7 th Grade Humanities (Social Studies & Language Arts) 201 6 -201 7 Syllabus
Mrs. Elizabeth Honn 425-837-5941
I am very excited for our year of learning together!
CLASSROOM GOALS:
Learning and personal growth are the absolute focuses in the classroom. Students will have many opportunities to practice and demonstrate both what they have learned and how they have grown. We are all in this together so let’s support one another in our classroom and school community by helping to create an inviting, engaging, and safe environment for ourselves and one another.
CLASS EXPECTATIONS
1. Take responsibility for your own learning.
2. Please participate! The more you put in, the more you (and the rest of us) get out.
3. Please respect yourself, your classmates and me. Be kind. I promise to do the same.
4. Reflect on your behavior and make amends if you have caused harm to another person and to our community.
5. We will all try our best to come to class every day prepared, ready to learn, and with a positive attitude.
6. We will follow school rules and expectations as stated in the PCMS planner and will strive to practice our school HEROES goals (Health, Excellence, Relationships, Opportunities, Equality, Safety).
UNDERSTANDING THE GRADE BOOK
The grade book will reflect both student mastery of the Common Core Standards in language arts and social studies and a non-academic component that will reflect student work habits, initiative, collaboration, and citizenship. Work must be completed to a high standard and demonstrate mastery of material in order to earn a high grade. Completion of work alone is not a measure of student learning. These standards will be made very clear to students using rubrics and other guides. Please ask if you have questions!
There will be absolutely no rounding of grades. Extra credit will not be an option ( this is the policy for all 7 th grade humanities classes), so be sure to do your best work. All students will be successful and are expected to meet learning targets. You will have multiple opportunities to do this. To be sure you understand your grade, look through your returned work and ask me questions if you do not understand a particular grade, feedback, or expectation. Check Family Access (your grade book) often to track your progress and speak to me right away if you have concerns.
TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES CLASSROOM
We will be using technology in the classroom to enhance the education and learning of students. While technology does not necessarily apply to every learning experience, its application does often engage students and supports deeper levels of learning, thinking, and exploring. We will be using iPads and computers in the classroom on a regular basis. Students are invited to use cell phones in the classroom for learning purposes only. However, in order to use cell phones in the classroom, students and guardians will need to read, agree to, and sign the Personal Device Policy and Agreement form. While outside of the classroom, the school’s cell phone policy will apply.
Students will be expected to watch screencast and/or Power Point lessons on vocabulary and grammar. This will be the primary way for them to access the material. We will follow up with in class discussions and it will be important for them to have viewed the lesson beforehand.
Students will be required to visit my website frequently. They can access homework, lesson material, watch and review class lessons, and participate in online discussions. I also encourage guardians to look at my website and your student’s gradebook on a regular basis. Please let me know if access to the internet is a hardship for your family.
I will also be using the text messaging app Remind. This is optional on your part and is another way for me to reach out to students and parents. Remind is a communication tool designed to allow teachers to remind students and guardians of upcoming assignments, tests, and other important information. If you would like to be included in this, please add your cell phone number to the signature page (see below).
HOMEWORK
It is my goal to limit the amount of homework a student has. I try to arrange assignments so that students can work during class time. I also try to provide a due date window so that students have multiple days to turn an assignment in. However, there will be times when spending time on your classwork outside of class time will be inevitable. Please see the late work policy below.
It is also my hope that students will be excited about what they are learning in the classroom and will want to explore that learning further on their own time. This could include reading, online research and just “digging around” time, watching videos and documentaries about a given topic, and engaging in conversations about what they are learning in class, as well as completing assignments we started in the classroom. Use your brain in ways that excite you and help you grow!
STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY
1) All assignments are important to learning. It is necessary for assignments to be completed and turned in on time in order for students to interact with the material they are expected to learn.
2) 7th graders are expected to complete all of their work on time. Students are encouraged to complete any late or missing work for their learning. Late work will be accepted up until the unit test; however, you will benefit less from learning that trails behind what we are doing in class. To optimize your learning and understanding, you need to keep up with classwork.
3) Any late work must be turned in before the unit test for any credit. Work turned in after the unit test will not be accepted for credit.
4) If a student regularly turns in late work and cannot correct their behavior, the following interventions will apply:
a. student conference with the teacher
b. parent contact
c. student will be assigned lunch detention and/or after school 7th period to get work completed
5) No matter how planned and organized we are, sometimes life has other ideas. Please be proactive and communicate with me if you are going to be absent or if you cannot meet a deadline. Responsible students do this before an assignment is due. Proactive honesty also decreases your stress level, which is important!
6) If you are absent, please check my website from home and print off and/or attend to the work you missed. You are also welcome to email me. It also a good idea to check in with me the day you come back. For each excused day of absence, you have one additional day to get work in. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to inquire about and make up the work you missed.
7) Academic Integrity/Honesty Policy: Issaquah School District has a clear policy, detailed in your planner, regarding plagiarism. Plagiarism, or academic dishonesty, is presenting someone else’s ideas or writing as your own. Please do not plagiarize; there will be severe consequences for plagiarism.
