Howards Grove Middle School
September Parent/Guardian Newsletter Vol. II
Important Upcoming Dates
Monday, September 25th, 4 PM MS Cross Country Meet
Wednesday, September 27th, 3 PM MS Student Council Meeting
Thursday, September 28th, 4 PM MS Cross Country Meet
Friday, September 29th, 2 PM Homecoming ParadeMonday, October 2nd, 4 PM MS Cross Country Meet
Wednesday, October 4th, 3 PM MS Student Council Meeting
Thursday, October 5th, 4 PM MS Cross Country Meet
Wednesday, October 11th, 3 PM MS Student Council Meeting
Wednesday, October 11th, 5 PM PTO Meeting @ NV
Thursday, October 12th, 4 PM 7/8 Grade Girls Basketball
Monday, October 16th, 6 PM School Board Meeting
Tuesday, October 17th, 4 PM 7/8 Grade Girls Basketball
Thursday, October 19th, 4 PM 7/8 Grade Girls Basketball
Monday, October 23rd, NO SCHOOL, Professional Development Day for Staff
Principal's Message
The school year is off to a great start. The energy the staff and students bring to our school is always an exciting time of year. Our staff has spent much time preparing for and anticipating the arrival of students back to our building. I'd like to applaud their efforts, dedication, and care that they bring each and everyday to support our students. I am grateful to be a part of a school and community who prioritize our students academic growth, social and emotional wellbeing, and behaviors.
Our commitments:
To start the school year our staff have intentionally been engaging with students to grow relationships, create positive culture, and instill our building values in all school environments. Students participated in low risk and highly engaging activities within the classroom to start the school year. As a result of these conversations, students and staff created classroom expectations surrounding our building beliefs.
At Howards Grove Middle School We Believe In:
Respect
Responsibility
Integrity
Appreciation
These expectations apply to how we will create the best possible learning environments for all students within our school. With student ownership and engagement in the process of creating expectations, students will have a clear vision and avenue to communicate what they need to learn best. Staff have modeled the expectations, reviewed expectations, will continue to grow relationships within their classrooms, and will reteach any unlearned expectations should students need further review. This process provides a clear pathway to maximize our learning potential for all students and provide support when needed for success.
As we continue to grow our capacity in supporting student learning environments, students have participated in taking a survey, answering several questions on how they learn best, to support our efforts as we approach the opening of our new school in the 2025 school year. The new facility presents an opportunity to communicate what we feel are the most important aspects of our school and provide structures that support those decisions . Many decisions that we make will impact future culture and learning for generations to come. Student learning and engagement are at the top of this list of importance. While we work through this process, getting input from all stakeholders will be crucial to planning what I believe will offer our students learning environments to maximize their potential for learning and success.
If you are interested in further information regarding the new middle school as this relates to the passed referendum please visit the district website: www.hgtigers.org.
A few reminders:
Parent pick up is in the back of our school building. Please help us in keeping with the traffic patterns that work to keep our students and staff safe. Our end of the school day allows our students who ride buses to be dismissed first, our walkers secondly, and lastly our parent pick up in back. There are crossing guards to help work with students as they cross HWY 42 or Kennedy Avenue. Our primary focus is safety. I appreciate your help in supporting our process.
Please be sure to contact the school office if your student is absent from school. If you email the office I ask that you please attach Ashley Pieper, apieper@hgtigers.com, and Kailea Schmit, kschmit@hgtigers.com to the email if you contact staff directly about attendance. Please also feel free to call: (920) 565-4452.
Our after school program is up and running. A thank you to Lakeland University, Howards Grove High School Student Council, Howards Grove High National Honor Society, and Mr. Dan McMullen for helping support our students. This program meets in our library on Mondays and Thursdays after school from 3-3:45 PM. There will be a skyward email sent monthly with the schedule for families.
Thank you parents for your engagement in our school, for supporting your students, and for working together to create a partnership of student success in our school. I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to serve in the School District of Howards Grove. My heart and soul is a part of all families, staff, and students in our district. I am confident we can work in shared commitment this school year. If at any time there is anything I can do, please feel free to contact me at any time. I wish everyone a happy, safe, and a successful school year.
