December 16, 2022

HUMANITIES

Next week, the seventh grade will complete two big milestones in Humanities. They will finish the historical fiction novel, Chains. Students have written thoughtful analyses of the character traits of the book’s protagonist, Isabel, along with creative illustrations representing her character traits visually. Additionally, students are finishing their projects revolving around the story of Ona Judge, an enslaved woman who ran away from George and Martha Washington and was never caught. Through analyzing primary and secondary documents, students have created projects ranging from comic books to diary entries demonstrating the factors that played into Ona Judge’s ultimate decision to run away as well as George Washington’s decision to pursue her in the manner in which he did. Ask your 7th grader what they think was the most difficult factor in Ona finding freedom!

Sammy

7Y MATH

Time flies when you’re having fun!

Students have begun to relate opposite numbers to additive inverses and use them to help evaluate addition expressions. By using number lines, decomposition, and patterns, students have learned to evaluate expressions with positive and negative numbers. Students were taught to visualize differences by plotting points on number lines and finding the distance between them  and represent subtraction expressions on a number line to identify that subtracting is the same as adding the opposite. There will be many fun projects to look forward to in the new year. Happy Holidays!

Katie

7X MATH

Students have been working hard shoring up concepts that they’ve learned throughout the semester. Today they had their module one test on everything dealing with ratios and proportional relationships. Students know how to use a scale factor, find a unit rate, and determine how proportionality applies in real world problems. (We even looked at some housing plans on StreetEasy.com to get a sense of how people evaluate where they might live; most apartments were not up to the seventh graders standards.) When we come back from break, students will apply their knowledge in a hands-on project.

Sammy

SCIENCE

Students have been working extremely hard to create our Rube Goldberg Machines. The process of engineering has been played out over the past month. So much learning has happened in the science lab and students have been reflecting on their individual growth and working relationship with their partners. Students are now finishing up these machines in order to showcase them on Monday, December 19 at 9 am. Check out the event email for showcase details. Everyone allowed their gained knowledge of simple machines and engineering techniques in order to successfully showcase their talents in completing this Rube Goldberg Showcase. 

Mike

JUDAIC STUDIES

What are the elements of a good community? 7th graders are pretending that we have been hired by a philanthropic Jewish family to study their favorite texts and then design a community inspired by them. Students are creating camps, boarding schools, retirement communities, and juvenile detention centers that reflect texts from the Mishna, the Rambam, and the Talmud. We have learned 

HEBREW

The 7th graders are making a difference! They learn about a famous landmark in Israel that transformed itself from a landfill into a park. The students learn about the process and then apply their knowledge into their surroundings such as the Gowanus Canal, Staten Island Landfill. At the end of the project the students wrote a letter to a city official with their goals and  details on how to create this project. 

Tomer