Monthly Class Updates

Sixth Grade

September/October 2021

 

Instrumental Music 6 (Introductory and Advanced): Welcome to 6th grade Instrumental Music! We will be spending this time getting to know each other as we develop the idea of the ensemble: “A group of individuals coming together to create a complete presentation of music.” As we begin our first few weeks together, we will expand on the idea of ensemble and how to learn together. Part of that process will include how to learn to play instruments, and the rest will be how to learn to play together. We will go in-depth in the fundamentals of technique for wind and percussion instruments, including posture/position and developing our sense of metronomic time as we seek to develop musical accuracy and interdependence. 

 

Acting 6:  Welcome 6th-grade performers and creators! Sixth grade theatre will start the year by building relationships, establishing trust in the room, and exploring foundational theatre games. The focus will be on team building and fun! Time will also be spent going over procedures, norms, and expectations for the ensemble.

 

Vocal Music 6:  Welcome to 6th-grade Choir! I hope you are rested and rejuvenated from a summer of sun, travel, and relaxation. After being gone for a couple of months it takes students (and me!) a little bit to get back into the routine. We will begin the year by exploring the foundations of vocal technique and the basics of being in a choir, learning some music theory, developing our aural skills, and beginning to explore repertoire for performances. Be sure to bring your black binder, pencil(s), tuning fork, and water to each class. Let the journey continue…here’s to a great year!

 

Art 6:  Welcome to 6th-grade Art! We will begin this semester by learning about the classroom and each other with some fun art games, and we will have the opportunity to make our own sketchbooks that you will use throughout the rest of the art class. Let’s make this year awesome together!

 

PE 6: Welcome to 6th grade PE. We will be working hard each day to improve our overall fitness level while also having a lot of fun in class this year. The start of the year will begin with activities that will give the students the opportunity to get to know each other while also developing teamwork skills. Our first two units of the year will be Pickleball and Speedball. We will also complete our first round of fitness testing during the first month of school.

 

Health and Wellness 6:  Welcome to health and wellness! We’ll launch into the semester with a unit designed to foster connections between students and to help them get to know themselves and each other better. As we continue the class, we’ll explore ideas around self-awareness and introduce useful mindfulness activities. We’ll expand upon these first units by learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion, including how to be an advocate and ally for others. 

 

Science 6:  

Welcome to 6th-grade science! We’ll start the school year by discussing what it means to be a scientist. We’ll begin with our first unit on the metric system and measuring. Students will learn how to properly use essential measuring tools in the science lab and also learn about the differences between the metric and imperial units. This unit culminates with the Metric Olympics where students get to test their measuring skills against some Olympic-level competition.

 

French 6:  Bienvenue! Welcome to the first year of French! Each unit will be built around questions that help us connect French to our own language and cultures. How many different ways do we use to greet each other? Is there a formal way of speaking in English? This month, as we get to know each other and get used to working together in an online environment, we will start off with greetings and introductions in different contexts. We will also dive into some numbers and common expressions for working in the classroom together. Students will practice their speaking and listening skills using a variety of scenarios and will learn about speaking formally and informally. We will explore cognates, listen to popular songs, and examine the pitfalls of online translators.

 

Chinese 6: Huanyin Huanyin Huanyin, I am so excited to welcome all of you entering OES Middle school and you are so brave to take the challenge to learn the Chinese Language. We will be focused on learning Chinese character’s pronunciation based on the pinyin (initials finals) and four tones. You will have a chance to create a pinyin song by yourself. Meanwhile, we will learn greetings in the Chinese manner, common classroom language and numbers. Also, we will be celebrating the traditional Chinese Festival-Mid Autumn’s Festival with hands-on crafts and mooncake tasting.

 

Spanish 6: ¡BIENVENIDO (welcome)! I am excited to meet you! We are all arriving at OES Middle School with zero or some experience in Spanish. After we get to learn a bit about each other and how to use technology, the first chapter is the basics and brand new for some people and a great review for others! We will be starting with the alphabet and pronunciation supported by some goofy songs. Learning greetings and goodbyes are a natural place to start with some role-playing activities. Also, we will be working on numbers to 100 with games. A basic small-talk area in every language is asking and telling the date and we will practice this often. See you soon!

 

Technology 6: This year the 6th grade students will take a trimester of Technology. We will explore technology tools and concepts through an inquiry and project-based lens with the goal of understanding computational thinking practices and perspectives such as: experimenting and iterating, testing, and debugging and viewing technology as a medium of creation. Some of the technologies that may be used in this course are the CoSpaces environment, VR and AR creation toolkits, the Swift programming language, and micro: bits. 

