Welcome to the first 7th/8th grade classroom newsletter of the 2019-2020 school year! The year has already started off in a wonderful way, and I’m excited to share some of what the students learned this week. This year, our weekly newsletters will be emailed to you and also posted to our new website. You’ll be able to find archived 7th/8th newsletters here:
brooklinschool.org/rebecca-tapley

Upcoming Events:

• Week of September 9th-13th: NWEA testing
• Tuesday, September 10th: Brooklin School Committee meeting at 6 PM
• Wednesday, September 11th: Back to School BBQ at 5 PM
• Monday, September 23rd: School Picture Day
• Friday, September 27th: Early Release at 1:00 PM
• October 7th-11th: Camp Kieve (https://www.kwe.org/the-leadership-school/)

7/8 Math – Mrs. Tapley

We had a wonderful first week of school in 7th and 8th grade math! Together, we discussed expectations for our classroom community. We completed a number of team building activities, and also began diving into math in earnest. Students did an excellent job on an activity called Four Fours where they used four fours and any combination of operations to create equations that resulted in the numbers 1-20. There was a fabulous amount of math conversation going on, and collaboration with their classmates. Our 7th grade mathematicians began their first unit, which is on ratios and proportions. Our 8th grade mathematicians also began their first unit, which is focused on exponents and scientific notation. 

7/8 Super Studies – Mrs. Bebell

This week the 7/8 students began exploring statistics about our global population by imagining the 7.7 billion people in the world as a representative sample of 100 people. They were surprised to discover a variety of facts about our global population, and each selected a statistic to represent by creating an infographic. Data were shown with images drawn by students to represent these statistics about global income, housing, safety, and freedom. The students were also fascinated by this visual representation of global population growth over the last 2000 years! https://watchkin.com/6e3c34efe3?script=WKize

7/8 English Language Arts – Mrs. Thoner 

This week we focused on how to productively engage in classroom discussions and how to be considered trustworthy. The text for the next 8 weeks will be A Long Walk to Water which focuses on the lack of water in Sudan and on the civil war in Sudan.  One goal is for students to have an awareness of other parts of the world and their political and physical difficulties. A major goal is to understand that sometimes reading is not just reading – it is reflecting on what is happening, delving further into the historical aspects of the text, and understanding the character development through the context of environment and occurrences.  Close reading helps you gain empathy and understanding for other cultures and other peoples’ experiences.  You should have received a letter emphasizing the need for you to possibly assist your child through some of the really hard parts of this text.  I encourage you to read it with and to your child, demonstrating how you might sometimes need to take a break from heavy readings, but how important it is for us all to acknowledge the life situations of others.