Special Subjects Seventh Grade

Eurythmy

In seventh grade the link between the mother tongue and its soul qualities becomes an important part of the lesson. We practice conditional sentences and the ability to move from one soul mood to another: happiness, sadness, earnestness, etc. Complicated geometrical choreographies bring form and structure; the posture and how we carry ourselves receive more attention. Concentration exercises continue, as do hopping, skipping and walking exercises. Students also practice five-, six-, seven- and eight-pointed star transformations, major and minor soul qualities and humoresques.

Handwork

In seventh grade we knit a beret, using circular needles. To achieve a balanced spiral in the beret, students must follow a pattern and knit with care and accuracy. The skills and terms they learn in this project are to use circular needles, round, make-one stitch, knit-two-together and decrease by eighths.

The second project of the year returns to needlework. The students stitch a lovely wool basket - a very centering and meditative activity. Copying the sample and making the basket come up on the sides while keeping it soft to the touch are quite difficult requirements. To complete this project successfully, students must achieve a real balance between strength and softness . By the end of the school year they are expert knitters.

Movement – Tendon

The theme of grade seven moves further out of the realm of the spirit and into the physical, yet still somewhat elastic, tendon. A tendon holds a muscle to a bone, allowing the muscle to do its work. It is denser than muscle and has less blood supply. The seventh graders mirror this in the hardening of their bodies and the development of judgments. To meet them, the curriculum offers more vigorous training methods to develop strength, flexibility and endurance. The sense of wanting the freedom to explore their world is met with running endurance requirements, goals, maps and orienteering compass work. In team games they work on Ultimate Frisbee, flag football, basketball, volleyball and softball. The students should be challenged in sprint work, vaulting, tumbling, gymnastics and aerobatics, and they should be competent at circus skills. Seventh graders deepen their knowledge of the Bothmer/Spacial Dynamics exercises they have worked with up to this point.

Math

In seventh grade math, we bring together the fundamental ideas, laws and properties of mathematics and discover how they relate to the students’ learning in previous years. It is a year of balancing practice in difficult computational problems with exciting new mathematical ideas. Although the review focuses on decimals, fractions, ratio, proportion and percents, the cornerstones of computational mathematics, we look at these concepts in a deeper, more theoretical way. New topics begin with a unit on signed numbers followed by one on basic algebra. Once we complete the algebra unit, we are able to apply the laws we learned to understand the algorithms taught in earlier grades. For example, understanding the algebraic properties of inverses and identities, as well as working with positive and negative integers, allow us to extrapolate the same idea and reason why one must “invert” the second fraction when dividing fractions. Or we use our algebra skills to convert repeating decimals to fractions, discovering that although it is disconcerting, point nine repeating indeed equals one. Over the year we revisit the basic sets of numbers and the properties as we integrate these concepts into new and old topics.

The topics we study include: levels of operations, terminology, sets of numbers, orders of magnitude, units of measure, place value, terminating and repeating decimals, square roots, rounding and estimating, scientific notation, solving equations with one variable, algebraic properties, order of operations, the four basic operations with integers, multiple notations for division, ratio, proportion, scale drawing, direct variation, rate, percent, discount, simple and compound interest, exponents, laws of exponents, negative exponents and problem solving. The students continue to expand their flippers or book of math rules and again have an opportunity to take a standardized test.

Gardening

In the seventh grade gardening classes we continue to develop basic gardening skills as well as work on improvement projects for the teaching garden. The students also mentor a special group of adults from the Morgan Center. Our students help these developmentally disabled adults with basic gardening skills and interact with them on a social level. Our upper-grade students have worked with this group for 13 years; all involved benefit greatly. During the winter, in our weather block, each student makes daily weather observations. The observations include tracking daily temperature highs and lows, barometric pressure changes, and daily weather phenomena.

Music

There are many, many songs about exploring, traveling, rivers and oceans, and we sing and play a lot of them, in harmony. We also sing music from around the world and look at how, as people moved to other countries, their music and culture moved and evolved with them.

We continue to play recorder and play and dance the music of the Renaissance while studying the emergence of harmony during this time. We study and listen to classical music history too. We also play in mixed instrumental groups and have the opportunity to join the upper school band club.

Spanish

The spontaneous interest of pupils and teachers as the surest road to success in second language acquisition is a wisdom that continues to inform seventh grade Spanish. Students also follow a clear curricular framework for learning grammar, and at this grade level excellent grammar is a major writing and speaking goal, with subject-adjective-article-verb agreement and correct use of simple verb tenses. The middle school rhythm continues, with opening exercises, oral exercises, recapitulation of previously learned material with guided questions, and then presentation of new material.

Students are now studying and experiencing the spiritual freedom acquired at the beginning of the Renaissance – a struggle for a new vision of the world. Spanish class activities support this process with readings on voyages and encounters with the new world, including with the rich Aztec/Maya cultures. Another seventh grade theme is Dia de los Muertos and other celebrations, and students do related reading and presentations. Other reading assignments include short stories of Spanish and Latin American origin. Students do some translations, but their reading comprehension and speaking practice comes, above all, by retelling what they have learned in their own words.

Dialogues and short representations of “survival Spanish” give students speaking experience, and they act out these “real” situations in pairs or small groups. Students continue with the journal writing that started in sixth grade, doing drafts that the teacher corrects for final versions. At this level they can write sentences on their own, as independent work.

The works of Spanish Latin American writers, including Rafael Pombo “Pobre Viejecita” introduce project-based research. Artistic exploration continues with the appreciation of works of Spanish/Latin American painters and a field trip to view the works of local artists.