Angie Houston
Middle School Principal
Intervention
Fall i-Ready Diagnostic Testing Results:
Students have completed the i-Ready Diagnostic(Universal Screener) in Reading and Math. Teachers will share the results with parents/guardians at the fall conferences. During Tiger Time students will be working on their personal instructional path on i-Ready to complete 45 minutes of math and 45 minutes of reading lessons per week. Students should complete about two lessons in both subjects per week. Please click on the links below to learn more about what i-Ready is and how you can support your student. Please contact Kerri Eilers HGMS Interventionist with any questions or concerns at keilers@hgtigers.com.
i-Ready Helpful Links for Families:
Understanding diagnostic results from i-Ready
Counselor's Corner
There are some awesome online opportunities coming up for families through the Student and Family Assistance Program. The SFAP will be offering four different webinars though a series titled "Things We Wish Grown Ups Knew". The webinars are free, all you need to do is register! Please see the attached informational flier and consider attending any or all of the available webinars! Mrs. Luecke
Student Council
This year our student council members got a jumpstart in planning and learned a lot about what it means to be leaders in their school and community by joining our summer school class, Leading With a Vision. Students discussed various topics, built relationships, developed a vision statement for the year, and started planning events for the student council. The group’s vision statement and goal for this year is to empower student voices, foster respect among all students, and ignite school spirit to promote school pride. They have been busy welcoming students to the new school year by hanging banners and locker signs, decorating bulletin boards, and putting together welcome gifts for students who are new to our district. They are busy getting ready for Homecoming Week, which starts September 25th, and leads up to the Homecoming game on Friday, September 29th. See the dress up days below. The new officers have been planning for our first full meeting happening this week on Wednesday from 3:00-3:30 in Mrs. Hoerth’s room. At the beginning of the year, the student council is open to any 7th or 8th grade students interested in being a positive leader and role model in their school. Later in the year, we will open our council up to interested 6th grade students. We are excited for the new school year.
Thank you Mrs. Hoerth for your guidance and leadership with Student Council!
Homecoming Spirit Days
September 25th-September 29th
No Mirror Monday- (wear your pajamas, messy hair, and mixed up look)
Tuesday - Favorite Movie Character Day
Wednesday - Barbie and Ken Day
Thursday - Neon Day
Friday - Howards Grove Gear and Colors
8th Grade
ELA- Miss Isabella Johnston
It has been so wonderful to get to start off the year with our wonderful 8th graders. I have really enjoyed getting to know everyone. We have done some get to know each other activities in ELA. One activity that we did was that students were given a blank outline of a croc shoe, that they got to color however they wanted to represent themselves. Then on the croc they designed three charms to put on the croc that, they then wrote a sentence explaining what it meant to them. Now these very colorful crocs are decorating our ELA classroom, and help showcase all our students. Please see the picture below.
We also worked on our writing skills by writing a personal narrative story about a small moment in our lives. Each student picked one moment to write about, then had to use details and descriptive words to make their stories come to life. They all came up with wonderful, and creative stories that helped me get to know all of them a little better.
Now we are starting to kick off our dystopian book club unit! Where students will work together to explore different dystopian books in groups. We will work together to reflect and analyze the novels that they are reading.
8TH GRADE MATH- Mr. Gary Kalk
It's been a great start to the school year in 8th grade math. The first several days of class, students completed a diagnostic test covering what they are to know and be able to do by the end of the year. This assessment indicated that students know a little already about some topics, but still have much to learn overall. Our first unit of study is Transformational Geometry. We've spent the last week beginning to learn what transformations are (rotations, reflections, translations, and dilations). Now we're starting to take a closer look at each. An emphasis is being placed on being able to describe the transformation as well as their effects on a figure. Students are also learning how to use mapping notation to write a transformation algebraically.
8TH GRADE ALGEBRA- Mr. Gary Kalk
Algebra students are deep into a review of last year's learning targets. Thus far, students have reviewed Expressions, Equations, and Functions. As well as Linear Equations. Next up will be a review of Linear Functions, Equations of Linear Functions, and Linear Inequalities. While our review of last year's material goes rather quickly, it is an important first step in a continuation of what is yet to come. Soon students will be learning about Systems of Linear Equations and Inequalities, Exponents and Exponential Functions, Quadratic Expressions and Equations, and Quadratic Functions.
SCIENCE- Mr. Marty Ryan
We are just getting into our first unit of Space Science. The students are learning about their Solar system and the placement of the Sun and the Planets in correlation to their distances to each other. We demonstrated this by our "Schoolyard Solar System Lab" as seen in the photos. Students measured the corresponding planets to their distance of the Sun in the center of the soccer field.SOCIAL STUDIES- Mr. Marty Ryan
We just started talking about the four causes of World War I and focusing on Geography and the understanding how that affects how the war is carried out and the alliances formed.