 

Pre-Algebra Prep 6: We’ll be starting off the year getting organized, learning the math class routines, getting comfortable with our textbook, and establishing classroom norms. Then we’ll double check some division and multiplication skills before embarking on powers and exponents, order of operations, divisibility tests, strategies for tackling word problems, some fun non-traditional problems and the “24 challenge”. Be ready for daily warmups, a variety of activities and some math reflection too. As students readjust to being back and school and doing math, I encourage them to ask questions and see me as needed.

 

Pre-Algebra 6: Welcome to PA! We kick off the year with useful organizational support (binders, papers, syllabi, Google Classroom, etc.), and classroom norms. Our days begin with a daily puzzle, followed by a lesson introduction, collaboration (at a distance), a game, and then solving problems utilizing the given lesson. The class will explore skills and methods for tackling word problems, implement exponents and powers, and apply order of operations when simplifying linear expressions. We will play games as we delve into divisibility rules and prime factorization. This will be very useful in understanding and finding Greatest Common Factors (GCF), and Least Common Multiple (LCM); our next lessons. 

 

Humanities 6: Welcome to Humanities! This year, we will be exploring the big question “What does it mean to be human?” through the lens of literature, history, current events, and ourselves. We will begin our school year with the essential work of building a community in each class as well as creating routines for reading, writing, discussions, and other activities Students will explore the multidimensional concepts of both culture and identity, which will guide our work the rest of the year as we consider perspectives beyond our own. In September, students will write their “Academic Autobiography” as well as share their “Timeball” of important events in their lives. By the end of the month, we will start to read the novel Peak and learn how to do close reading by annotating our books. 

Seventh Grade

September/October 2021

 

Instrumental Music 7: Welcome to 7th grade Instrumental Music! We will be spending this time getting to know each other as we develop the idea of the ensemble: “A group of individuals coming together to create a complete presentation of music.” As we begin our first few weeks together, we will expand on the idea of ensemble and how to learn together. Part of that process will include how to learn to play instruments, and the rest will be how to learn to play together. We will go in-depth in the fundamentals of technique for wind and percussion instruments, including posture/position and developing our sense of metronomic time as we seek to develop musical accuracy and interdependence. 

 

Acting 7: Welcome 7th-grade performers and creators! Seventh-grade theatre will start the year by building relationships, establishing trust in the room, and exploring foundational theatre games. The focus will be on team building and fun! We will also be assessing where each student is in their comfort level and experience with performing arts. Time will be spent going over procedures, norms, and expectations for the ensemble.

 

Vocal Music 7:  Welcome to 7th-grade Choir! I hope you are rested and rejuvenated from a summer of sun, travel, and relaxation. After being gone for a couple of months it takes students (and me!) a little bit to get back into the routine. We will begin the year by reviewing the foundations of vocal technique and the basics of being in a choir, reviewing some music theory, developing our aural skills, and beginning to explore repertoire for performances. Be sure to bring your black binder, pencil(s), tuning fork, and water to each class. Let the journey continue...here’s to a great year!

 

Art 7: Welcome to 7th-grade Art! We will begin this semester by learning about the classroom and each other with some fun art games, and we will have the opportunity to make our own sketchbooks that you will use throughout the rest of the art class. Let’s make this year awesome together!

 

History 7:  Welcome to 7th grade! We begin the year by posing this question: when studying the past, how do we know what we know? We explore the importance of using evidence to inform our understanding of history. We also discuss other important vocabularies that help the students think and behave like historians. We then begin studying when and how the first humans arrived in the Americas, exploring different theories and looking for the evidence that supports those theories. We also review the steps involved in good historical research and citing one’s sources effectively. Lastly, students will collaborate on the first unit project, as we work together to build community. 

 

PE 7: Welcome to 7th grade PE! As the weather will still be nice in September, we will be spending our first units at the field. Units will be ultimate frisbee and frisbee golf. We will also be doing our first round of fitness testing. In the first week, students will be assigned a PE locker at SPARC. We also will go over the expectations of the students for the year in PE. 

 

Health and Wellness 7: Welcome to health and wellness. This semester we will start with the overarching topics of mindfulness, self-awareness, and self-care. Students will hold a journal on given prompts with connections to “The Power for Good”. Subtopics that we will take a closer look at will be yoga, flow state, and sleep.

