Robert Taft Middle School 1000 S. Main St, Crown Point IN ... · Math- In Mrs. Slosson’s math...
Transcript of Robert Taft Middle School 1000 S. Main St, Crown Point IN ... · Math- In Mrs. Slosson’s math...
Team 6B ---LITTLE GIANTS!!!!…..
What a great start to the new school
year! It’s hard to believe that we are
already at the end of the first grading
period. We are thrilled to begin this
new adventure with all of our students.
Our goal is to create a strong, success-
ful team through a combined effort of
our students, parents, and teachers.
Our core teachers are Mrs. Equihua
(Math), Mrs. Pugh (Math), Mrs. Buelow
(Language Arts) , Mrs. Howard
(Language Arts), Miss Huebner
(Language Arts), Mrs. Blue (Science),
Mrs. Jeremiah (Science/Social Studies),
and Mr. Holobawski (Social Studies).
In Social Studies, students have finished
our Geography section and will now be
learning about the Ancient Greek civili-
zation. The students will learn how the
Greeks spread their culture through
Europe and Asia through colonization,
trade, and conquest.
In Science, students will be finishing up
their Astronomy Unit with Chapter 6 and
an Astronomy Post Test. They will
participate in an Oreo moon phase lab
and other fun labs to visualize different
space phenomena’s. Students will also
be going on a field trip to the Challenger
Learning Center. Students will be able
to carry out a simulated space mission
to Mars and see a a show in the plane-
tarium
In English, students just finished “The
Interactions with Self” Unit. They have
read several stories featuring characters
with diverse traits and life circumstanc-
es. Students are discovering what self-
awareness is, challenges that they face,
and similarities that we all experience as
we grow up. They have been able to
reflect on their own traits and personali-
ties comparing them to those of the
characters that they are reading about.
Students have also taken a look at the
six traits, or “ingredients” that make up
good writing as a foundation for the
upcoming narrative and argumentative
essays that they will write this quar-
ter. They are off to a great start, and
we encourage you to keep reading 20
minutes every night.
The second quarter in Math will have
the students working with decimals
and fractions. They will focus on num-
ber theory dealing with Greatest Com-
mon Factor, Least Common Multiple,
and Prime factorization.
Overall, our team has really started out
well. Please remind all students to
check the agendas for each subject in
BUZZ to see all of their homework
assignments. Also, check BUZZ for all
homework throughout the week.
Thank you to all of our wonderful par-
ents for supporting your children so far
this school year. Please don’t hesitate
to contact us if you have any questions
or concerns.
Team 6A- It is hard to believe that we have
already completed one quarter. Hopefully
your child has settled in nicely here and feels
at home now. We are looking forward to a
very successful second quarter. Below you
will find a snapshot of what the team will be
covering in the next nine weeks.
Language Arts- Over the last nine weeks,
students have been learning about self-
confidence and self-awareness through sto-
ries that we have read. Students are learning
how to become more confident and self-
aware through our stories and activities that
we have competed. Moreover, students have
learned essential reading comprehension
skills such as finding main idea, theme, and
making inferences about characters. They will
take these skills that we have learned and
apply them to our upcoming writing assign-
ment.
Math- In Mrs. Slosson’s math class, all stu-
dents are reminded to bring their math note-
book to class every day to take down notes and
complete them during the lesson. The exam-
ples from the notes are helpful in completing
practice work, review work and to help study for
quizzes and tests. Students also complete as-
signments in their notebooks. No pages are to
ever be torn out from the notebook.
All students use the Chrome books for our
online textbook, practice quizzes, Moby Max,
Prodigy and especially to see the assignment
each day on their math Buzz Agenda. The Buzz
Agenda also can show upcoming quizzes or
test. If a student is absent, all they would need
to do is check the Buzz Agenda for the assign-
ment for that day. Our online text is my.hrw.com
username and password: tmath27
This quarter students will be working on: adding,
subtracting, multiplying, and dividing Decimals
and Fractions. We will also solve equations with
decimals and fractions.
In honor’s class this quarter, students will be
working with equations, inequalities, and deci-
mals. We will also be working with proportion-
al relationships.
Like the regular math class, all assignments
are located on Buzz Agenda. The username
and password for the online textbook
is hmath36.
Science- As students move into our second
grading period, the students have completed
their studies of our solar system. They will
now move on to learning how the Earth moon
and sun interact. This unit will involve such
concepts as the seasons on Earth, the phases
of the moon, and tides, amongst many oth-
ers. We will also be taking a field trip to the
Challenger Center.
Social Studies- The second nine weeks will
take students halfway around the world and
back in time to Ancient Greece and Rome.
This is a time and place that holds the roots to
our democratic society. The students will be
deciding if Alexander was really Great, and
come to know why all roads lead to Rome.