7th Grade
ELA- Mrs. Holly Hoerth
It has been such a fun start to the school year getting to know all of the new seventh grade students. I have started to get to know more about them as readers and writers through various activities and conversations, and I’m really excited to see where this year takes us. They have already started their reading journeys by checking out new books at the library the very first week of school. It has been fun to talk with them about their books to see what they think about and notice as readers. We started the year in detective groups in an attempt to solve the mystery of the famous Ghost Ship, The Mary Celeste, a real mystery in history. Groups learned about the ship through different texts and videos, and they were asked to come up with their own theory as to what they believed happened to the missing crew members of the Mary Celeste and why their ship was abandoned. Groups had to back up their theories with evidence and justification to explain their thinking.
To help build our classroom community and get to know each other, we have talked about our four community values: respect, responsibility, integrity, and appreciation. Students helped decide the expectations for both students and teachers in all four of these areas. The seventh graders just finished designing their Digital Lockers to help us get to know one another. They were asked to add ten items to their lockers that represent who they are.
We will be starting our first writing unit this week: Writing Realistic Fiction with Symbolism, Syntax, and Truth. Students will show their creativity by writing fictional stories based off of realistic characters, settings, and situations. I am also very fortunate this quarter to be working with Katie Bleck while she is student teaching. Katie comes to us from Lakeland University, and she has already started forming connections with the students and helping out in the classroom. She is going to be a great addition to our classroom this quarter, and we are excited to have her join our class.
MATH- Mrs. Ann Parnitzke
It has been a great start of the year. Students are working hard and having good attitudes toward learning, even when challenges are thrown their way. One of my goals for students each year is to get them to gain confidence in their abilities and to learn to work with things that may be challenging for them. I believe we all want to be good at everything we do, but sometimes it takes time and practice before mastery is achieved. This is sometimes hard for kids to understand. Together, we will work this year to bring out the best in each other.
The 7th Grade Math curriculum begins with studying Ratios and Proportions. This is somewhat of a review from last year with a few new concepts added on.
The Algebra curriculum begins with translating Algebra to English. This means making sense of what the expression means in "Algebra" language.
SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES- Mr. Peter Schwantes
To start off the school year the students have been sharing a lot about their interests, backgrounds and connections to both science and social studies. In science this year we will be exploring living things by examining cells, using microscopes, making lab observations about plants, hatching birds to view development and much more. We just started our first observational lab, experimenting with mold, to determine what living things need to survive on Earth. In social studies, we have been exploring the many elements that make up social studies, and determining our favorite things to learn about past events. We will eventually be using student interest to drive inquiry-based projects in class related to American History from 1800 to the early 1900s.
6th Grade
WRITING- Mrs. Becky Holzer
The 6th graders began the school year by listening to the fractured fairy tale, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by Jon Scieszka. They wrote opinion pieces, using writing frames to support their opinion if they felt the wolf was really framed! We will begin to write personal narratives and learn how to choose small moments in our lives and craft those small moments into amazing stories. We will study personal narratives written by other middle school writers and determine what writing elements are essential to writing a well written personal narrative. Students will create personal writing goals, collaborate with each other, and engage in the writer’s workshop process to independently write and publish a personal narrative.
READING- Mrs. Amber Schwerin
To begin the school year the sixth graders engaged in a game called Would You Rather? This activity helped us learn more about each other's likes and dislikes in the areas of school, food, and entertainment. Students also filled out a Getting to Know You survey to help me better connect with students on a much quicker level. I really enjoy reading about their interests and finding out what helps them to be productive in school. The questionnaire also has specific questions for reading. This assists with guiding students to the best fit books and the genres that motivate them for reading enjoyment.
The unit of study the sixth graders are currently exploring is Deeper Character Study. This unit helps students take charge of their reading lives and engages students to read with a detailed eye as they gather text evidence and evaluate multiple theories about complex characters. In the book we are studying, On My Honor, Marion Dane Bauer uses few words to make a strong impact on the reader. Each scene of the story is described so vividly that the reader really experiences all of Joel's character traits and emotions as they occur to him.
MATH- Mrs. Gina Haala
The school year is off to a great start! The first week of school we spent a lot of time setting up routines, participating in icebreaker activities, and participating in classroom expectations using brainstorming activities. All of the students had a voice in what each of our core values - Respect, Responsibility, Integrity, and Appreciation - look like in a middle school classroom.
