Social Cause Categorizing

Today we took care of some logistical items and also started the process of our support of the student government.

AIM: I will choose my classroom job, review my current grade and categorize social causes by learning the post-it note method of consensus.

Lesson Steps
We started class by completing our Do Now and by choosing our classroom jobs. We will be practicing our jobs over the next two weeks in order to fully understand how they will help our classroom run smoothly.

Students then received their grade reports and we discussed how their assignments were calculated to determine the overall grade.

We then shared our homework regarding a social cause and used the post-it method of categorizing all of the causes of the class. We discussed how we would later elect a student government representative to help work on a social cause that would be important to the 7th grade.

Finally we turned toward our Essential Question for the first unit:
How did the Earth become our home?
We discussed what we might study and brainstormed some topics that would answer the question.

Homework: Complete a cover page for the first unit of the year. You must include the essential question and decorate it with images that you think will connect to the question. Finally, you will need to write a brief explanation of why the images connect to the question.

Follow the rubric below and check out the example photo below to help you do a great job on the first project of the year.

Students Learn How to Work in Groups

We started to practice group work while brainstorming our ideas for the Seventh grade social awareness focus for this school year. The Social Studies Department has a focus on inspiring students to make connections between class work and the world outside. We will be choosing a global social cause to address as a seventh grade class. Students will petition to adopt causes that they believe to be important and we will run informed elections to determine the social cause for the year. Once this has happened, students will raise funds and awareness about our cause in our school community.

AIM: I will demonstrate my understanding of how to work in a group by brainstorming a social cause and effectively implementing the group work participation chart.

Lesson Steps:
We started by completing another round of Do Now questions that related to our classroom jobs. We are still learning how our classroom works.

Next a group of students volunteered to model how to work in a group discussing the topic: "What are some reasons against wearing a uniform?" I modeled how to fill out the Group Work Participation Chart while our volunteers followed the discussion guidelines.

I then introduced the idea of the "Social Studies Social Cause" project that we will be working on throughout the year and explained how the seventh graders will focus on an international problem. I explained that we need to really focus on making sure that we always connect the outside world with our classroom.

Students then got into their groups and practiced group work while discussing the social causes assignment.

Homework
Bring in an example of your social cause (a picture, an article, a written summary of a radio program).
Once students have narrowed down their ideas, students must choose one social cause and bring in something that will help illustrate the cause. They can bring in an article, a picture or even write a summary of a conversation/radio program that they heard. We will use these examples in tomorrow's discussion.

Quiz Day and Group Assignments

Today we took our name quiz with great success and then got into our groups for the next few weeks. We also started the team building process that is necessary for a successful group.

AIM: I will demonstrate mastery of my classmates' names by taking a quiz and scoring a passing grade.
I will also create a positive and effective team through the strengths and weaknesses activity.

Lesson Steps
The name quiz was a huge success and now there is no more "He said/She said" in our class because we studied our names.

Students were then assigned groups based on strengths and weaknesses from the pretest, homework and classroom observations. We started the process of building strong teams by having students share their own strengths and weaknesses. Once this activity was finished, groups then had to compile a list of strengths and weaknesses that everyone in the group shared. Each group then reported their findings to the whole class.

We then practiced our dismissal procedures and left for the day.

Homework:
Just a reminder that all students must bring in a package of 100 index cards for our vocabulary project. Everyone will need color pencils for class work and homework. Finally, all students need 10 plastic slip covers to organize their work throughout the year.

Classroom Procedures

Today we completed the classroom procedures scavenger hunt and prepared for tomorrow's name quiz (which was postponed to this Wednesday)

AIM: I will complete the classroom procedures scavenger hunt and use it to compete in a class-wide group work exercise.

Lesson Steps:
The pretest took longer than anticipated and many students did not get a chance to complete their classroom procedures scavenger hunt on Friday. Today we continued this activity and then used the scavenger hunts to compete in a game of Pop-up to asnwer questions about what we would need to do in order to complete certain tasks in class.

Homework
We will take our name quiz tomorrow and all supplies are due this week so we can begin our vocabulary key rings for the year.