FMS Weekly Update 10.6.24

Good evening, Trojan Families!

This is a message from your proud principal, Mrs. Kinard, and the school leaders at Ferndale Middle School. We strongly encourage you to access the digital version of this announcement, available on our school website and social media. It contains additional important information that you and your students need to know.

Dear Ferndale Middle School Families,

We are reminding you that NWEA testing will take place on Tuesday (Math) and Wednesday (ELA) of this week. Please ensure your child is on time, ready to do their best, and present on those days. Testing is a critical part of tracking their progress.

We also encourage you to check your child's grades regularly in PowerSchool and contact their teachers if you have any concerns or questions.

In addition, we want to recognize that Hispanic Heritage Month continues through October 15th, and October is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month and National Principals Month. Let’s come together as a school community to celebrate and honor the significance of these occasions!

Thank you for your continued support.

Good evening, GCS Families, This November, you can vote on a fraction of a penny sales tax that could boost pay for GCS teachers and frontline workers. A vote this November could mean higher pay for GCS teachers and frontline workers. Learn more about the referendum by visiting

www.gcsnc.com/salestax .

Each month we will be focused on a Trojan Pride character trait. For the month of September students focused on Positive Attitude. For October we will be focused on Respect. Please see below for information on our October PBIS incentive. Students who earned 100 pts or more with NO ISS or OSS will receive a Pop up incentive.

October Grade-Level Attendance Challenge

The grade-level with the highest attendance for the month October will receive a special reward on November 1st! Make sure your student(s) is present so that their grade-level can win!

Attendance Percentages for the Week of 9/30/24:

6th Grade: 95.6 of students present (+2.2%)

7th Grade: 88.4% of students present (+3.1%)

8th Grade: 94.6% of students present (+3%)

Overall: 92.8% students present this week (+2.7%)

Shoutout to 6th grade for having the most students present for the grade-level!!

We had a wonderful week of learning math. The Math Department continues to assess the best way to determine how well scholars have understood and retained math concepts, terms, and vocabulary. We are reviewing data this week for targeted interventions. We will have our NWEA Math Assessment on Tuesday, October 8, 2024.

Please find below the teachers and math content we are covering this week.

Ms. D. Cole and Ms. Walker are continuing to teach 6th Grade Math from Open Up Unit 2, our GCS district approved math curriculum, focusing on Area and Surface Area.

Ms. Spears is continuing to teach 7th Grade Math from Open Up Unit 2, our GCS district approved math curriculum, focusing on Scale Drawings.

Mrs. S. Clarke-Huie, Ms. B. Rudesill, and I are continuing to teach 8th Grade Math from Open Up Unit 2, our GCS district approved math curriculum, focusing on Rigid Transformations and Angle Relationships.

Ms. Clarke-Huie is in teaching Math 1 from Open Up Unit 2, our GCS district approved curriculum, focusing on Linear and Exponential Functions.

Ms. T. Sawyers, our 6th and 7th Grade Math EC Teacher, and Ms. Garner, our 8th Grade Math EC Teacher continue to provide phenomenal support.

Great things continue to lie ahead!

Thank you for your support!

Dr. Cole

Beginning in Grade 6, commonly used frameworks for literacy standards require students to write summaries of texts that are free from students’ personal opinions. Summarization improves reading comprehension and writing skills. In addition, summarization is a strategy that can be practiced with literary or informational text during independent reading. The strategy can be applied to whole texts, such as novels or news articles, or portions of text, such as book chapters. Thus, it is a high-leverage literacy activity that you can use with your middle-school-age child at home.

A summary is a brief, concise statement of the most important information in a text. It includes key textual details and begins with a topic sentence that states the main idea of the text. Importantly, summaries also include transition words and phrases that make logical connections between the textual details. Although summarization might seem like a relatively easy task for children, there are several common errors that children make while writing summaries. First, some children may include interesting or memorable details, rather than those that are most important to understanding the text.Second, children may copy textual details word-for-word, rather than writing the details in their own words. Third, students may include their opinions or judgments about what they read in the text, rather than providing textual details.

This is skill that can also be applied to music and television viewing. Invite your students to write objective summaries about their favorite show- the most recent episode or about a song they just finished listening too. Practice equals progress!!!

Free Virtual Tutoring opportunity for GCS students! Please see flyers below for details.

In the month of October counselors will be pushing into PE classes to engage students in learning around Bullying and Bully Prevention. In addition the counseling team will be adding SEL learning lessons to students Clever dashboards via the Compass app. Students will being engaging in this during homerooms on Friday starting 10/11.

In October we focus on Bully Prevention through our Unity Day Spirit Day and Red Ribbon Week.

• For UNITY day, October 16th, we wear orange in order to send a visible message of building commUNITY through kindness, acceptance, and inclusion to prevent bullying.

• Red Ribbon Week highlights the importance of living a drug-free life. It presents an opportunity for parents, educators, and communities to reinforce the drug-free messages they share with their children throughout the year. During Red Ribbon Week, youth and adults around the nation pledge to increase their knowledge by learning more about the destructive effects of drug abuse, including prescription drug misuse, and renew their commitment to live a healthy, drug-free lifestyle. We will have a spirit week October 21st-25th.

Website: https://www.gcsnc.com/ferndale_middle
Location: 701 Ferndale Boulevard, High Point, NC, USA
Phone: 336-819-2855
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FerndaleTrojanPride
Twitter: @fmstrojanpride