DOWNLOAD THE NEW FCS APP!
- View grades
- View attendance
- View bus info
- View the lunch menu
- Access school and staff info
- Receive important alerts
- View news stories
- View calendar info
IT'S EASY! SEARCH "FRANKLIN COUNTY SCHOOLS" AND LOOK FOR THE APP ON APP STORE AND GOOGLE PLAY!
*do this with 1:1 help at Parent Night on 10/11/2022 - we'd love to help you!!
STUDENTS ARE STARTING TO TEST THE RULES - AND BULLYING AND AGGRESSION ARE REARING THEIR UGLY HEADS.
Please talk to your child and let them know the following ways to deal with bullying and aggression:
- Tell a teacher or your parent/guardian
- Have confidence
- Tell them to stop - loudly! You want to get the attention of other people, especially the teacher
- Control your own emotions
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, FROM 5:00-6:30 PM
- 5:00pm: presentation in the auditorium
- 5:30pm-6:30pm you can do any of the following:
- Go see a grade level teacher in the cafeteria
- Go to room 101 and get set up in PowerSchool
- Go to room 101 and get set up with the FCS app (includes PowerSchool and a lot of other things!)
- Go to room 212 to speak with the School Counselor, Ms. Gilbert
- Go to the cafeteria and speak with a grade level teacher or an electives teacher
- Go to the Office to get help with registration, ask general questions
- Go to the media center to see Ms. Faulkner re: Chromebooks
FMS NEEDS SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS!!!
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE FCS JOB BOARD
- Up to $120 or more per day
- Job Qualifications: High school diploma or higher, at least 21 years of age, completion of the FCS effective substitute training found on the FCS website and a completion of criminal background checks.
THANK YOU TO THE FOLLOWING FMS ANGELS!
- Franklinton Baptist Church: staff breakfast first week back
- Franklinton Women's Club: staff lunch first week back
- Franklinton Women's Club: five gift baskets to give to teachers throughout the year to keep up motivation
- Hill Ridge Farms: large box of school supplies, hygiene supplies, and socks for our students
- Novozymes & Southwire for 7 boxes of school supplies and string bags filled with school supplies for our students
- Rhonda Carper: cups for the school to use for anything
- Tom and Nancy Heilman: 25 backpacks and 300 earbuds
- Addy Giandenoto: volunteering to clean and organize the FMS supply closet in anticipation of the 2022-2023 school year
- NC DPI - school supplies
If your student is interested in participating (and competing) in Battle of the Books for FMS please let me know!! The number of books on the list has been decreased to 16!
I have sent out invitations to your student for the Media Center/STEAM Lab google classroom.
Please encourage your students to accept because this is where I post all my information!!
We will be having an after school STEAM Club starting in October with support from NC State!!
Stay tuned to the Media Center/STEAM Lab google classroom for more information!
SCIENCE: MS. DOWNUM
Good afternoon parents! We completed our first module in Science this past week. We are starting out a new unit which is a continuation of what we learned in the last module. We are working on Ecosystems which covers how plants and animals interact with their environment. At the end of this unit students will have a project and a test. The test date is not set yet but will be in about three weeks.
We will be starting Social Emotional Learning this week. The first unit covers starting middle school and making goals.
Make sure you are checking your child(ren) PowerSchool regularly to make sure they are keeping up with grades. Better yet you can get a Parent Portal letter from the front office to get access to your own PowerSchool that can set up notifications straight to your phone when grades are changed in PowerSchool.
SOCIAL STUDIES: MS. BROOKS
In social studies students will be learning about the elements of culture by
learning about how religion, tradition, and cultural practice influence the development of civilizations and societies. Also, we will learn about population and migration and how it connects to human geography by applying tools that a geographer uses to understand the emergence, expansion, and decline of civilizations.
Please remind students to turn in missing assignments if they have any. If you have any questions, please contact me at jericabrooks@fcschools.net.
ELA: MS. MCINTOSH
Notes for the week:
We will start i-Ready lessons soon. This year’s requirements are passing three lessons with a 70% or higher.
