tell this will be a great year for the 7th grade. -Ashley _______________________________________________________________________________ So far in this first week of school it has been really fun. 7th grade is full of fun classes that involve a lot of activities. The first week was full of learning about cool tools, or how to live the Jayhawk Way at school. 7th grade I feel like is the same thing as 6th grade, but we get lockers and we have more teachers. In Language Arts, we have been doing activities that would introduce the class, individually. For example, we did autobiography poems. We also did a what-did-you-do-over-the-summer poster. We did Compass Learning too. I’m excited to read and find more interesting books that I enjoy. I especially want to find more books with action and a lot of suspense. In science, we observed the sky and the things around us and we made a summary of the things we heard,saw,and felt. In math, we are learning how to add/subtract and multiply/divide decimals. In gym, we have been doing games that help us learn how to be responsible, respectful, and take pride. In social studies, we have done a scavenger hunt. I am not planning to sign up for any activities until basketball. -Kenneth _______________________________________________________________________________ My first week of seventh grade has been pretty new to me, seventh grade is pretty different from sixth grade and all the grades before. Although, all of my teachers have really helped me get into the swing of things. Now, we have lockers to put all of our books and supplies into unlike sixth grade. I had to get used to opening my lock all the time because we go to our lockers pretty often. When we come in, in the morning we have to go straight to our locker and put our backpacks into them. Then, we take out our necessary things for class. At first it was hard to fit everything in but after I organized my locker I can grab and go easily. Also, in Seventh grade you change classes more often. Instead of having your L.A. teacher as your advisory teacher you have different teachers for almost everything. In L.A. we... We did many things in L.A. this week. First we made a project about the things we did in summer. I made two. One was like a journal entry and the other just had a picture that said summer. Also, I made the fount represent that thing I did in summer. Cool, right? Then we signed into Edmodo (a website to remind us about homework and to put online tests/documents on). We also learned about our reading logs. We have to read 15 pages on weekdays and 15 pages Friday through Saturday. Finally, we learned about our Google drive where we write our warm-ups, free write stories, reading responses, and of course our blogs! In other classes we… In science we took a beautiful nature filled walk outside the school to observe the little things outside that actually make a big difference. We also used our five senses to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch what is outside and what we have probably been missing. Then, we learned about how we are going to make solar collectors. We are going to build them, and then test them and draw conclusions. In Spanish, we learned our vowel sounds. A makes an “ah” sound. E makes an “eh” sound. I makes an “ee” sound. O makes an “oh” sound. U makes an “oo” sound. We met the vowel people like, Anna she says (“ah”) and Olga she says (“oh”). We also learned how to count from zero to ten in Spanish. We learned a catchy song to remember our numbers. In math, we reviewed how to convert decimals, percents, and fractions. We also reviewed how to multiply, subtract, and add decimals. We touched on the subject coordinate grids and how to plot points. Finally, we reviewed how to identify the independent and dependent variables in a math sentence. In social studies, we did an activity on getting to know each other better by finding a different person for each box. The boxes have different things that a person would have or obtain. We also did a textbook scavenger hunt to get to know our textbooks. Finally we worked on an activity to better understand our standards in each lesson in Social Studies. Some examples are, Historical analysis, economy, and government and politics. In conclusion, this is how Seventh grade in the first weeks of school has been. With many different classes/teachers and different people to meet Seventh grade has been pretty different. -Jamie This week we welcomed our new 7th grade class back to Jay Stream Middle School. Throughout this school year, students will be keeping a journal of what's happening in our 7th grade accelerated L.A. class, as well as the rest of their classes. All student journals will be kept on a Google Doc that will be shared with Mrs. Smith. (Let me know if you would like your student's document shared with you as well!) Each week, I will select one student's journal to post onto our accelerated L.A. blog to keep parents up to date on what's happening in class and provide an opportunity to publish students' work! Stay tuned for our FIRST blog in the next couple of days!
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