In order for our scholars to compete in the real world of college and careers, we must set high expectations for them now in school. Our teachers use these high expectation to design a curriculum for their students that is both challenging, exciting, and meaningful.
At West Prep teachers use a consistent and demanding approach to student learning. For example, teachers use project based learning, and universal by design approach when teaching their units of study. Then they design assessments and performance tasks for students that force them to find meaning and make connections with what they are learning and the real world. Any given day you may find students in the science lab conducting an experiment, or in Social Studies engaging in debate, or teaching their math class a new way to solve problems.
What are we learning in English Language Arts?
Expeditionary Learning is an intensive close reading curriculum which pairs grade level fiction texts with common core aligned nonfiction texts. The curriculum model challenges students to think critically and take active roles in their classrooms and communities.The Expeditionary Learning curriculum includes authentic reading materials. Authentic reading materials include published works that are typically encountered by students in daily life, such as in magazines, books or newspapers. The use of authentic reading material may mean that some material is emotionally charged or may use language outside of a student's particular cultural experience. Students will actively read, cite evidence, discuss, write, and grapple with the curriculum’s essential questions. Expeditionary Learning provides students with the academic platform necessary for college and career readiness.
Right now we are nearing the end of our second unit: Myths: Not Just Long Ago. In this unit, scholars are reading original myths and then analyzing key elements and themes that can relate to our modern world. Scholars will be writing analytical essays to answer the question: Why does mythology matter?
Our next module of study scholars will investigate the question: What are “rules to live by”? How do people formulate and use “rules” to improve their lives? How do people communicate these “rules” to others? In this module, students consider these questions as they read the novel Bud, Not Buddy, Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, President Barack Obama’s Back-to-School Speech, “If” by Rudyard Kipling, and informational research texts.
In this module, students are involved in a deep study of mythology, its purposes, and its elements. Students will read Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief. In this module, students will read with a focus on the archetypal journey and close reading of the many mythical allusions. Through the close reading of literary and informational texts, students will learn multiple strategies for acquiring and using academic vocabulary.
Through the curriculum this year, your child will learn about ancient civilizations while making connections between social issues common to both the ancient and modern world. Your child will learn to think and work like an historian while intentionally developing literacy skills, integrating the English Language Arts (ELA) skills of reading and writing with an alignment to the Common Core State Standards.
Your child will learn about major issues in Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, and their own community, focusing on evidence-based reasoning, introducing and supporting claims through sources.
The Sixth Grade regularly uses New York City’s museums, other cultural institutions, and their resources to complement classroom instruction.
Our current unit is Becoming an Historian in Ancient Greece. Students are learning about the societal structures of Ancient Athens and Ancient Sparta, including educational values. Students will come to understand that societies and cultures are influenced by socioeconomic and gender differences by investigating and making connections between who is educated in the past and the present.
What did you discuss in class today?
What are you doing in Social Studies that relates to real-life?
How much “seat time” did you have today? What does that mean? Why is “seat time” important?
Did you “play school” today? What did that look/sound like?
1st Quarter: In unit 1, your child is introduced to reading, thinking, and working like an historian. Students will become detectives to uncover a murder mystery at West Prep Academy. Together, we will come to understand that historians investigate the past like law enforcement solves crimes. Scholars will learn how to formulate a claim and cite textual and non-print evidence to support their claims.
We are nearing the end of our second unit which has students digging up old knowledge of adding, subtracting and multiplying with whole numbers, fractions, and mixed numbers and applying this knowledge to dividing. In early December, we will begin Unit 3, Comparing Bits and Pieces, where we will use ratio thinking to solve multi-step problems. This includes part to part comparisons and part to whole comparisons. The main tool being used in Unit 2 is the bar model, and for Unit 3 will be ratio tables.
Learnzillion.com is a great website with free videos and guided practice problems. You can use key words from the homework to find helpful videos and practice. You can even go to earlier grades to brush up on important concepts that might still be confusing. Try it out!
Khan Academy, like learnzillion, has videos and guided practice. This is a great resources for all students.
Developing “number sense” is some of the critical work done in Unit 1. Throughout the first 6 weeks of school, scholars will be in small groups playing strategic games, solving real world problems, and learning how to have rich discussions around what they are noticing and understanding about real-world and mathematical problems.
Scholars will be working specifically with the language of factors and multiples, will be instructed on how to use bar models to represent all kinds of mathematical problems and situations, understand negative numbers in context, and use the coordinate plane to understand absolute value and distance as a positive difference between two points.
By the end of this unit, your scholar will be able to draw a rectangle model to represent problems, reason about when situations require division, multiplication, addition subtraction, and explain mathematical reasoning and ask questions about the mathematical reasoning of others.
Below are the standards we will address in the first unit. The standards are in the order that students will be working on them, though they will show up in many times in this unit and later units. The codes will be useful with learnzillion. Make an account, type in the standard, and you will find TONS of videos and guided practice problems.
Play the factor game online!
Play the product game online!
In science, our current unit is on the diversity of life. Diversity of life is seen through the study of cells. Students will understand how cells are the primary source for biodiversity, and will learn to classify organisms according to similarities and differences at the cellular and organism level, as well as using internal and external structures in living things. Students will also study how different organisms have different energy needs to live. They will understand that energy flows through ecosystems in one direction, usually from the Sun, through producers to consumers and then decomposers, in which its balance is the result of interactions between living and nonliving things. Students will be able to construct models of biomes and/or ecosystems they investigate and that will visually represent their explanation about how energy is used and transformed by different organisms in an ecosystem.
Prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, and animal and plant cells, are observed to describe their structure and to explain how these cells make different organisms.
process/method. Students will become familiar with the steps in the scientific method as well as the variables in an experiment. The coupling of science content and skills will allow students to strengthen their science knowledge and have them thinking, acting and communicating like scientists!
