ORHS Athletics for Rising 9th Graders
Rising 9th graders interested in participating in athletics at ORHS should use the contact information below for more information:
- Football: Please send the student's name, address, cell phone, previous middle school, Parent Name, Cell Phone, and Parent Email to Coach Gaddis's email (jbgaddis@ortn.edu) or mail to Joe Gaddis, Oak Ridge High School, 1450 Oak Ridge Turnpike, Oak Ridge, TN 37830
- Volleyball: Tryouts are scheduled for July 6-7 from 1-4PM at ORHS Arena. Coach Kolodney will host an information session on Zoom on June 1st at 6 PM for any families interested. The meeting is not mandatory but could be helpful for new families to get an idea of how our program works and what it would look like if your daughter were to make the team. Please contact Coach Kolodney (dmkolodney@ortn.edu) in order to access the Zoom meeting or ask any additional questions or concerns.
- Girls Basketball: Please send the student's name, parent's name(s) and phone numbers to Coach Redman (hptaylor@ortn.edu).
- Boys Basketball: Please send the student's name, address, and phone number as well as a parent's name, phone number, and email to Coach Scott (sco34tt@yahoo.com)
Counselors Corner
Good Evening from JMS Counseling Office! We hope that you had a great week and you were able to drop off your laptop, pick up personal items from your lockers and purchase a yearbook. We need to give extra thanks to Ms. Pelletier for providing a surprise for each 8th grader when they dropped off their laptops. This newsletter provides information how to close learning gaps over the summer.
Barbara Dianis from Edutopia states that a nonacademic summer can cause students at every grade level to digress two to three months in their academic skills. She states that half an hour to an hour set aside daily can help students close learning gaps and perform at higher levels during the upcoming school year. Summer is an ideal time for students of all ages to strengthen their academic skills while still having plenty of time left over for summer activities. Here are some ways that can help.
1. Make Time for Learning
Set aside time for your student to read each day during the summer break -- 15 to 30 minutes per day is all it takes! During the summer, students have more time to read for enjoyment, which also offers a great opportunity to preserve and strengthen their reading skills.
A great way to track how much reading your child is doing during the summer months is a tally on your regular activities calendar.
Parents of students reading below grade level should read with their children in order to assist with sounding out words they might not be able to decode themselves. In addition, keep a dictionary or online source close by to help students figure out those words by using the phonetic spelling provided.
2. Learn and Practice Affixes
Children and teens of all grade levels can improve their reading and spelling skills by learning affixes. To make this practice appealing, turn it into a game! Students can create flashcards of
prefixes and suffixes. On the reverse side of each affix flash card, they should write the meaning. All children love guessing games and can point out what they think the affix means. You can also use this game to help them learn new vocabulary words.
3. Develop Math Skills
Though it may not seem fun to them at the time, working on just three to four math problems per day during the summer can prevent students' mathematical skills from getting rusty. Parents can purchase a math workbook for their child's academic level at most bookstores. Working on just a few problems daily (or more, if your child enjoys math) can help students of all ages close the gaps in their math skills, preserve what they learned during the previous school year, and prepare for the next.
4. Improve Reading Comprehension
To help your children better understand what they are reading, consider offering them a reading comprehension workbook to work on several minutes daily. Students of all grades and ability levels can benefit scholastically by working with material that offers self-quizzes and high-interest stories. This practice helps develop their fact-retaining and inference-making skills.
5. Review and Build Grammar Skills
Review the past grade level's grammar concepts and begin to work on the next school year's concepts. During the summer, students benefit from weekly reviews or pre-learning two to four lessons. Find workbooks geared to their grade or skill level and encourage them to check their work using the answer key provided.
6. Encourage Creative Writing
Creative writing is a great way to improve your children's written language skills while giving them a fun and imaginative activity during the summer! Have your student write a creative paragraph each week. As a parent, you can help by assisting him or her with choosing a "topic" (such as a family vacation, special outing or holiday memory) to write a paragraph about.
Students can also benefit from using a thesaurus and changing several common words to more interesting words. This will make their writing more interesting while learning great new words at the same time.
7. Focus on Specific Skills
Pinpoint the subjects your child had the most trouble learning the previous school year, and make sure to fit in some practice in these areas. Summer is an ideal time to set aside just 15 to 30 minutes a day for helping your student on areas of difficulty. Students may wish to play learning games with their friends to help make the time fly by and make learning more fun.
Over the summer, students and parents who practice the above tips can see great strengthening and improvement in scholastic skills and avoid digressing two to three months in learning. Summer learning can be fun and challenging at the same time. Students may find learning to be more fun as they become more capable of meeting scholastic challenges and overcoming any learning weaknesses. By implementing a summer plan and igniting your child's passion for learning, he or she can enjoy a renewed sense of academic self-esteem and dignity -- wonderful benefits of learning not to be "counted out."
If your child is a rising 6th-8th grade and have not sign up for 2020-2021 electives please click on one of the links below. – You Must watch the video to the end to see directions how to sign up. The last day to sign up is Tuesday, May 26th.