Now we have been working on our Integers unit, learning about positive and negative whole numbers, opposites, plotting integers on a number line, and ordering integers from least to greatest. We also are learning about the absolute value of integers and what magnitude each integer holds, and we are applying that knowledge to real world situations. Once we finish up with our unit on integers, we will be moving on to our unit with rational numbers.
SCIENCE- Mrs. Kayla Bell
6th Grade science has been working on the Organization of Science lessons. They were able to re-arrange a set of cards outlining the different types of science. Next week the students will create visual displays and paragraphs explaining how the scientific levels fit into the Wisconsin Wetland. Wetland Field trip is September 21 and 22. During the activities the 6th grade teams have been focusing on cooperative group roles and individual responsibility.
SOCIAL STUDIES- Mr. Dan McMullen
We are learning about civilizations and culture. Soon we will start a project where each student will be assigned a civilization to research and then present to their class on. We have had good discussions about ‘this day in History’ as well as 9/11 and the ramifications of what happened that day.
5th Grade
WRITING- Mrs. Amber Schwerin
Personal narrative writing is an essential part of students’ writing toolbox, therefore, I decided to put a unique twist on their first personal narrative writing piece. I started the year with a fun writing activity where students wrote a letter to their future self on the first day of school which they will read on the last day of school. Needless to say, the fifth graders had a wonderful time composing their letter to themselves.
Personal narrative writing is so much more fun when students get to integrate their interests and tell more about who they are as an individual! Students didn’t even notice that they were building their writing skills as they carefully curated their answers to a fill in the blank story that asked personal questions about themselves. I really enjoyed watching fifth graders dig deeper to flesh out ideas as they created their letters. I can’t wait to return their writing creation at the end of the year. This will be a great way to help students see how far they've come in their writing process throughout the school year!
READING- Mrs. Becky Holzer
We are learning to take charge of our reading lives! The entire fifth grade signed a reading oath. They have promised that in order to grow as readers and take charge of their reading they will: 1. Work on their reading 2. Take on the goal of getting better at their reading 3. Work with deliberateness toward the specific goals that they set
Our first Unit of Study is Interpretation Book Clubs: Analyzing Themes. Minilessons will focus on writing about their reading, just not reading a page or two in their books and writing down whatever comes to mind. Students will take charge of their reading lives and learn to think deeply about their book’s characters, plot, setting, and repeating objects to identify the book’s theme or themes. We will read aloud daily from the short, yet powerful book, Home of the Brave, by Katherine Applegate, where reading strategies will be modeled. We will read our first book club book together as a class and in small groups, The Best/Worst School Year Ever, by Barbara Robinison. Students will then select independent books or continue to read in small groups throughout the rest of the unit. The fifth grade has also brainstormed ideas to make this year’s Readers Workshop as powerful as possible. Stay tuned to future newsletters to read about their ideas and see them put into action!
MATH- Mrs. Gina Haala
The school year is off to a great start! The first week of school we spent a lot of time setting up routines, participating in icebreaker activities, and participating in classroom expectations using brainstorming activities. All of the students had a voice in what each of our core values - Respect, Responsibility, Integrity, and Appreciation - look like in a middle school classroom.
Now we have moved into our first unit on whole number place value and multiplication. We currently have reviewed place values and recognized the 10 to 1 relationship among place values. In addition to that, we are exploring the use of powers of 10 and exponents. We are looking for patterns that we see when multiplying by multiples of 10. Then we will move into multiplying 1-digit numbers and multi-digit numbers.
SCIENCE- Mrs. Kayla Bell
5th grade science has been working on "Communicating like a Scientist". The students have created a set of directions for a unique Lego shape (that they built). Then other groups had the opportunity to "test" these written directions. During the build the 5th grade teams have been focusing on cooperative group roles and how to have productive and positive conversations around the content.
SOCIAL STUDIES- Mr. Dan McMullen
5th Graders are currently studying Maps. We are practicing how to use a map to find directions and locations. We will soon start states & capitals. We have done several interactive games for team building such as ‘hot seat.’ Also, we discussed 9/11 and the ramifications of what happened that day.
Howards Grove Middle School
Website: www.hgtigers.com
Location: 506 Kennedy Avenue, Howards Grove, WI, USA
Phone: (920) 565-4452