7th Grade Parents' Window into the Classroom

Hi Folks,

Wow! Your seventh grader is valiantly plowing through the difficult task of reading The Grapes of Wrath that you gave permission to read. There is no doubt that it is difficult reading. I encourage you to discuss the story with your child as they near the end of the exodus of these desperate farmers into what they "thought" was going to be the Promised Land. Our focus is to impress on the students the desperate conditions these people had to endure and how they prevailed in the end.

CSAP's are over (Yeah!), but NWEA's will be starting soon. (Uhg!)

Mr. Kurz has developed a list of research paper topics associated with the era of American history linked to the kids' timeline of study. This will be a more difficult paper to write than any they have done this year, so hopefully I can walk them through the steps of researching the topic, collecting data, recording the sites they've used in their research, organizing and writing the paper. Ask them about their topic!

Hopefully, we will have enough time to read one more novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

We also have to get a Writing Assessment piece completed before the Writing Assessment Scoring Day on April 26. Most of this writing will be done in class.

Your child is sewing! All of the kids have completed the preliminary hand sewing practice and are now becoming familiar with the sewing machine. How fun! We'll start constructing their locker caddies shortly. Ask you child how it's going!

Whew! That's a lot of work yet to do before the end of the year! Encourage your student to stay focused right up to the end. Then... they can get spring fever!