8th Grade Weekly Newsletter

Good morning 8th grade families! There is a lot of information here from Spirit Days, to Conferences, to High School transition information, let alone the usual classroom updates. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed and communicating with the team with any outstanding questions or concerns?

We are hosting Parent-Teacher Conferences on Monday, February 10th as well as Tuesday, February 11th.

• On Monday 2/10, we are going to have prescheduled conferences with all the core subject teachers. If you'd like to schedule a conference, please sign up on this doodle.
• On Tuesday 2/11, we will have drop in style conferences from 4 PM to 7 PM at the Middle School where you may come in whenever is convenient for you.

In March, our 8th Grade Students and familes are going to be invited to a Transition to High School Informational Night. The details of this event will be sent out at a later date. Until then, we would like to get your feedback as parents / guardians to see what you feel would be most important to review! Some of the topics we plan to address are the following:

- Electives / JR ROTC

- Dual Enrollment

- Career Tech Center

- Michigan Merit Curriculum and Kingsley Graduation Requirements

- Top 10 Honors

- Athletics / Clubs Overview

- Parent Responsibilities

The link for the survey is here! Please have your submission in by Tuesday February 25th. High School Questions can be directed to Lori Heitmeyer (lheitmeyer@kingsleyschools.org) or Lori Nolf (lnolf@kingsleyschools.org).

Great Kindness Week is next week! As a Middle School we have some fun things to participate in if students choose to! Please find those things and details below!

Food Drive: Students are encouraged to bring in canned food / non perishable food! Students should bring these items to their first hour. These items will all be donated to a local food pantry!

Classroom: Many classrooms, especially during WIN, will be watching videos, having discussions, and doing activities emphasizing kindness.

Dodgeball: We will have our annual staff vs. students dodgeball game on Friday January 31st during 7th hour! 8th grade students who would like to participate need to turn in 2 STAG tags to Mr. Buniewicz by Tuesday.
Spirit Week: See Calendar Attached!

The winter NWEA testing window opens next week. The 8th grade students will be completing both Math and Language Arts NWEA tests in the coming weeks.

February 10th - Scheduled Conference Night (4-7 PM)

February 11th - Drop-In Conference Night (4-7 PM)

February 14th and 17th - No School - Mid Winter Break

Blooket: https://play.blooket.com/play?hwId=678e586dff0e21427bb359ca

Quiz Vocabulary: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1niI6ZxutgAXQ5SpcjUnjSdtPIhb84tbQOaSIbt8QM_o/edit?usp=sharing

Students took the first quiz of the third quarter on Washington's Presidency. Students may retake one or both sections of the quiz. There will be time in class dedicated to this on Tuesday, but students may take this whenever they are ready anytime after Monday.

As for new learning, we are going to dive into Washington's Farewell Address before moving onto our new unit on Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion.

Algebra: NWEA Winter Testing. Pre-Algebra: Linear Equations Test Tuesday or Wednesday then NWEA Winter Testing.

Students started their first week off learning about basic cooking and sewing supplies. We are trying to get all students started on their first sewing project and plan on starting a few basic cooking projects next week!

This week we started with a mostly new group of students. We have begun playing a variety of tabletop games that feature the deck-building mechanic. We will continue playing them into next week. Students are completing written analysis of the games in terms of theme and how other mechanics work with the deck-building mechanic.

Thank you for reading the newsletter! Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours!