We lucked out with the weather again. What a great day, biking over 20 miles and enjoying the weather, our city, and each other’s company!
7th – Bike Trip
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Category Archives: 7th Grade – 20/21
7th – Field Day
We had a great day outside on Friday for Field Day. Attached are a few of the photos from the events from the day.
7th – Canoeing Trip
We had a wonderful time on our 7th grade canoeing trip last week! Beautiful weather and a fun day exploring our city from another vantage point.
5th, 6th, 7th – Michael Kovnar Mini-Mitzvah Day
5th, 6th, and 7th graders went to two locations in the Milwaukee River basin today to perform a mitzvah: clean up our environment to make the world a better place. After 2 backpacks, a brief case, three softballs, 6 tires, and about 20 trash bags full, I think we did just a little bit today to do our part.
Encourage your student to continue to pick up and clean up our environment.
7th – Growing Up Milwaukee
The Milwaukee Film Festival is actually a year-round organization. Part of what they do is provide educators curricular assistance with implementation of film in the classroom. Recently, they offered teachers the ability to show the film Growing Up Milwaukee in the classroom. This movie perfectly aligns with the content we have been covering; especially since some of the film takes place in the exact neighborhoods we have read about in Evicted.
Today, we started our Growing Up Milwaukee process with a discussion on the importance of your Zip Code. Feel free to look at the set of classroom discussion questions we started with; linked here.
7th – Planet Money Newsletter
Many of the students have been interested in the recent government spending bills. They have lots of questions and demand answers. Today, we read the weekly Planet Money Newsletter (Planet Money is an economic-focused podcast put on by NPR); which summarized a lot of the proposed spending as of late.
Feel free to check out the newsletter here so that you can engage in a conversation with your child. Additionally, some students seemed fascinated with our country’s debt so we took a detour to look at the debt clock (located here).
6th, 7th, 8th – President Biden’s Speech to Congress
Last night, President Biden spoke to Congress for the first time as President. Regardless of politics, it is an important speech to monitor because it highlights the current administration’s desires moving forward. In class, we did our best to understand some of the speech, as well as the coverage of the speech (trying to get both sides of the arguments and to understand media coverage is biased).
To see the document we worked on in class (as well as attached resources to explore on your own), click here. We are doing our best to present as unbiased a view as possible; which through discussion and personal research, students are able to develop their own opinion about a topic.
7th – Evicted
Although I handed it out in October, we are finally getting to start reading parts of our book Evicted. We are only reading portions of the non-fiction book, but these parts are powerful and impactful. They connect with the content of what we have covered (poverty in Milwaukee) and help further fuel the “why” behind our desire to help those in need and make our world a better place.
As we read, students will be given different levels of questions to help further direct their thinking as it relates to what they are reading. They all have a copy of the book (thanks in large part to the Judee Ross Imagination Grant) so feel free to read along with them/steal the book when they are not looking.
It really is an amazing read, especially as it centers around our city and neighbors.
7th – Supply and Demand curves
We stepped up our supply and demand curve game with some additional bits of information. We know how a shift occurs ON the curve (so if price goes up or down, we know exactly what happens to the quantity demanded and supplied). We are now focusing on understanding what happens to the curve itself (meaning, what shift occurs in the entire curve). Today, we did our warm-up for the examples attached here.
Feel free to give them a try or to check out what advanced economics your child is learning (or better yet, give them some examples and ask what will happen to the supply and demand of something).
7th – Compost for sale
As a grade, we have been collecting food waste from the school the entire year (when in person). That food waste gets collected by Compost Crusader. Compost Crusader then drops the food scraps off to a processor and in 2-3 months, that food waste becomes compost.
The compost that is created by our food waste (and millions and millions of pounds of organic waste from other homes, schools, and businesses) is now for sale. Any bag that is purchased through this fundraiser earns money for our class. That money raised will be reinvested into our garden program; allowing us to grow more vegetables, which will be sold (and money donated to local food shelters) or given to local food shelters.
The link for the compost ordering is located here. We will have compost available for pick-up from MJDS on Friday, May 21. If you need it before then, please let me know and we can arrange for an alternative pick-up date.
