Happy New Year! Welcome back and I am so excited to begin 2023 together! I hope that everyone had a relaxing break. I cannot wait to hear all about the adventures that were had during our warm-up this morning.

Here is a snapshot into what our first school week of the new year has planned….

French- Our oral language warm-up this week will begin together with a pair and share about our holiday break and then continue later on this week practicing expressions that use the verb “avoir”, the passé compose, and also those where two verbs are used together. Proper verb conjugation is a goal for many of my students, so we will spend lots of time focusing on some activities in the coming weeks to help give them some strategies to improve their spoken language. As we work through our unit in #LaClasse, students will also make progress on their travel journals, looking closely at le passé compose and l’imparfait.

We will also return to our read aloud novel “Mamie Gangster” as we continue this story about a boy and his “gangster” Granny.

Science-We will begin the final sections of our unit on living things as we kick off Chapter 4 on human reproduction over the next few days. Together, we will look at the human anatomy, the stages of human development both before and after birth, as well contraception over the next couple of weeks.

With all my classes over the next few days, we will also begin our preparations for the Gulf Shore 2023 Science Fair. I am so excited that this event will make its comeback this year. More details to follow in the coming weeks.

Grade 9 Science-During our classes this week we will return to our textbook to explore chemical and physical changes in matter (Chapter 7). Much of this chapter is a review from Grade 8, but with our added knowledge of how atoms combine from our studies before the break, students will look at these concepts through a different lens than they did last year.

Grade 7 Science-Before the break, we began our unit on biodiversity. This week students will review the concepts we discussed in December including species, and taxonomy, before beginning to look at population, habitat and niche later on in the week.

Grade 9 English Science-As we continue to move through our chemistry unit, this week we will look deeper at the atom, exploring subatomic particles, how to draw Bohr models and at how the periodic table is organized, as we explain why it is called the “periodic” table.

Have a wonderful week! Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions and concerns you may have.

Mme MacNevin