Cluster FOUR Monthly Update

In Cluster 4, we end each year with a multi-week interdisciplinary project intended to answer the following question: How can we, as novice city planners, solve practical problems of stormwater runoff in a livable and sustainable city that you would like to live in? Students will work in small groups to learn about cities, stormwater, and scale, as well as practice group work and oral communication skills.

• Ancient and Classical Greece, c. 1200–300 BCE

• Who were the Ancient Greeks? ✅

• How did Athens and Sparta shape the lives of their people and the history of Greece? ✅

• The Roman Republic and Empire, c. 500 BCE–500 CE

• What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman Republic? ✅

• How did the Romans build and maintain power?

By the end of this unit, students should be able to…

• Describe the shared characteristics of the Greek poleis using specific examples from their history, culture, and society.

• Make civic connections by analyzing the ways in which the tools of Athenian democracy put power in the hands of some of the people.

• Compare and contrast life in Athens and Sparta, including the status and role of women and enslaved people in the two city-states, using specific examples from images and texts.

• Describe the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman Republic and provide specific examples of how the United States was inspired by its form of democracy and civic values.

• Explain why and how Rome transitioned from a Republic to a system of government ruled by an emperor.

• Organize information from multiple sources to argue how the Roman Empire built and maintained power.

Investigating History Lesson Titles:

• Lesson 6: Who Were the Greeks? ✅

• Lesson 7: Athens Becomes a Democracy ✅

• Lesson 8: Women, Metics, and Enslaved Persons in Athens ✅

• Lesson 9: Spartan Society and Its Civic Focus ✅

• Simulation I: Direct Democracy (emulating ancient Athens) ✅

• Lesson 17: The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Roman Republic (Part I) ✅

• Lesson 18: The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Roman Republic (Part II) ✅

• Lesson 21: Ruling the Roman Empire during the Pax Romana

• Lesson 22: The Tools of Empire: How the Romans Built and Maintained Power (Part I)

• Lesson 23: The Tools of Empire: How the Romans Built and Maintained Power (Part II)

• Simulation II: Representative (indirect) Democracy (emulating the ancient Roman Republic)

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Vocabulary

Tier 2:

obligation, communal, spartan, oration, endure, flourish, philosophy, drama, gymnasium, consolidate, infrastructure, incident, martyr/martyrdom

Tier 3:

polis/poleis, Zeus, gods & goddesses of Mt. Olympus, democracy, tyrant, oligarchy, metic, helot, agora,, Parthenon, Hippocratic Oath,

republic, autocrat, Pax Romana, province, legion/legionary, garrison, centurion, triremes, “bread and circuses,” Latin, aqueduct, amphitheater, Forum

In Social Studies class, students are also working on their speaking and listening skills. They are paying attention to the content of their peers and considering the manner in which they are speaking. They are impressive young people, open to coaching and will make impressive participating citizens of the world!

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Dystopian Literature Mentor Unit

• What defines who we are?

• Who has power in our society and why?

• How can our choices impact ourselves and our world?

• How can I contribute to my community?

• How do stories & memories shape who we are and how we see the world?

As we move into our final unit of the year, we return to these guiding questions introduced in September to frame our year of learning in ELA. These questions connect to key themes in The Giver, by Lois Lowry and we are exploring how the ideas presented by authors through imaginary stories help us to consider these big questions in our own lives. Students are doing strong work noticing and tracking these themes as they become familiar with the strange world of The Giver. As the dystopian nature of the novel is revealed, students will return to the guiding questions to reflect on how this novel helps us understand our own lives. Next up, students will read one of several choices of dystopian novels in book clubs and will track the characteristics of dystopian literature and consider again how this genre gives us insight into our own experiences.

Independent Reading: Keep up with reading 30 minutes a day at home. This is where students really build understanding as readers, background knowledge, and vocabulary. We do a weekly book check on Friday’s to track progress. To get credit, students need to have their physical books with them in class, so they might need some help from home to put them in their backpacks. Consider reading along, listening to audiobooks on long drives and it’s not too late to read aloud to your student at home.

Learning Standards:

• I can determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text
• I can analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.
• I can cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
• I can determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning, tone, or mood, including the impact of repeated use of particular images.
• Independently and proficiently read and comprehend literary texts representing a variety of genres, cultures, and perspectives and exhibiting complexity appropriate for at least grade 7.

As we near the end of 7th grade, students will be putting together much of what they have been learning in science this year. We end our energy unit by comparing both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources used to generate electricity. Students are diving into these topics to understand the scientific, ecological, and political issues around energy, its sources, and uses. This year, we have examined how energy is used and transformed by living things, how energy cycles through living and nonliving matter, and how it is manipulated by humans to serve our energy needs. Next, students will take a close look at water, reviewing the water cycle and examining how stormwater impacts Watertown. All of these topics will be applied in our final, interdisciplinary unit titled Future Cities. As students work in teams to plan, design, and build their own future city, they will select an energy source to supply electricity for their city, and they will have to implement structures to direct water flow, just as the city of Watertown has done.

It has been a wonderful experience working with your children this year. They are curious, cooperative, funny, insightful, and most importantly, kind and hopeful. Thank you!

7.MS-ESS2-4. Develop a model to explain how the energy of the sun and Earth’s gravity drive the cycling of water, including changes of state, as it moves through multiple pathways in Earth’s hydrosphere.

Clarification Statement:

• Examples of models can be conceptual or physical.
• 7.MS-ESS3-4. Construct an argument supported by evidence that human activities and technologies can to mitigate the impact of increases in human population and per capita consumption of natural resources on the environment.

• Arguments should be based on examining historical data such as population graphs, natural resource distribution maps, and water quality studies over time.
• Examples of negative impacts can include changes to the amount and quality of natural resources such as water, mineral, and energy supplies.

Hello Cluster 4!

We're nearing the end of our 7th-grade math curriculum, having just completed a unit on data, statistics, and probability. Next, we'll delve into 3-dimensional solids, focusing on surface area and volume. To cap off the school year, we're embarking on an exciting cross-curriculum project: designing futuristic cities and crafting scaled models of our creations.

Student Goals for Probability

• Use a sample space to determine the probability of an event as a number between `0` and `1`. (Lesson 2)

• Use the results from a repeated experiment to make predictions about the sample space. (Lesson 3)

• Recognize that the results of a repeated experiment approach the probability of the event. (Lesson 4)

• Compare probabilities from a model to the results of a repeated experiment to decide whether or not something is fair. (Lesson 5)

• Use the results from a repeated experiment to approximate the probability of an event. (Lesson 5)

• Calculate the probability of a multistep event. (Lesson 6)

• Make connections between real-world situations and probability tools that could be used to simulate those situations. (Lesson 7)

Student Goals for 3-Dimensional Solids

• Determine the volume of right rectangular prisms and right triangular prisms. (Lesson 10)

• Calculate the volume of a prism with a complicated base using a variety of strategies, including decomposing into more familiar shapes or surrounding and subtracting. (Lesson 11)

• Calculate the surface area of a prism. (Lesson 12)

• Explain whether to calculate the surface area or volume of a prism to solve a problem in a real-world situation. (Lesson 13)

• Apply surface area and volume to answer questions about a real-world situation. (Lesson 13)