Dear 7th Grade Students and Parents,

Homework Reminder on All Hallows Eve

On this past Friday I assigned the following terms to be defined using page 11 in the most recent Upfront Magazine. You may copy verbatim or paraphrase: filibuster, supermajority, gerrymandering, moderate, Tea Party.

On Tuesday, November 1(tomorrow) I have agreed to give up our American Studies time for a presentation that relates to your current studies in English. Please find this note from Laurie Fichter.

Neil Taylor, a former resident of Westminster is coming tomorrow from (11-noon) to talk with both 7th & 8th about going blind at 29 and living independently three years later. 7th grade is reading The MIracle Worker right now, and the 8th graders read it last year. The 7th graders have just completed a 30 minute experiment of blindfolding themselves and trying to change clothes or brush their teeth. Neil lives this everyday and manages to cook, clean, and work! He is motivational and honest. 
 
We will meet in the assembly hall. 
Laurie

Finally, on this Friday, the 4th we will finish reviewing the lesson we read on this past Friday from our book We the People entitled "How did political parties develop?" We will compare and contrast this reading to the article in the Upfront Magazine about Washington's current governmental gridlock!

Best, Steve

PS - On last Friday we had a very spirited whole group discussion about the article in Upfront "Hey, Who Shrunk My Doritos?'.
Ask your child about the discussion and where their opinion fell ! You might want to ask your student to bring the magazine home, read the article first and have a discussion with your child as well. Some very interesting opinions form the students.

Dear Seventh Grade Parents and Students,

*Homework for this Friday is to read articles in the new Upfront Magazine on pages 8-11 and pages 16-17.

Upfront Magazine
As I told the students this magazine is for them to read whenever and whatever articles they want to. We will not have time to cover  the entire magazine in class, so your child and you should enjoy the articles together and discuss them together.

Last Class
This past Tuesday we continued our marathon reading of the Constitution. When we have finished we will then read the 27 Amendments. The language of these documents is beautiful but very challenging. I feel that if we are going to study the founding and framing of this document we needed to read it at least once (as challenging as it is). We will be referring back to it periodically.

Next Class

We will finish the reading of the Constitution and discuss the articles assigned.

Coming Up

*The students have indicated a desire to continue taking the U.S. Citizenship test, so be prepared for another quiz.

*We will be having a visit on Friday, November 11th at 8:30am from Steven Kiruswa, a Tanzanian and a member of the Maasai tribe.
More to come on this.

*We will be having a visit from Ken Burns on Friday, November 18th at 8:30am. More to come on this.

*After the November Break we will begin reading, "Facing the Lion". I will send along a synopsis.

*See this weeks Wednesday Notice for information about our Global Education Study for the next 5- 6 weeks.

Any questions or concerns please let me know.

Best,

Steve

Dear Parents and Students,

I am sorry I missed class on Tuesday as I was at a "Celebration of Life" service for Edmund Brelsford, Rory and Luke Cuerdon and Willa Dana's grandfather, and a long time supporter of TGS. All five of his children attended school here.

I will be seeing you all on Friday.

The homework assignment was to define these terms as they pertain to the U.S. Government

*separation of powers
*checks and balances
*legislative branch
*executive branch
*judicial branch

In class on Friday we will finish up any loose ends and begin our marathon reading of the U.S. Constitution and the 27 Amendments to it .

Then a break from homework for the Faire weekend. Thanks very much to parents and students for the donation of your time for this event !

Steve

October 7, 2011

Today Mary Heller Osgood was my substitute, as I was at a meeting with other Heads of School from Putney talking about community service. Mary had been the 7th grade teacher a few years ago and had a great day. She finished up with small groups reporting out on Supreme Court Cases and then started the lesson on "What is a constitutional government".

We will finish the lesson on Tuesday and then take a detour for a week or two and begin our study of the continent of Africa, in particularly the Maasai culture. This years school wide Global Education Theme will be about Tanzania and Kenya. As you know, in general, the continent is struggling politically, economically and climatically. This weeks homework assignment in the Upfront magazine points out some rays of hope for some of the countries on this continent.

We will compare how these countries are fairing compared to Tanzania, Leyeyo's place of birth. Paul and Sarah and Leyeyo will be doing an all school presentation on October 18 (more details to come), and we will be starting to read the book, "Facing the Lion".

In between we will continue our American Studies continuing to focus on the "constitution" and current events anx awaiting a date for our first class with Ken Burns.

The homework is to read pages 8-11 for Tuesday!

Hello All,

My teachers page is up thanks to Mary Heller Osgood. Straightforward and nothing fancy but hopefully informative.

10-4-11

Thanks for subjecting yourself to the first page of the U.S. Citizenship Test. Your children were excited about administering it and I am happy to say they reported back that most of you did very well. I used this with them as a pretest of sorts and they took the test in small teams in a gameshow format. They were allowed to use their books as a resource and three teams answered 16 of the 19 questions correctly and one team was able to answer 13 of the 19. Believe it or not the test has 100 questions, so be prepared to see more questions in the future.

Today students worked in small groups discussing the 5 Supreme Court cases the students were assigned for homework in the Upfront magazine. Each group reread/reviewed the case and decided if they agreed with the courts decision and the impact the decision may or may not have had on them now or in the future.

As a class we will not get to read each article in every issue as I am picking the ones relevant to our studies, so I urge you to read and discuss some of these timely stories with your son or daughter.

Next class we will finish discussing the other Supreme Court decisions we did not get to today and then start lesson number three in our text book We The People. This lesson will focus on "What is constitutional government?". We will also review and share the homework assignments.

HOMEWORK FOR FRIDAY

This assignment is to " Pick one of the 10 Supreme Court decisions we have read about, in both the first and current Upfront Magazine, that is of the most interest to you. Reread the summary of the decision and then delve deeper by researching the details of the case using any research tool at your disposal. (please site your source). Then write in one,  two paragraphs or more any interesting details you may have uncovered, then write how this decision has or will effect you now or in the future. Sometimes reading the "dissenting opinions" of the supreme court judges who did not agree with the majority vote opinions can yield some interesting side notes.

Good Luck,

See you Friday!