We will continue to read chapters 5-7 of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief this week. So please read in Sora (our online library). Corresponding assignments will be added to Google classroom.
* I am having issue with the Percy Jackson workbook posting in google classroom. So I will postpone the due date until the assignment is fixed. Thank you all for your patience.
Standards for this week:
I can cite text-based evidence to support an analysis of literary text. (RL.6.1)
I can describe how the characters change throughout a literary text. (RL.6.3)
I can analyze how an author develops a narrator or speaker’s point of view. (RL.6.6)
ELA: MS. BAECHLE:
Happy official fall! The next two weeks we will continue reading and analyzing our first text Lyddie with a strong focus on: vocabulary, analysis and identifying textual evidence, annotation strategies and a spiraled review of content to ensure student comprehension.
Please make sure students are completing 45 minutes of both ELA and Math on their I-Ready pathway on a weekly basis. We will begin grading their completion on a weekly basis beginning this Friday. This program allows students to work on increasing their comprehension skills, while improving in specific skill-sets, all while focusing on mastering grade level content.
This week students selected their invention and type of project they would like to complete, which was present during the Industrial Revolution in connection with our text Lyddie. They should have submitted their choice and begin working on their project. This project will be due Friday, October 27th. The link for the rubric is attached below: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ey4PRCrPqOy3T2Dm-2oCVhLqjM_vI6rFVXFqaKHPnF0/edit?usp=sharing
In addition, grade alert forms were sent out through email last week if a student was failing one or more of their classes. Please make sure students are checking Powerschool regularly and making up work as necessary to stay on track. I have seen a great deal of solid work and effort, let’s keep the momentum going!
Please do not hesitate to reach out to me at kimberlybaechle@fcschools.net with any questions.
SCIENCE: MS. NEUJAHR
We are in week six of the school and students are gearing up towards numerous labs based on the human body systems! Students will learn the proper technique for doing CPR on both infants as well as adults. This week students are asked to dissect chicken wings to understand the anatomy of how tendons and ligaments work within the skeletal system. After next week, students will have a long term sub while I am out on maternity leave. Students are expected to follow the same rules for the sub as they would if I am still in the building. All work and assignments will be uploaded into Google Classroom for the time that I am out so students MUST bring a working chromebook to school to be able to complete the learning of the rest of the human body systems while I am out. I will still resume grading as normal and grades will be placed daily. Students will be tasked with making sure they are taking the appropriate notes as well as completing the ed puzzles, graphic organizers, worksheets, and formative assessments while I am gone. If they lack work ethic in the following weeks while I am gone, it’ll be a challenge for students to bring up their final grade for Quarter 1 when I return. Their first final nine week project is due November 1st so please be checking to see if they are completing and submitting online.
MATH: MS. JENKINS
Happy October!
This week we will continue using our understanding of ratios and proportions to solve real world problems involving scale factors. The students will focus on how scale factors of 1, less than 1, and greater than 1 affect the size of scaled copies. Our next learning goal will be to use proportions to solve problems involving percents.
Things to remember:
Bring your materials (Chromebooks(charged), notebooks and pencils) to class daily.
Get a good night's rest and come to class prepared to learn.
Math I-Ready assignments will begin next week.
Believe in yourself, you can do it.
Our students are doing a great job. Keep up the good work! If you have any questions or concerns please contact me at litisha.jenkins@fcschools.net.
SCIENCE: MS. HEAD
We are continuing chemistry with a focus on physical and chemical changes with balancing chemical equations. In the second step lessons, we are working on our future selves and the path forward toward our interests. Please let me know if any questions come up (my email: nadinehead@fcschools.net). Thank you!
SOCIAL STUDIES: MR. DOWNUM
Good morning,afternoon, or evening parents. I hope that all made it through the storm well, and that the students had a relaxing day off. We have finished the geography unit and have moved on to the next unit which is titled Birth of A Nation. This unit covers the colonies and The American Revolution. The next two weeks we will be learning about the colonies; why they were formed and the regional differences.
