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.