 

Science 7: We are excited to welcome you back and begin exploring the fascinating planet on which we live! Science 7 is all about the interconnectedness of Earth’s Systems and you will deepen your understanding of this through scientific investigations and engineering design challenges. This month we will dive into an overview of Earth’s systems and demonstrate our understanding by identifying interactions among the Earth’s spheres as observed on our beautiful campus. Next, we will prepare for our upcoming trip to Mount St. Helens by exploring the science, history, and real-life accounts of the active volcano in our backyard known for centuries as “Fire Mountain”. We will also take time to build our class community and get to know each other as we go on this journey of learning about our planet and our place within it. 

 

French 7:  Bienvenue! Welcome to 7th grade French. Each unit will be built around questions that help us connect French to our own language and cultures. This month, French students will build their vocabulary skills for classes, descriptive adjectives, places around school and town, telling time, and asking specific questions. They will make cultural comparisons with what it’s like to go to school in France, and what school lunches are like in francophone countries. They will expand their communication skills by tackling two major verbs this month: être and aller. They will also learn a staple grammar point: agreement and position of regular adjectives. We will start to look carefully at what I call PFGs - petites fautes de grammaire. These little grammar mistakes start to get more attention, as students better understand how French grammar works. We will watch Tintin periodically, play perennial favorites, like the circle game and the crossy-offy game, and check out some new popular French songs. 

 

Chinese 7: Huanyin huixia 欢迎回校! For the first two weeks, besides getting used to the technology tools and new schedule, we will spend some time reviewing Pinyin, tones, radicals, stroke orders, and the characters that we have already learned. We will have lots of games for students to reflect on what they have learned, look for any patterns, and make conclusions. After that, we will start our new unit. Students will learn to list a few typical Chinese dishes; exchange opinions (likes and dislikes) about food or restaurants. Also, we will be celebrating the traditional Chinese Festival-Mid Autumn’s Festival with hands-on crafts and mooncake tasting.

 

Spanish 7: ¡Bienvenidos back to school! We will spend our first two weeks reviewing last year's material and then head right into our first unit – the differences between ser and estar (both of which mean “to be”), comparing and contrasting, and using quantifiers to flesh out sentences. We'll be doing lots of fun games and activities to practice when to use these verbs! It can certainly be an adjustment for students moving into Spanish 7 and its all-Spanish-all-the-time policy, so the more encouragement to speak Spanish the better!  After three months without class, some students may likely feel as if they’ve hit a brick wall, forgotten “everything,” and/or feel self-conscious about speaking Spanish. This is completely normal! I encourage all my students to come find me when they’re feeling this way for a bit of encouragement, laughter, and some one-on-one time with the material.

 

Pre-Algebra 7: Welcome back and welcome to Advanced Pre-Algebra (APA)! We kick off the year with useful organizational support (binders, papers, syllabi, Google Classroom, etc.), and classroom norms. Our days begin with a daily puzzle, followed by a lesson introduction, collaboration, a game, and then solving problems utilizing the given lesson. We begin the year converting units within the US Customary system and into metrics. (This will also be very handy in science.) Simplifying algebraic expressions and solving algebraic equations comes next. We will build on these skills throughout the year. Refreshing all operations with fractions and decimals is also a part of this month’s goals. I look forward to jumping into our new schedule which will allow more time to collaborate, play games, and explore math in a variety of ways.

 

Algebra 7: Welcome back! We will start off solving simple and multi-step algebraic equations, including absolute value equations. We will also rewrite equations and formulas as we get more comfortable manipulating variable expressions. We will tackle our first Problem of the Week, a challenge problem that we will do periodically throughout the year. We wrap up the month by learning some problem-solving strategies and applying them to word problems.

 

English 7: After an initial discussion of major themes for the year and an accompanying writing assignment based either on the summer reading book or some other book selected by the student, this month we will begin the first reading selection for seventh grade English: Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. This historical novel tells the stories of two families living in Seattle’s International District during World War II and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war years. The novel illuminates many themes: American identity, immigration, family relationships, race, and ethnicity, bullying, justice, and the idea of “outsiders” in society. Students will practice active reading and comprehension skills, and we will look at literary terms and examine the use of figurative language. There will be short writing assignments based on the novel, and students will also learn vocabulary words pulled from the book.

