Feels like we never left! Loving, learning, and laughing are all in full swing this week back from Spring Break! We are settling back into our routines and finding the groove that will take us to the end of the school year. We have so much to look forward to! Basketball trips start this week, students are preparing for Spread the Word, the Middle School Dance details are in the works, GRP and Disney are approaching quickly, and to wrap up the year, middle school students will plan and facilitate Field Day! 

I want to give a special shout out to the seventh grade class! They displayed incredible empathy and organized a fundraiser for Ukraine. They wrote a persuasive letter to Ms. Kelly, worked with Ms. Kayla and created their own fundraising pages and learned about fundraising etiquette, and have reached out to family and friends in order to raise money for families in Ukraine. Over Spring Break, they reached out to the Post and Courier about this special project. They were featured in “Letters to the Editor” in the Post and Courier yesterday! 

Here’s a look at what is happening in each of the classes:

What’s happening in Science:

Seventh Grade began their chemistry unit this week! They explored the states of matter and the impact temperature has on specific molecules, specifically dry ice (CO2) and water (H20). They spent the week investigating substances to determine what was in the “mystery mixture.” It was baking soda and citric acid! Seventh graders also choose an element from the periodic table they will research and create an informational slide that will be part of an interactive periodic table of elements. Every middle school student will contribute their research, creative interpretation, and what they think is cool about their element. When it’s complete, I can’t wait to share it with you!

What’s up in Math?

At the beginning of this week, mathematicians finished and corrected their Mid-Unit 5 Assessments. We have since moved into the statistics portion of this unit. Students are looking at different compilations of data and organizing the data effectively into charts and graphs. Students are able to identify which list of data matches with which graph. They are able to identify correlations and make predictions about future trends. We will move into creating scatter plots and finding a line of best fit for the data. I’m looking forward to the students to strengthen their understanding of using mathematics when solving real-life statistical problems. 

What’s happening in ELA:

This week, Seventh Graders have worked on the following concepts: helping verbs and using apostrophes to show possession. They have also reviewed capitalization, pronouns, articles, punctuations, action verbs, who-which clauses, and homophones. We have also been reading books by Walter Dean Myers and Tim O’Brien about the Vietnam war. Students were able to look at images of the beautiful jungles, rivers, and mountains of Vietnam. They were also able to look at pictures of American soldiers in Vietnam. After looking at images of the Vietnam War and learning some facts about it, they were then able to imagine what the setting would be like in their own individual historical novels. One of their homework assignments this week was to prepare a Google Slide with pictures of what they thought their story setting would look like. The novels that the Seventh Grade students are reading are actually set in the early 1970s with desegregation and the 1930s during the Great Depression. If you haven’t asked them about their novels, please do so.

Important Dates:

April 15 & 18: April Break

April 28: TCS Gala