This is an election year and the students have been working hard on predicting who they think will win all of the senate races occurring across the country. The students will all be voting in the senate election on November 8th and we have begun doing some prep work on that. The students all took a quiz to see what political party they are in. Throughout the next two weeks we will also be looking at the candidates for the senate race and where they stand on the issues. I want to make it clear I am not telling the students how they should think or what they should answer, I want the students to be engaged politically when they are of age regardless of what side of the political aisle they are on.
Finally I want to remind all parents that late work is only allowed from students who are absent the day the assignment is given. If the student is in class the assignment must be completed in class. We want to ensure that the students are getting everything out of the unit and we cannot guarantee that if the student is doing the work after the unit is over. If there are any questions please do not hesitate to contact me or anyone on the team.
MATH: MR. HURD
We have just started a new unit at the end of last week and will be continuing our topic of exponential form and scientific notation this week. They will have a quiz of sorts at the end of this week and I am looking forward to the results.
ELA: MS. FROST
The first nine weeks, students will read multiple nonfiction texts about WWII and the conflict(s) between the United States and Japan. Students are asked to read the novel titled Unbroken at home in order to optimize learning opportunities during class. We are working on close reading annotation skills, identifying character traits with text evidence from the text, using context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words, and making inferences.
Our Ultimate Reading Goal this school year is Reading Standard 10: By the end of Grade 8 students will be able to read increasingly complex texts independently for extended periods of time. Extensive independent reading opportunities in and out of school will improve your child’s ability to read fluently, improves comprehend, builds vocabulary bank, and increases stamina to read for long periods of time (i.e. End of Grade Testing).
Please continue to encourage your child to have a fully charged chromebook. Students who come to class unprepared cannot make up for missing work if present in class.
DRAMA: MS. HATTEN
7th and 8th grade: Students are working on playwriting based on original stories. Please talk to your students about doing their work in class. Many times, grades are given at the end of class based on the work actually done during the 90 minute class time. When you see grades in PowerSchool that say Classwork with the date, that means that students were supposed to be doing work independently on their scripts and what I observed during class was that no work was done (I do watch online work through our monitoring system, so I can see their screens and see what they are doing. Also, students should be sharing their documents with me so that I can review their work. This also gives me a history of changes/work for the document so I can see what they did during class) Students have been working in groups to get stories completed, and will be working in groups to begin playwriting, but each student has a scene that is assigned to them to write independently.
6th grade: Students will be working on projects related to our Theater History research. We will be working with glue, paint, and markers. The paint will not come out of clothing, so on days students have Drama I encourage wearing clothing that is not loose. (I do have some smocks available, but they are very big and tend to be harder to work in)
ALL STUDENTS: Parents, please remind your students of our non-negotiables: No phones, food, drinks (except water in a clear bottle), gum or candy. In my classroom I do not allow name calling, calling out, bullying behavior, or disruptive behavior. At this point in the school year, these procedures and rules should be a habit. Warnings have been given several times in class. Repeated offenses will be documented/written up.
The Middle School AIG Vision Statement focuses our efforts toward making classes rigorous, or challenging, for students so that they show growth. This can be tackling more complex topics or asking them to critically think about the subject in their ELA novels. In math this can be moving at a faster clip and adding in a few of the next grade’s standards.
We strive to help them find relevance in their work. Students will focus on learning skills rather than just memorization. They can Google that! Our department is striving to help them have the life skills they need when they leave us.
Lastly, we hope that they form great relationships with peers that also have a love of learning. It is also a goal to teach them the social skills needed to be successful when addressing those in authority as well as colleagues in their future career.
Their AIG teacher is the day to day ELA and Math teacher of the advanced class. I am the AIG Facilitator. I work mostly behind the scenes to support the learning of our advanced students. I come into the classroom to teach and co-teach as an added layer of enrichment. I look forward to a productive year!