 

Technology 7: Welcome to your 7th grade year, and technology class. Throughout this course, we will broaden and deepen our knowledge and understanding of the technology tools you and your peers have previously explored, or new technologies you are interested in. You will be asked to develop a project which demonstrates your ability with these technologies, explain how it supports you and your learning objectives, as well as documenting the process of how you gained these skills. Some examples of technologies students may select from are 3D printing, VR and AR, the Swift programming environment, CoSpaces, Micro: bits, and more!

 

Religion 7:  Welcome to Religion 7! I’m looking forward to exploring with students how and why sacred stories play such an important role in many faith traditions. We’ll start the school year this September by learning about creation myths from various faith traditions and examine the similarities and differences among them. Our dive into creation stories will culminate with students creating their own unique myth of how the world came to be. Lastly, we’ll start to focus on important characters and plot lines that appear in early stories within the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths.
 

  

Eighth Grade

September/October 2021

 

Eighth Grade Inquiry: Welcome to Inquiry 8!  We are excited to support students as they discover and then explore a topic and a big question that excites them. By diving deeply into a question that interests them, Inquiry 8 offers students the chance to explore who they are and their place in the world. This is accomplished through focused and creative work to support students in developing not only their critical thinking and research skills, but also their curiosity, perseverance, and wonder. Students start the year exploring their identities as both individuals and as a class. Through a range of activities meant to build community and learn about ourselves and each other, students will discover how identity shapes the way we see and experience the world. Through building a deeper and richer understanding of their identity, students are creating a foundation to identify their passions and then craft a guiding question that will direct their research and exploration later this fall. 

 

Instrumental Music 8:  Welcome to 8th grade Instrumental Music! We will be spending this time getting to know each other as we develop the idea of the ensemble: “A group of individuals coming together to create a complete presentation of music.” As we begin our first few weeks together, we will expand on the idea of ensemble and how to learn together. Part of that process will include how to learn to play instruments, and the rest will be how to learn to play together. We will go in-depth in the fundamentals of technique for wind and percussion instruments, including posture/position and developing our sense of metronomic time as we seek to develop musical accuracy and interdependence. 

 

Acting 8: Welcome 8th-grade performers and creators! Eighth grade theatre will start the year by building relationships, establishing trust in the room, and exploring foundational theatre games. We will also be assessing where each student is in their comfort level and experience with performing arts. Time will be spent going over procedures, norms, and expectations for the ensemble.

 

Vocal Music 8: Welcome to 8th-grade Choir! I hope you are rested and rejuvenated from a summer of sun, travel, and relaxation. After being gone for a couple of months it takes students (and me!) a little bit to get back into the routine. We will begin the year by reviewing the foundations of vocal technique and the basics of being in a choir, reviewing some music theory, developing our aural skills, and beginning to explore repertoire for performances. Be sure to bring your black binder, pencil(s), tuning fork, and water to each class. Let the journey continue... here’s to a great year!

 

Art 8: Welcome to 8th-grade Art! We will begin this semester by learning about the classroom and each other with some fun art games, and we will have the opportunity to make our own sketchbooks that you will use throughout the rest of the art class. Let’s make this year awesome together!

 

History 8: Welcome to History 8! This class is about Modern World History. We’re going to start off with some community building, so we get to know each other and start to feel comfortable talking about the big ideas that make the study of history so important. History 8 takes a look at how our past connects to our present. For each unit or theme, the class will study what it looked like in the past and how we see it today. We’ll start off with an exploration of different systems and various forms of data so we can practice our observation and inquiry skills. Our first focus is on seeing change over time. 

 

PE 8: These first two months of 8th grade PE will focus on frisbee games and pickleball for our first-class units, including skill development, team cooperation, and fun competition. Each class will also introduce students to a wide range of fitness activities and principles they can incorporate into their active lives. We will also complete our first round of fitness testing. 

 

Health and Wellness 8: Welcome eighth graders! We will start our time together in Health and Wellness by forming norms as a community and expressing our hopes for our time in class together this year. Beginning by investigating our “spheres of influence” in our lives, we will see where our locus of control is in our own lives. Once we are clear about what we hypothetically can control, we can reflect on why even these areas can be challenging for most humans. 

We will explore the positive and negative effects of “stress” and how it affects each of us in different ways. By the end of the month, we will start to delve into the human evolutionary roots of our nervous system and attempt to be a “witness” to how our own unique mind operates. 