Investigating items in a mysterious garbage bag.
Mentos and Diet Coke Lab.
Mini 4 paragraph fictional essay on the contents of the mysterious garbage bag.
Chemical Reaction Lab Report (mentos-lab): Students have to perform a lab (pre-lab, lab report and post-lab) where they research the scientific processes that are involved in the chemical reaction when mentos is placed in carbonated beverages (soda). Students will be prompted to ask and answer why this reaction occurs. During this lab students have to change variables in the experiment to observe any changes. Students will then be asked to illustrate their skills and knowledge in a written lab report, illustrating written and visual representations of the knowledge attained.
West Prep Academy would like to invite you to join us at New York Hall of Science for our 1st annual Family Science Day.
Please email Ms. Bristol at tbristol@ms421.org if you are interested in chaperoning or attending.
In ELA, the 7th graders are focusing on Expository Writing. We are concluding our analysis of A Long Walk to Water by writing essays about the factors that helped Salva survive the war. In the following unit, we will be reading “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and will analyze how Hawthorne used the setting to develop the mood of the story.
Expository Essays are graded using the New York State Expository Writing Rubric.
A checklist version of the rubric is below.
o The introduction answers the focus question / writing prompt.
o The introduction previews the topic of each body paragraph.
o The introduction provides some background information on the text/ topic.
o There are at least two quotes in each body paragraph.
o Each quote aligns with the topic of the body paragraph.
o Evidence is from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
o Each body paragraph has a distinct topic.
o No “I” or “my” or slang in formal writing.
o The conclusion answers the focus question and summarizes the essay.
o Underline the title of the text.
o Capitalize the first letter of names of people and places and titles.
responsible for bringing water to her family. The Unit will culminate in scholars writing poems that incorporate two perspectives. In addition to reading to analyze perspective, scholars are writing tosupport their claims. This includes citing evidence from a supporting text, and explaining evidence in such a way that strengthens their ideas. As the year goes on we will progress to writing transitions within our essays to show how the many ideas we write about, build upon each other.
In this Unit we are covering the 13 colonies, events leading up to the American Revolution, and The American Revolution itself. Some topics that will be discussed are The French and Indian War, Propaganda, Treaty of Paris, Proclamation of 1763, Stamp Act, Boycott, Tea Act, Militia, Loyalists, Boston Massacre, and The Boston Tea Party.
This unit we are studying Geography and early exploration of the Americas. We will cover Christopher Columbus and his discovery of present day Dominican Republic. We will also discuss the cultural diffusion and the Columbian Exchange and their effects on the worldthen and now. After the Columbian Exchange we will move into the first colonies of present day America focusing heavily on Roanoke and Jamestown. We will discuss how these colonies led to further colonization of present day America and what affect it had on those who already lived there.
Use ratios, rates and percents to compare quantities.
Scale a ratio, rate, or percent to solve a problem.
Set up and solve proportions.
Recognize and connect proportional situations from a table, graph, or equation.
The main goal of this unit is for scholars to “apply and extend previous understandings of operations with fractions”. Below is a list of the learning standards associated with this unit.
Here are some additional resources that scholars can use to further their understanding of the mathematics in Unit 1.
How do scientists investigate the natural world?
Students will understand that the central purpose of scientific inquiry is to develop explanations of natural phenomena in a continuing and creative process.
What are we learning in ELA?
This Quarter students will be introduced to the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This Pulitzer prize winning novel will capture 8th graders with themes such as advocacy, discrimination, and pathos . Students will continue the 8th English Language Arts practice of reading, writing, and discussing the text over a course of 4 weeks.
Analyzing how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspect of a character or provoke a decision.
During the first unit scholars will read several books and articles that discuss The Vietnam War. Though many of the texts in this class will be more historical in nature, the main book "Inside Out and Back Again" will cover the journey of a young refugee girl, who moved to the United States to escape the tragedy of war. This is a story of faith, hope, and identity. Scholars will grapple with the notion of leaving a home. They will also read, write, and discuss about how going through tough times can reveal someone's character. Expect scholars to have various homework assignments through the unit. Most of the homework assignments involve the main book "Inside Out and Back Again". Scholars will be bringing this book home regularly to read and complete short writing assignments.
1) Citing evidence to develop an argument.
2) Understanding how authors use word choice to change meaning.
2) How do critical incidents reveal character?
Standards: W.8.1 Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
**Each students has an independent reading text. They are encouraged to read at least 1 hour daily after school.
Or you can always ask your child daily what they are doing in class.
What are you doing in class that relates to real-life?
How much “seat time” did you have today?
What does that mean? Why is “seat time” important?
Did you “play school” today?
What did that look/sound like?
We are focusing on post civil war America. How did the states come together to make one country? How were former slaves treated now that they are free? What is the industrial revolution, and how did the invention of new technology change the United States? What problems did Reconstruction resolve? What problems did it fail to resolve?
During this unit, students will learn that a linear equation is an equation for a straight line. There are many ways of writing linear equations, but they usually have constants (like “2” or “c”) and must have simple variables (like “x” or “y”). Students should be able to explain how changes in rate, the y-intercept, and the selected inputs for the equations effect the output in and out of context to real-world applications.
Establish a structure of exponents, formed by the process of repeated multiplication or repeated division.
Represent numbers in scientific notation and manipulate those numbers using the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Use scientific notation to help demonstrate very large and very small numbers when solving real world applications.
During this unit, students will learn the effects of different types of forces on the motion of objects, through the study of the Newton’s laws of motion. Students should be able to explain how changes in motion, perspective, and reference of objects, depend on different variables such as mass, direction of motion, and frame of reference.