Overview of Courses and how to use the website.

If you would like to read an overview of both classes in Languages Arts and Social Studies, then please read the Course Description HERE.

I hope that you have had a chance to look at the LASS7 Rodgers class website. I will regularly display and read from the website most days in class. Please view it HERE. Here you can find a number of resources that can help students with assignment details, grading rubrics, category descriptions for grading, course and assignment resources, as well as links to other Hall resources.

I have developed a useful and timesaving links page for students HERE. Each link has vital information, including the district school calendar, the Hall Informer, and a quick links table to all of the teachers in the seventh grade. I highly encourage parents and students to put a link to this document in their Bookmark Bar for easy access. It is important that student read the Hall Informer periodically to stay ahead of school wide events and activities.

The class website has several resources that are being redeveloped from my previous website. Within the next couple of weeks, most of these resources should be available. The class website is intended to offer multiple pathways for students to find the information they need, typically accessible from a universal menubar as well as within each page.

Social Studies 7
I am writing the web overviews about our first couple of units in both LA7 and SS7 currently. We will start with World Geography and a one week review of basic concepts from 6th grade, with a special emphasis on Ancient Greece, which is fundamental to understanding the Roman World, our first full scale Civilization that we will cover. Students will have opportunities to use 2D art skills, public speaking, as well as demonstrate critical thinking in short writing pieces and within group activities.

Language Arts 7 
Writing. We will focus on an very successful, intensive writing program that we adopted last year. The focus of this program for Trimester One is Narrative Writing. We will use our notebooks extensively to explore ideas, brainstorm, organize ideas, and develop details before attempting to write formal pieces of writing. Most pieces of writing will cover personal stories, which will then lead into short story writing.

Reading. Each week will read shorter pieces of fiction and non-fiction in class in order to build fluency, developing strategies for comprehending the ideas and structure of sample readings. By week three we will start to read our first Novel, Stargirl, which looks into themes about individuality, dealing with personal conflicts, and helping others. The Good Deeds project that serves as a capstone for our first novel, gets students to give to the community and reflect on how it feels to help others.

Review of First Week

First Week School Wide Workshops - Let's say that the first week was simply great. We started back on Tuesday, and the staff for each grade level guilt in Introductory, Back to School Workshops and Assemblies. 7th Grade students learned about the special and unique traits of the 7th grade staff the first day, followed up by a digital footprint presentation by Mr. Montes. During Wednesday and Thursday, the entire 7th grade was divided up into four groups. Each day students participated in a total of four half hour workshops about various topics to help students 1. get organized, 2. deal with stress, 3. understand how their personality affects their learning, and 4. understand how to work together in groups. On Friday, 7th graders met with their Advisory Teacher to pair up, have a discussion about various aspects of starting back to school this year, closing with writing a letter to their June 2018 future self about goals, meeting expectations about school, friends, and outside interests as well.

First Week of Instruction in LASS7. 
To accommodate the first week of workshops, Each class met for a brief 26 minutes introduction the first round of classes, followed by two 45 minutes periods of instruction the rest of the week.

Social Studies 7 - 
This week we participated in a set of compare and contrast activities about Summer vs. School, before writing a two paragraph writing sample for the classroom teacher to use as an informal assessment tool to see where each class is as writers to better help me teach appropriate lessons for each student.

We also examined different theories of history, using a list generated by the students. Then students were to then to ponder a hypothetical big bang type beginning of time that supposedly took place in 1963. Students used the notes on different theories, and some asked their parents in drafting a 5 point response. On the day of the "debate" with Mr. Rodgers defending the position, the entire class for each period was engaged in a debate with the teacher about the theory, using evidence to debunk the 1963 Big Bang theory with their own evidence and arguments.


Language Arts 7 - Since the Summer vs School paragraphs was one writing piece for all of my students, students in Language Arts were introduced to Journal Guidelines to be completed in their notebooks. Students wrote a journal in their Notebook for 12 minutes about Summer. Students next harvested 5 key parts of the piece that they liked or thought was most meaningful.

Welcome Back, August 22, 2017

Week 1, 082217 -

Welcome back. Summer was just yesterday for all of us: Sleeping in, vacations, endless amounts of time, hanging out, open schedules, and personal projects. I hope everyone adjusts to the new sleep schedule, makes some time for relaxation and personal endeavors, so that we all can ease back into the school year.

This year we will do many things, learn several strategies and skills, work together in groups, focus on personal goals, combine art and graphics, and perform in front of the class throughout the year.

We will read, poetry, short story and essay, as well as three novels in Language Arts. We will write using a variety of strategies.  We will keep a writer’s notebook, create several booklets, and use a process that engages students in the writing of personal narrative and short fiction, argumentative essay and controversial topic research, as well the expository and personal essay. Besides writing, we will work on our Oral Presentation skills throughout most of the year.

In Social Studies we will continue the historical survey about the time period known as the Medieval Time Period which includes the study of Late Roman Empire to the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, Islamic Civilization, China and Japan, West Africa, and MesoAmerica. We regularly make connections with the modern world, and examine how recent history helps us understand history in a personal way. We will ask big questions about history and discuss Cause versus Correlation, Historical models, controversial topics, put into context cultures and time periods that are different from our own.