Special
Points of
Interest:
Congratula-
tions Spell
Bowl Team!!!
Notes from the
Nurse
Guidance News
ISTEP+ Ac-
countability In-
formation
November 23-
24 Thanksgiving
Vacation No
School
Robert Taft Middle School
1000 S. Main St, Crown Point IN 46307
219-663-1507/ https://www.cps.k12.in.us/Domain/167
October/November 2017/2018
ended with a review of key concepts
and an introduction to the elements of
fiction, which will begin the second
grading period. Our second grading
period will begin with a unit on sus-
pense, where we will read “The Tell-
Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe,
among other suspenseful fictional
pieces. Before long, Winter Break will
be upon us. This has been a very
enjoyable first grading period, and it
has been rewarding seeing our stu-
dents grow stronger in their skills.
Team 7A would like to thank the students and parents for such a great start to the school year. We’ve enjoyed getting to know your children. We can’t wait to see what this year has to bring.
In Math 7, students will be explor-ing multi-step equations, solving proportions, using the customary and metric systems of measure-ment, and exploring real life per-cent application problems. In pre-algebra, students will be working with factors, fractions, and expo-nents, rational numbers and equa-tions, and ratios, proportions, and probability.
Team 7A Language Arts students spent the first quarter learning
about physical challenges through fiction and nonfiction texts. Stu-dents focused on two units cen-tered around challenging careers as well as physical de-mands. Students completed an argumentative writing assignment and learned how to make claims and support them with textual evi-dence. Students will now begin the next unit which focuses on heroes.
Science-7: Right now the stu-dents are exploring earth structure and movement, with a focus on earthquakes. Next students will turn our attention to rocks, explor-ing the unique properties of the minerals within and the processes
involved in the rock cycle. We’ll close out this semester with our study of energy.
In social studies class, students have learned the ancient history of the Middle East. The roots and achievements of the Mesopotami-an and Egyptian river civilizations were a large focus. Content then shifted to the birth of monotheistic religions, as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were covered. Students will be moving on to a very compli-cated subject, the modern Middle East. Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Iran will be key topics.
ries, “The Possibility of Evil” and “The
Lottery.” These two stories helped to
reinforce the standards/concepts of
plot, point of view, conflict, mood and
tone, irony, foreshadowing and flash-
back, and textual evidence. Students
were taught all these standards and
had many Skills Builders for practice in
order to be able to apply the concepts
to their readings. Students then
moved on to our non-fiction pieces
about the Civil War, where textual
evidence and figurative language were
important elements to the understand-
ing of the texts. The grading period
It is hard to believe that the first grad-
ing period is already over. The stu-
dents in Mrs. Weiss’ and Mrs. Zembil-
las’ classes have been very busy
learning. There were many stand-
ards/concepts taught. The school year
began with a grammar lesson on sen-
tence structure, which will be applied
throughout the school year. Then, the
students were taught about narrative
writing, and they wrote their first essay
of the year. Following the narrative
essay, students did a short back-
ground search on the author Shirley
Jackson, as they read two of her sto-
already and will complete more before the
end of the semester. During the second
quarter, the science students will explore
earthquakes and volcanoes to finish up
their unit on Earth’s structure and move-
ment. Then, they surge forward and learn
all about energy transfer. Topics will in-
clude light and sound waves, kinetic ener-
gy, potential energy, and Newton’s laws of
motion.
For the second quarter in regular math
classes, students will be working on topics
from chapters 12, 4, 5, and 6. These will
include such topics as multi-step equa-
tions, using proportions, and problem-
solving as it relates to real world situations,
such as doing comparison shopping. In
pre-algebra classes, students will continue
to work with rational numbers. They will
cover topics from chapters 4, 5, 7, and
lessons 1-6 of chapter 6. They will spend a
great deal of time with fractions and pro-
portions in this quarter.
In Social Studies, students have studied
how the early civilizations in Mesopotamia
and Egypt were able to grow, develop, and
thrive. Also, students have learned how
and why the first Monotheistic religions
were able to emerge. In the second quar-
ter, students will look at conflicts in the
middle east as well as focusing on the
history of ancient and modern Africa.
Students on the Wolfpack Team, 7B, have
gotten off to a great start for this school
year. In English class, students have
learned about theme, mood, and tone in a
unit that focuses on physical challenges.
Students will continue to work on the liter-
ary elements of theme, mood and tone into
second quarter. After completing an argu-
mentative essay on the Education in Spar-
ta, students will write an informational
essay in second quarter that dissects a
character in the short story, The Diamond
Necklace.
In science, the students began the school
year by learning about lab safety, scientific
method, metric measurement and plate
tectonics. They have participated in 4 labs
In Science, students have started
off their year studying an introduc-
tion to chemistry. Students have
looked at the atom and how it is
structured as well as the periodic
table of elements and how it is
organized by this atomic structure.