Valerie Hawthorne
AIG Facilitator
ACADEMIC RULES FOR ATHLETES
- Athletes must adhere to the academic standards put in place by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
- If your child has been accepted on a sports team, they must prove that they are eligible under DPI rules.
- That means that if they are in 7th or 8th grade, they must have finished the final semester of the 2021-2022 school year passing 3 out of 4 core classes.
- Once coaches have selected their team, their academic history will be checked and those students who are not academically eligible will be let go.
Statewide Summary:
• Results show that there was a negative impact for all students, for all grades, for almost every subject (except English II). These negative impacts were especially true for Math (5th-9th grades) and Science (Biology, 8th grade).
• Most students continued to progress during the pandemic but at a slower pace than they would have done otherwise.
Race/Ethnicity:
• Students of all races/ethnicities were negatively impacted by the pandemic.
• Pre-existing disparities have increased, however, the extent to which these disparities have changed varies by test.
Economically-Disadvantaged:
• Gaps widened between economically-disadvantaged students and the general population of students, especially in reading grade 4, math grade 5, and the sciences. (we've seen the outcomes here at the middle school)
Academically or Intellectually Gifted:
• Despite early predictions, AIG students were significantly negatively impacted too, especially for reading in grades 6-8 and math in grade 8.
WHAT FMS IS DOING TO HELP OUR STUDENTS TO CLOSE THOSE GAPS
- We will be pushing our AIG and Advanced students hard this year with increased rigor and more in-depth activities and lessons.
- We have expanded our Exceptional Children program to offer our students with IEPs top of the line support coupled with time to work on IEP goals.
- All of our Math, ELA, and Science teachers remained at FMS this year - no new teachers in these areas, which is a huge bonus!
- We have a robust Professional Learning Community program that includes weekly collaboration with administration and our instructional coach to maximize district resources and help our teachers to bring their best to the classroom.
- We are fully implementing our Second Step Social/Emotional program this year, which will help students to build those very important social/emotional skills. Students who can manage their emotions and interact well with others are more successful students than students who cannot manage their emotions or interact well with others.
- The entire teaching staff will be doing district-provided professional development call Learning Focused. This professional development gives teachers strategies that help to engage students, deepen learning, and push students to become active learners. We are excited to bring what we learn to the classroom!
- We are expanding our multi-tiered system of supports program to include more time working with grade level teams to collaborate and find solutions for each and every student in the grade. We strongly believe that each child deserves to be taught by teachers who care, and who know how to address each child's learning needs.
WHAT PARENTS CAN DO TO HELP CLOSE THE COVID GAP
- The number one thing parents can to help their child to be successful is to stay "in the know" about how their child is doing academically.
- Download the new FCS app and use it to check grades every day. Once you are in PowerSchool you can click on a current class grade and access all of the assignments and all of the grades your child has gotten on those assignments.
- If you see a zero in a grade for an assignment, that means that the assignment was never submitted or handed in. If you click on the notes section you will see if a teacher left a note regarding that assignment. You can get a lot of information this way sometimes!
- Children sometimes lie to their parents for the first time in middle school, especially about grades and work completed. This is a way for them to separate from their parents, try to keep from getting in trouble, or try to gain something positive. Stay vigilant, and understand that this is normal behavior at this stage of a child's development. If you feel like you don't know the whole story about grades or what your child is saying about something that happened in school, contact us.
- Another important thing for parents is to notice if your child is behaving differently, sleeping too much, or seems not like themselves. Check in with your child and ask them some questions. If you listen carefully you may be able to understand what they are experiencing, and help them to process it. This is hard work for a middle schooler, and they will often need adult help to process interpersonal conflict, how they feel about themselves or their friends, and how they feel about things at home. Keeping that connection with your children will help them to feel supported and able to focus on school. If you are concerned about your child's mental health don't hesitate to reach out - the school has excellent resources to help!
- Middle school students are expected to be more mature and able to be responsible for more academic expectations. However, they still need your help to manage all these new responsibilities! Keep track of their progress, hold them accountable when they slip up, and love them with your whole heart. They will get there, and so will you!