 

Science 8: Eighth-grade science at OES is about how our world and our modern society interact. We'll start off with the biggest foundation possible: our universe. What's out there, what's down here, and why and how did things come to be as they are? From there we'll learn about atoms and molecules and how they shape and affect our lives, how they change (or don't change), and inspect some in our food. Later this year we'll learn about and explore photosynthesis, energy, climate change, growing food, and towards the end of the year we'll put it all together to develop our own mission to Mars. So, we start off in space and come back full circle. As in life, enjoy the journey!

 

French 8: Bienvenue! Welcome to 7th grade French. Each unit will be built around questions that help us connect French to our own language and cultures. Students will complete Unité 6 - their final unit from last year and learn to talk about food items, grocery stores, specialty food stores, and markets. They will quantify food and drinks, use regular -re verb conjugations, and will broaden their use of articles—a staple of French grammar. The culture sections in the book are now in French, which helps build reading skills. Students will explore the importance of cheese in French culture and will learn about different cheeses and their regions. We will also revisit their favorite French songs, build skills with dialogue videos, and reexamine the pitfalls of online translators.

 

Chinese 8: Huanyin huixia 欢迎回校！This month, besides catching up with students and getting used to the technology tools and new schedule, we will be focused on quickly reviewing the characters in the units that we have already learned. After that, we will start our new unit which is about shopping. We will start the unit by asking and answering questions about the availability and price of products, and express opinions on and negotiate an item’s price. Also, we will be celebrating the traditional Chinese Festival-Mid Autumn’s Festival with hands-on crafts and mooncake tasting.

 

Spanish 8: ¡Bienvenidos back to school! We will do a minimal review of last year's material and dive right in with IOPs (Indirect Object Pronouns). We will be playing some fun games, learning technology and telephone conversation vocabulary, and adding IOPs to all prior grammatical concepts. After three months without class, some students may likely feel as if they’ve hit a brick wall, forgotten “everything,” and/or feel self-conscious about speaking Spanish. This is completely normal! I encourage all my students to come to find me when they’re feeling this way for a bit of encouragement, laughter, and some one-on-one time with the material. 

 

Geometry 8: We’ll start building the discipline of Geometry starting with some undefined terms and use those to develop precise language that will form the backbone of our year. Using a compass and straightedge is a great hands-on approach to discovering geometric relationships and learning to write geometric explanations. Then it’s on to determining unknown angle measurements based on a straight line, parallel lines, and the angles in a triangle. Explaining their reasoning will serve as a springboard for upcoming geometric proof. I encourage students to email or seek me out whenever concepts are unclear.

 

Algebra 8: Welcome back! We will start by reviewing pre-algebra topics, including prime factorization, greatest common factor, and operations with negatives, fractions, and decimals. We will also be reviewing simple and multi-step algebraic equations, including those with the variable on both sides of the equal sign. We will then review linear equations and graphs, and brush up on slope-intercept, standard, and point-slope forms of a linear equation. Toward the end of the month, we will explore using an online graphing tool called Desmos.

 

English 8: English 8 students will be sharing song lyrics that have meaning to them as a beginning to our look at how language ties to identity. We begin this work by looking at children’s books in order to practice the kind of literary analysis and writing we will engage in throughout the year. We will then be building from this idea as we begin our first novel of the year, Warren St. John’s Outcasts United, and moving towards our first creative and analytical writing connected to that source. 

 

Technology 8: Welcome back to the beginning of your eighth-grade year, and especially to your technology class. This course is an open-ended course that will help you develop a novel technology project by the end of the quarter. Each student will choose a topic of their choice and then set up and test out their own project that relates to something they're currently doing in another course here at OES. Code an infinite runner game on Scratch. Design and print a 3D replica of a Japanese temple on Tinker CAD. Program a Micro: bit to play your favorite tune. Or maybe you'll find something you are more interested in, and each of us will hone our skills along the way. What awesomeness awaits you?

 

Religion 8: Welcome to Religion 8!  This class offers students the opportunity to learn about and appreciate different faith traditions by exploring the ways in which various traditions worship and gather. We accomplish this by both examining the how and why behind worship practices and by also designing and leading our weekly Middle Schools Chapels. Starting in September, students start this process by reflecting on what their experience of Chapel has been and what they hope to see chapel become. Students will also explore how best to incorporate music, story, and student voice into our weekly chapels, with a particular focus on creating an inclusive and welcoming space. After setting some initial goals for our services, we’ll examine how different faith traditions gather and what different worship styles may teach us about our own chapel gathering.