JMS Enrollment and Withdraw
If you have a family member or a friend that needs to enroll their child for the 2020-2021 school year at JMS please follow link below.
Enrollment: Please be sure to read the entire document and fill out everything that is required. The top of the document is an extensive check list of documents you will need when you go to enroll your student. Be sure to save often to your device to prevent losing the whole document.
If you have moved or plan to move out of the Oak Ridge City District please follow the link below.
Withdrawal: Please be sure to read the entire document and fill out everything that is required. Please remember that a student will not be fully withdrawn from Oak Ridge Schools until we have received a request for records from the new school.
Contact Amy Myers-Counseling Registrar for more information or questions at amyers@ortn.edu
Summer Reading
Rising 5th and 6th Grade
We encourage you to read 20 minutes a day in increase reading fluency and comprehension. Questions contact mfox@ortn.edu or njcorrigan@ortn.edu (5th grade) or skwilson@ortn.edu
(6th grade)
Rising 7th Grade
This summer we are encouraging rising 7th graders to read one of four novels listed below. We realize these times are different and that accessing any of these books might be difficult. That is why we are suggesting students read but not requiring it. These are all books we have used for summer reading in years prior, and students tend to enjoy them. Of course, we are thrilled that students participate in any reading, so if there are other books students would like to read, that is wonderful.
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, or
Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt
To encourage careful reading of any book a student might read, we will have a day of voluntary reporting on what students read over the summer. The student can bring in his/her book(s) and give a verbal synopsis of it. We hope this will give other students ideas on what they might like to read through the school year.
If you have any questions, please contact Ms. Humphrey at jhumphrey@ortn.edu or Ms. Sears at crsears@ortn.edu.
Rising 8th Grade
Welcome to the 8th Grade! Due to the crazy end of the school years, we will not be doing the traditional summer reading. Instead, we’ve compiled a book of recommended reading. Ms. McMahon and Mr. Sprouse would love for you to pick at least one book off of this list to read over the summer. Though it is not required, it can help you avoid losing all the skills you’ve gained over the last year. When we return, Mr. Sprouse and Ms. McMahon will provide a project, quiz, or writing assignment to earn extra credit on your first midterm for completing summer reading.
Stay safe and healthy...and read!
If you have any additional questions feel free to contact us by email at: Ms. McMahon jamcmahon@ortn.edu or Mr. Sprouse cjsprouse@ortn.edu
Action/Adventure
*Call of the Wild - Jack London
The Hunger Games -Suzanne Collins
Non-Fiction
Lion: a long way home -Saroo Brierly
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind -William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
Mystery
The Westing Game -Ellen Raskin
When You Reach Me –Rebecca Stead
*The Moonstone –Wilkie Collins
*The Hound of the Baskervilles –Sir Conan Doyle
Sci-Fi
Uglies -Scott Westerfeld
The Giver – Lowis Lowery
Fantasy
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (if you haven’t read it already) -JK Rowling
The Lost Hero –Rick Riordan
Magnus Chase: the sword of summer –Rick Riordan
*The Hobbit –JRR Tolkien
Realistic Fiction
Freak the Mighty
Okay, For Now -Gary Schmidt
Ghost –Jason Reynolds
Historical Fiction
The Mighty Ms. Malone - Christopher Paul Hunt
Across Five Aprils -Irene Hunt
Classic Literature
*Little Women _Louisa May Alcott
*Treasure Island -Robert Louis Stevenson
Other
Crossover -Kwame Alexander (poetry)
Leviathan –Scott Westerfeld (steam punk)
The Marvels -Brian Selznick (graphic novel, of a sort)
*More advanced literature, but open for anyone to read
Rising Freshman
Oak Ridge High School will not be requiring students to complete a traditional summer reading assignment for the upcoming summer break. We feel under the present conditions the task would be too burdensome and the logistics too difficult to overcome. Instead, this year, we are posting to the school’s website a list of recommended readings for students in order to provide options for continued learning and to mitigate potential losses in reading skills over the summer. The list includes selected works from different disciplines and departments at the high school for students who might be interested in science, math, technology, history, social science, and classic literature. There is a mix of all nonfiction and fiction genres, and the selections range from high-interest contemporary works to traditional, canonical texts. Although we have made every effort to consider content and subject matter in order to avoid sensitive topics, controversial issues, or mature subject matter, parents or guardians are ultimately the best judges of what is suitable for their students. Therefore, we strongly suggest that parents or guardians evaluate each selected text to determine whether a work is appropriate for their students. The list also identifies if and where a text may be available online in a free eBook or audiobook format.
https://www.ortn.edu/ORHS/summerreading2020.pdf
We hope that students enjoy the works we have selected, and if there are any questions, please contact Michael Feuer, Oak Ridge High School Department of English Coordinator: mfeuer@ortn.edu
Have a great summer and reach out if we can help in anyway this summer!
Mrs. Castle mccastle@ortn.edu