Plymouth South Middle School News

Term 3 grades closed last Friday. As of today, your child's grades for term 3 are accessible in ASPEN. Please use your ASPEN account to access those grades. As a reminder, due to Remote Learning, students will not receive traditional grades such as As, Bs, etc. Students will receive a grade or either "Pass" or "Fail".

In addition, the traditional long list of comments that teachers typically use are not in use at this time. Teachers were issued a small list of comments to choose from that would reflect your child's level of engagement in Remote Learning. This short list of comments was newly generated to coincide with the Remote Learning that we have adopted.

Please click the following link for a brief set of instructions to help you access ASPEN. If you do not have access to your own parent portal, we ask at this time that you log on with your child's account as this is the quickest way for you to gain access to their grades.

If you need a paper copy of the term 3 report card mailed out, please email the PSMS data secretary, Mrs. Arponen at jarponen@plymouth.k12.ma.us with: your child's name, grade and homeroom number, your name and home address and she will mail one out to you next week.

Accessing Grades on ASPEN

It's teacher appreciation week! Thank you to all of our teachers at PSMS! You do so much for our students and families. Your efforts recently are a shining example of that! Thank you to the students and families who contributed to this video! Thank you to our PTA as well for helping to bring this video to life. And a special thanks to Mrs. Burns who created the video!

Students in Mrs. Burkhead´s and Mrs. White´s 6th-grade Ancient Civilization classes continued their study of ancient China and produced replicas of Emperor Shi Huang Di´s Terracotta Army to protect him in the afterlife and designed special robes that depicted symbolic animals and color to represent his characteristics.

Colleen Spiegel 107 and Julia White 106

Colleen works tirelessly to complete all learning opportunities, pushing herself to always give more than is required. She holds herself to a high expectation and successfully achieves her goals. Julia White makes the most out of every learning activity- thoughtfully and thoroughly completing her work with great detail and always in an organized and timely manner. Congratulations.Thank you both for your consistently excellent effort and the positive attitude with which you approach each challenge.

Did you know... during the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, 40 million people died per year during the height of the plague? 7th Grade 2nd Floor students in Mrs. Ring's Pre-Algebra classes have been using statistical analysis to make cross-curricular connections in Social Studies and Science classes. Students analyzed an infographic used for a lesson in Mrs. Sass' Social Studies class that depicted the death tolls of pandemics over the last 2000 years. They applied unit rates, inequalities, and probability models to draw conclusions about our current quarantine in comparison to pandemics in history.
In Mr. Skinner's Science class, students used their math skills to analyze deer and elk populations per square kilometer in Yellowstone to notice that when the deer/elk population decreased, the biodiversity of the land increased. And why did the deer/elk populations decrease, because the wolves were back! Understanding the power of statistical analysis and how data is used to drive public policy has been a topic in both Social Studies and Science this week.

Third floor seventh grade families can access daily work, teacher office hours and emails, and support at our team website. Check in each day for updates. psmsthirdfloor7.weebly.com

This week in 8th grade ELA, Mrs. Miller and Mr. Joyce continued the study of critical literacy using The Outsiders. Students were introduced to the concept of “Power Mapping” and “Power Dynamics” in novels and were provided a Google Slides presentation that walked them through practicing, noticing and recording these concepts. Students were guided through a study of “Power” using clips from the movie The Hate U Give. Students were tasked with completing 2 journal entries in response to The Outsiders as well as creating their own “Power Map” for the novel.

Email: jmurphy@plymouth.k12.ma.us
Website: https://www.plymouth.k12.ma.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=15
Location: 488 Long Pond Road, Plymouth, MA, USA
Phone: (508) 224-2725
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/psmsjaguars/