7TH GRADE NEWS

MATH AND SCIENCE:

Out of This World Field Trip

Seventh grade students traveled to Houston to share about the St. James Day School Drone Academy with educators at the Technology Curriculum Conference of Aldine (TCCA). While in Houston, we toured NASA and saw historic Mission Control, the ISS mockup facility where astronauts train, and the Saturn V rocket. From there we visited the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL), a 6.2 million-gallon pool with submerged components of the International Space Station. At the NBL, astronauts prepare for spacewalk missions to simulate minimal gravity conditions. The learning experience was truly out of this world!

LANGUAGE ARTS AND HISTORY:

Seventh grade is completing its month long ancient and medieval African kingdoms unit. Not only have the students studied the influence of geography and natural resources on the development of these kingdoms, but they have also learned about the importance of trade, scholarly learning centers, and Islam as the main religion of these kingdoms. The growth of civilization depends on these factors and more, and the 7th graders are making connections between these empires and civilizations they have studied previously. They learned vocabulary, studied maps, and wrote summaries and journal entries to demonstrate their learning in a variety of formats.  To review for a unit assessment, the students played a Kahoot online game as well as Quizlet Live, and even I participated on a team. What fun we had, displaying our knowledge to each other. “I enjoyed learning about Timbuktu,” says D.P. “I think it is interesting that these kingdoms had so much gold while at the same time Europe was exploring America looking for gold,” commented D.Y.