May Newsletter

The end of the school year is approaching fast. This month is busy with activities as we wrap up the year. Make sure to keep an eye on the calendar for all out upcoming events!

Returning student registration opens today! Don't forget to register this month to save money on your registration fee!

As the weather improves, please make sure your child in in clothing the meets the dress code. Torsos and backs should be covered and shorts should be an appropriate length for all students.

Physical Education students will be going outside as much as possible in May. The main unit will be softball/kickball.

• May is Asian American Pacific Islander Month

• D3 CLCs close on Friday, May 24

• AR is due on Friday, May 24

• lost/ overdues/ fines due:

• 8th grade: Tuesday, May 28 to the MS office or Online (see Canva link for details)

• 5th-7th grade: Wednesday, May 29 to the MS office or Online (see Canva link for details)

• Walking field trip to FRGML grades 5-8: Tuesday, May 28

Happy Summer Reading! Remember to visit FRGML: https://frgml.org/youth/youth-programs/

The District 3 Spring Concert will be on Thursday, May 16th at 7pm! This concert will feature the Middle School and ARS choirs, concluding with a combined finale piece. The Jazz Band, Beginning Band, and Symphonic Band will also be performing! Band students should arrive for warm-up at 6:15 and choir students should arrive at 6:30pm.

Art Club runs on Tuesdays after school until 3:25p.m. All 7th and 8th grade students are welcome to join any time. Recently students went outside to draw like the Impressionists, au plein air also known as outdoor painting. The kids loved the experience and with the nicer weather we plan to get out more.

Lit: Students will be finishing a Poetry unit and participating in literary book clubs.

GW: Students will be completing writing tasks that are connected to their literary book clubs.

Math: We will continue with dividing fractions. We will move into the unit of study on measurement.

Science: Students are making observations and measurements to identify materials based on their properties. They will measure and graph quantities to provide evidence that regardless of the type of change that occurs when heating, cooling, or mixing substances, the total weight of matter is conserved.

SS: Students will be completing a unit on the Civil War.

STEM: Students will continue to work on coding and building robots.

Music: We are continuing our unit on world drumming! While we began by learning how to hold a drumstick and play the bucket drums, we are now introducing African drumming. By listening to music from Kenya, Ghana, and Guinea, we will learn what makes African drumming unique. Students will also learn about the different African instruments, create djembe drum art, and finally, create a drum circle composition! We will finish the year with our ukulele unit!

Lit: We continue to read Refugee by Gratz. This powerful book has allowed us to discuss moral dilemmas, human compassion, survival in desperate times, and cultural empathy. AR goals and progress can be monitored by having your student log in to Renaissance. Please note the CLC is going to close down May 24th, so be aware that all books must be returned by that date and AR goals must be met.

GW: Students just completed a unit on sentence types and structures. We continue listening and recording the Six-Minute podcast. We will finish the trimester with a speech unit that has students planning, preparing, and presenting a speech. Please monitor your child’s assignments and progress on Padlet and PowerSchool, and encourage him/her to finish the school year strong.

Math: We are finishing up our unit on surface area and volume. After this, we will move into integers, number lines, and the coordinate plane.

Accelerated: We are finishing up our unit on geometric shapes and angles. We will be reviewing the topics covered this school year to prepare for our final benchmark.

Science: We will be planning an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object. Students will also begin to use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves that includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy in a wave.

SS: In 6th grade social studies, the students are finishing their visit to Ancient Rome. As we head into the end of the school year, we will be learning about the Middle Ages, the Renaissance & Reformation, and the Age of Exploration.

Art: Students are now focusing on the element of art ‘form’. Students will be introduced to a variety of artists who have focused on sculpture as their main form of expression. Auguste Rodin, Joan Miro and Louise Nevleson are just a few of the artists students will learn about during this unit. Students will explore a variety of ways to manipulate paper and will finish with a lively sculpture focusing on the elements of art: line, value, color, space, and form.

Music: We have begun our study of music in pop culture! We will learn about album cover art, symbolism, and musical genres. We will also learn about how music and emotion are connected, and we will create personal playlists of songs that match the many emotions we experience everyday. We will finish the year with our ukulele unit!

Lit: We continue to explore the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Currently we are reading “The Raven” and are taking a deeper look at each stanza to truly get an understanding of the mood, theme, and meaning behind his poem. We will complete our pilot program, Amplify, in the next few weeks reviewing several of Poe’s short stories and poems. AR goals and progress can be monitored by having your student log in to Renaissance. Please note the CLC is going to close down May 24th, so be aware that all books must be returned by that date and AR goals must be met.

GW: We finished the 3rd trimester project: Narrative Write. The students then worked through dangling and misplaced modifiers. We will finish the trimester with a mythology unit. Students will research information, create a slideshow, and present their chosen mythological character. Please monitor your child’s assignments and progress on Padlet and PowerSchool, and encourage him/her to finish the school year strong.

Math: Students are wrapping up our chapter on Statistics, where they learned how to determine if conclusions are valid by analyzing the sample population and comparing populations using data displays. We will move into geometric shapes and angles after this chapter.

Accelerated: We are finishing up our unit on Surface area and Volume. We will be reviewing the topics covered this school year to prepare for our final benchmark.

Science: Students have started exploring the connections between biotic and abiotic factors within an ecosystem, with a focus on biodiversity and how populations of organisms adapt over time. Students will research National Parks to explain these connections and how the relationships of organisms rely on a number of factors. There will also be a field trip to the water conservation district to discover how important water is to our ecosystem!

SS: We are wrapping up our chapter on expansion in the United States. After this, we will move into learning about slavery and the Civil War.

Art: Students just wrapped up a chalk pastel unit and learned so much about working with this medium and did a fabulous job! We are entering a water color unit. Students will demonstrate their understanding of how to create a variety of techniques as they complete two paintings. Mixed media will be incorporated into projects as needed.

Spanish: Students will be learning subject pronouns, the verb “to be”, and common adjectives, and will apply this knowledge to describe people.

Lit: As we head into the end of the school year, the 8th graders are examining mysteries. We continue to work on our unit for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, and we will end with Sherlock Holmes, himself, in The Adventure of The Speckled Band.

GW: In Grammar & Writing, students are finishing up their unit on verbals and are about to start working on the “Space Race Unit” This unit will focus on using primary and secondary source documents for informational research, as well as discussing and writing about this fascinating topic.

Math: Students will learn about scientific notation and transformations.

Algebra: We are finishing up graphing quadratic functions. We will finish our year with solving quadratic equations.

Geometry: Students will continue to work on surface area and volume and end the year with arcs. Don’t forget we will have a Semester 2 final too!

Science: Students will be researching and discovering how human use of resources affects the climate and the world as a whole. There will also be a number of fun end-of-the-year activities for students to participate in, such as launching bottle rockets.

SS: 8th graders will be learning about the major events of the 1950’s, 60’s & 70’s in US History.

Health: Students will learn about the benefits of nutrition and end the year by discussing the prevention of STD’s.

Spanish: Students will be learning subject pronouns, the verb “to be”, and common adjectives, and will apply this knowledge to describe people.

STEM: Students will continue to learn about coding and making inventions work.