LOVE AND LOGIC
The Love and Logic principles will guide how opportunities for learning and making mistakes are handled. Students will be asked to step back and think about behaviors that do not adhere to classroom expectations. Each situation will be responded to on an individual basis. Students are ultimately responsible for their own behavior.
LANGUAGE ARTS :
Students will develop their skills to meet the national Common Core Standards in the areas of reading, writing, language, and communication. We will be writing narrative, expository, and argumentative essays, as well as completing research based writing and projects. We will be learning about various genres, using both fiction and non-fiction texts, to develop grade level reading skills with a focus on reading comprehension. Students will apply grammar and vocabulary skills to both their reading and writing studies. Speaking and listening will also be a part of our language arts curriculum and students will practice specific speaking and listening skills with partners, in small groups, and within the whole class environment.
READING : Readers … read .
Every attempt will be made to create time for in class reading each week. Throughout the year we will participate in three genre specific reader’s workshops (Courage to be an Individual, a non-fiction unit, and a Dystopia unit) as well as a poetry unit. In this model, students will be able to choose which book(s) they read for each workshop. Activities will include whole class, small group, and independent work. Each reading unit will be approximately 4 weeks.
While I will not be tracking outside reading, the reading expectation is for students to always be actively involved in reading a text. I will be checking in with students on a regular basis about the books they are reading. Students will keep track of the books they read throughout the year in their reading notebooks. Have fun and explore yourself and the world you live in through reading! I believe we can learn a great deal about real people and events through the reading of both non-fiction texts and literature. Read, read, read! Use print, books on tape, and digital reading outlets to experience the world through reading.
WRITING : Writers … write.
Every attempt will be made to create time for in class writing each week. The Issaquah School District has adopted Writing Fundamentals which uses a workshop model. We will begin the year by examining how writers write (craft) and will apply these skills to our own reading and writing. Throughout the year we will work within three distinct writer’s workshops: a memoir, a photo essay, and a book review. Each writing unit will be approximately 5 weeks long. We will also engage in writing poetry during our poetry unit.
I encourage all students to keep a journal of some kind. This could be a personal journal, a travel journal, an experience journal, a daily log of activities journal, a poetry journal, or any other type of journal or journal combination you can think of. Writing provides a (private) way for us to express what is going in within us and allows us to interact with the world from a reflective point of view. It’s fun! It’s interesting, and I would like you to give it a try.
VOCABULARY & GRAMMAR
This year I will be creating screencasts and/or Power Points for both vocabulary and grammar lessons. Students will be responsible for viewing lessons each week and bringing any questions back to class. There will be practice quizzes online. We will have in class reviews to clarify understanding and students will have continued access to the learning material. There will be both grammar and vocabulary tests every four to six weeks.
There are 92 SAT vocabulary words that we will be learning this year. Each trimester will include a portion of those words with a culminating and progressive trimester final exam. (For example, trimester 2 will include trimester 1 words, trimester 3 will include both trimester 1 and trimester 2 words.)
Each trimester will also include grammar lessons and there will be a final assessment for each trimester as well as a yearlong, culminating final at the end of the school year.
Grammar and vocabulary will be naturally embedded throughout our reading and writing units as they are skills that strong readers and writers acquire as they work. Students are expected to use grammar and vocabulary skills in their reading and writing units.
COURSE MATERIALS
1. Reader’s Workshop Novel Selection (Book lists are available for each unit.)
2. Literature. Dallas, TX: McDougal Littell, 2008.
3. Please have a system to electronically transport materials to and from class (USB drive, email account, file “on the cloud”). A back up is always a good idea.
4. Writing instruments: pens (red), pencils (including lead and erasers), and highlighters (yellow, green, orange).
5. One composition notebook for writing & reading.
6. Sticky notes.
7. Basic art supplies are available in class, but if you like Sharpies or special markers, you will need to supply your own.
VIDEO MATERIAL RELATED TO CURRICULUM
1. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (The Twilight Zone. By Rod Serling. 1960. DVD.)
2. A Christmas Carol (A Christmas Carol. By Charles Dickens. Perf. George C. Scott. 1984. DVD.)
SOCIAL STUDIES :
Students will continue to develop skills to increase understandings of the core concepts and ideas in civics, social studies skills, economics, geography, and history. Students will be using in-class textbooks for both the Medieval World and Beyond and Washington State History. Each textbook has an on-line component for home use. Our units of study will span from 600 CE to 1600 CE and will include Medieval Europe, the Origins and Spread of Islam, Imperial China, and Medieval Japan. In the third trimester we will study Washington State history which is a high school requirement.
History tells us stories and is made up of beliefs, events, and relationships that have shaped the world we currently live in. We will be learning about the cultural past of real places and people and making connections to current times. We will incorporate historical artifacts from traveling museum trunks from the Burke Museum and MOHAI for our study of China and WWII Homefront (Washington State History). We will also be incorporating simulations in various units to help immerse students’ perception and imagination in the cultures we study.