Category Archives: 7th Grade – 19/20

7th – The Starfish Throwers

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Before we were confined to Distance Learning, we were diligently studying the impact of hunger in Milwaukee and different ways we could make an impact.  We have obviously had some changes occur, namely in how we are operating as a class (far fewer opportunities for a live discussion).  Students are still exploring the topic of hunger, but since we are no longer in a large classroom setting, we need to make some changes.

As part of that change, students are going to be watching the film The Starfish Throwers (the film is free online so feel free to watch with your student and have a conversation about the what, how, and why of the film).  This film documents three people and their question to help end hunger.  The hope is, after watching the film with a partner and have smaller discussions, each student will find a way to be inspired and make an impact in their community, in their own way, helping people who are afflicted by hunger (we need to help now more than ever).  Obviously our project has shifted in some ways (and worry not, when we do eventually return to school, we will resume with our gardening project), but students can still use their voice to choose how they want to make the world and our community a better place.

The Starfish Throwers Poster

 

7th + 8th – Student Blogging Challenge – WK 6

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We continue with our Student Blogging Challenge, with students working on completing their fourth task (week 4 was a recap week and week 5 was not entirely relevant so we took a week off).  I have pasted below the challenge each student is expected to partake in; which is really just a way for them to be more connected to others around the world, as well as build their level of blogging/internet proficiency.  This sixth challenge is based on getting students to see the similarities and differences with other classrooms around the world.  In addition to this activity, each student will be in contact with their “blogging buddy” from a school in Malaysia

Feel free to check out your child’s blog to see how they did their sixth task.

Week 6 of the Student Blogging Challenge looks at school around the world.

7th + 8th – Student Blogging Challenge – WK 3

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We continue with our Student Blogging Challenge, with students working on completing their third task.  I have pasted below the challenge each student is expected to partake in; which is really just a way for them to be more connected to others around the world, as well as build their level of blogging/internet proficiency.  This third challenge is based on getting students to understand how to appropriately use photos when publishing work, as well as how to create images on their own.

Feel free to check out your child’s blog to see how they did their third task.

STUBC week 3 tasks summary

7th + 8th – Student Blogging Challenge – WK 2

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We continue with our Student Blogging Challenge, with students working on completing their second task.  I have pasted below the challenge each student is expected to partake in; which is really just a way for them to be more connected to others around the world, as well as build their level of blogging/internet proficiency.  This second challenge is based on getting students to understand how to successfully and appropriately comment on other blogs.

Feel free to check out your child’s blog to see how they did their second task.

 

This week there are four tasks to learn about commenting STUBC

7th – Media Bias

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We took a bit of a break for a few days from our planting research to find out more related to media bias.  So many students have been asking about what is in the news and why it is there.  I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the role media and social media plays in the information we receive before moving on.

 

So far, it has been an interesting ride by having them examine different artifacts as they relate to media bias.  Some of the students are even starting to uncover some of their own personal biases and trying to overcome those.

7th + 8th – Geography Quiz

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Friday is fun day (every day is a fun day, but today is a challenging fun day).  Each student will be asked to go to the following website to take the quiz.  They have 15 minutes to guess all the countries in the world…without cheating. Once they are done, they will take a screen shot and reply to this blog post.  The most countries without cheating wins…care to join us?

Me – 115/196

my ability to guess the countries around the world…I only got 115/196

7th + 8th – Student Blogging Challenge – WK 1

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We started up the spring session of the Student Blogging Challenge yesterday, with students working on completing their first task.  I have pasted below the challenge each student is expected to partake in; which is really just a way for them to be more connected to others around the world, as well as build their level of blogging/internet proficiency.  This first challenge is based on getting to know others and effectively introducing yourself to your community.

Feel free to check out your child’s blog to see how they did their first task.

 

Summary of week one tasks STUBC Avatars About Pages and Connecting

7th – Helping to end Hunger in Milwaukee

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Our ultimate goal of the school year is to figure out how we can make our community (and world) a better place.  We realized that poverty was a major factor in people’s lives and wanted to do something about that (more specifically, getting food to people that need it).

Since this goal became apparent for us, we have worked at understanding better how food is raised and make available for others.  We are now on a researching quest, trying to find the best, cheapest, and most efficient way to raise healthy food for people in need in our community.

Students have researched thus far raised garden beds an hoop houses.  Soon, we will examine in more depth greenhouses, hydro and aquaponics, and indoor grow lights.  Eventually, we will come to a decision on what we think is best to help members of our community and put that into practice.

7th – Save the Last Word

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First off: Gev. McAdams and Gev. Jirovetz are amazing at what they do!

Secondly: they let me steal their amazing teaching strategies (and make me look good while doing that).

 

The 7th graders all read an article about the good and bad of urban gardening projects in Milwaukee (as it relates to our question of how do we get healthy food options to people cheaply; especially those living in poverty and food deserts).  When reading this article, they were asked to write down five passages from the article that they: 1. agreed with, 2. disagreed with, 3. had heard of before, 4. found interesting, and 5. wanted to talk about.  They did this process alone.  Next, they gathered in small groups of 4-5 students.  One person started the conversation by stating the topic (meaning “something I agree with…).  Every student then got a chance to share something that related to that topic, with the person who started the conversation having the last word.  From there, organic conversations and questions popped up, which was awesome to hear about (I heard a lot of “why do you think that” and even heard a conversation about the merits of investing in solar arrays for one’s house).

 

It was great to see them having an informed and intense discussion of the good and bad of urban gardening in Milwaukee.

really good conversation about solar arrays and their economic value

really good questioning and support for answers

really diverse set of opinions on offer

7th – Price floors and ceilings

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One of the driving questions my students want to know (and will ultimately answer) is how to get healthy food options to people in need for a cheaper price than they are currently available. Everyone that has been grocery shopping knows fruits and vegetables are far more expensive than processed chips or other factory-produced items.

As part of that process, each student came up with a policy/plan on how to get more healthy food to people in need (check out their blogs; in particular the blog post from February 14 titled “How to help close the hunger gap”). Those plans were a great start, but something was missing. Numerous students for example stated the government should just raise/lower prices in order to make food cheaper.

These statements directly correlated with some economic principles and curricular standards. Understanding the role of competition in an economy is one of the standards our students have yet to master. As a class, we began to study the meaning of and impact of price floors (minimum price something can be charged at) and price ceilings (maximum price something can be charged at) and how it impacts consumers and producers differently.

Feel free to ask your student to draw out a supply and demand curve, label everything, and explain in their words how price floors and ceilings impact people in our society. Hopefully we will use this information to better understand how to make policy/plans to get healthy food to people without harming others in our society.