7th Grade Newsletter - October 2023

Hello!

Welcome to the October edition of the Grade 7 Monthly Newsletter! In this newsletter, we will be sharing highlights in classes, upcoming dates, as well as other important school information. Please feel free to reach out to any Grade 7 Team member with questions. Thank you!

Family Portal in ASPEN is now Open!

Student and family logins are now available for Aspen, This portal can be used to check student's grades and progress in all subjects.

If you have not received your log-in info, please reach out to your student's homeroom teacher for more info!

Here is the link for ASPEN:

https://ma-lowell.myfollett.com/aspen/logon.do

Progress Reports

Quarter 1 Progress Reports will be sent home on Wednesday, October 11.

Please be on the lookout, sign the progress report when received, and have your student return it to their homeroom teacher the following day.

In addition, we will be making the transition away from paper progress reports during Quarter 3, so keep that in mind!

Classroom Updates:

Mr. A - Social Studies

During the first three-to-five days of the school year, we did ice breakers and get-to-know-you activities. We also went over class expectations and policies.

During the third week, we began our first unit, The Global Environment. This unit will last four-to-five weeks and cover a variety of topics related to the environment, geography and the climate crisis. There are many climate crisis related events in the news and we've been examining those in class.

Ms. Kothari/Mr. Dev - Math

The first week was spent on getting to know each other and establishing routines and protocols. Second week onward, we jumped into math, distributed the book we will use (volume 1) for the first half of the year. The students need to come to class always with the Math book, in addition to the workbook and Chromebook.

We have covered about five lessons but we need to hasten our pace as we need to cover a lot of ground. We are also using the WIN period to reinforce the math skills that and freshening up our recall of those skills. Having a solid foundation in using those essential mathematical tools, will enable the students to be able to cope with 7th grade math a lot better.

In the coming weeks, we are going to increase our pace and start using quizzes as well, in addition to evaluating students on their classroom work.

The message is: stay focused on learning in class.

Mr. Corcoran/Mr. Francis - ELA

We are so excited and happy to be back in school and teaching this wonderful group of new 7th graders!

As we all know, getting to know new faces in a new environment can be difficult, that’s why, to begin the year, we started with our “Getting to Know You” Poetry Unit. You may have seen in their notebooks that students made heart maps of the people and things they loved and wrote poems about their likes, dislikes, and important world issues. These not only helped us get to know the students fast, but it gave them an insight into what makes poetry important and necessary, which will come in handy later in the year.

For the first two months, we will be diving into realistic fiction in our “Investigating Characterization” unit. This unit will entail studying characters and how they act, but also, why authors make characters do, say, and act certain ways. Soon, students will be divided into book clubs and begin reading, analyzing, and writing about novels!

We wish your students the best of luck during this 7th grade year!

Students of the Month for SEPTEMBER

Each month, one 7th grader will be chosen from each homeroom to be out Students of the Month. These are students who represents the Butler core values, follows the PBIS school-wide expectations, and/or is making good choices during the month.

Below are the students who were chosen for September. Students pictures will be posted outside the library to celebrate this accomplishment!

Homeroom 212: John Ramos

Homeroom 217: Jacoby Ba

Homeroom 218 Jenesy Acevedo

Homeroom 223 Talha Syed

Homeroom 224: Aubriella Greene

Congratulations to all of our recipients!

Upcoming Events

Please see the School calendar for other important dates and events!