Students ended the quarter with
the Element Information Poster
Project, where each student had
to research a given element and
create a poster including this re-
search. The students really
seemed to enjoy this project and
did a wonderful job on the posters!
In the second quarter, students
started the quarter with the Period-
ic Word Project, where students
were given the task of spelling a
word using only the symbols from
elements from the periodic table.
The challenge here is that they
could not use the same word as
anyone else on our team and the
word had to be able to be illustrat-
ed in some way. Students created
some very creative posters that
will be displayed on the wall out-
side our classrooms as a result of
this project. They will continue
their study of chemistry with chem-
ical bonding and chemical reac-
tions. Students will be looking at
how the elements we studied from
the periodic table react to and with
each other to form every day reac-
tions and common chemicals that
we use everyday. It will be a fun
quarter filled with a lot of hands-on
lab activities!
Science Olympics-
Mrs. Adamski’s Classes
The students worked hard over
the first quarter completing work
and receiving stamps in return.
For every five stamps earned, the
students increase their status and
receive a raffle ticket to enter into
the class raffle. The status levels
are Qualifier, Bronze, Silver, Gold,
and Platinum. Students reaching
Gold status completed all 20 as-
signments required for the stamp
sheet. Students reaching Plati-
num status went above and be-
yond the 20 required assignments
and completed at least six extra
assignments!! Outstanding effort
and devotion! All students achiev-
ing Gold and/or Platinum status for
all four quarters will be invited to a
special celebration at the end of
the school year.
The following students achieved
Platinum Status in quarter 1:
Kiara Vasquez-Klein, Griffin
Dusseau, Carmen Hernandez,
Kailey Callander, Arisha Raza,
Brayden Weller, Clare Dillon,
Kaylee Porche, Joey Yang, Fati-
ma Pasha, Gabby Hometorwu,
Kylie LaChapelle
As the school year gets underway, students have already played many fun
sports and prepare for more. As always, they continue to have plenty of cardiovascular
activities and days where that is our main focus. We encourage you to participate in ac-
tivities that you and your children can do together as well as encouraging your child to try
new activities that increase their personal fitness levels. One of our goals, as a staff, is
teaching students to set new goals for themselves and finding ways to achieve them. Our
main focus is to teach students that total wellness is balance of a sound mind, body, emo-
tions and relationships.
All the students in health and P.E. classes took the Presidential Fitness test.
We had fifty five students who achieved Presidential status. Please ask your child how he
or she did and what their goals are for the end of the year when they take it again. We
look forward to the next nine weeks and finding new ways to stay fit!
Pre-AP Biology- This first quarter students have focused on charac-teristics of life, cells, and cell pro-cesses. This second quarter they will be working on DNA and ge-netics. Students have had some great labs, and looking forward to participating in some more labs and activities to reinforce and see
real applications of the topics.
Pre-Algebra students have started off the year in a positive direction! They began the
year reviewing Order of Operations and Evaluating Expression while strengthening our
Integers rules skills. For the last month, students have been working on getting more
comfortable and confident when working with fractions. All of their hard work has paid
off and students are beginning to see successes!
Algebra students are also growing in their math skills. They are applying their preexist-
ing knowledge to understand new concepts. It is fun to watch them deepen their under-
stand and make connections at the same time. So far, we have covered Foundations of
Algebra, Equations and Inequalities including compound statements and absolute values.
“Parent involvement” is more important than physical presence at
school. A parent’s presence at school isn’t correlated to student achievement.
What is correlated to student achievement is whether the parent is involved, which means the following:
1. Parents know where their children are at night.
2. They know who their children’s friends are.
3. They know if their children have homework.
They have high expectations, support, and persistence.
-AMLE Magazine March 2014
REALITY STORE!
Friday, November 3rd, 2017
8th grade students attending Robert A. Taft & Colonel John Wheeler Middle Schools will participate in the
Reality StoreSM
What is the Reality StoreSM?
Students will be able to walk in the shoes of their 28 year old self. They will choose an occupation and be given a checking account with the monthly salary amount for that job. At the store, headed by area busi-ness volunteers, students will spend their money on the necessities and luxuries that they plan to as an adult. They will buy a house and car, pay for utilities, food, insurance and education. During the event, students will be thrown a curve ball with a “Reality check,” an unexpected situation such as a broken air conditioner or the loss of a job and make the necessary accommodations. At the end of the event, students can spend their re-maining money on luxuries, such as vacations and entertainment. The students will take a pre and post survey to measure the effectiveness of the event. The lesson we want them to learn is this, “Will you be able to pro-vide the financial resources to provide the type of lifestyle you wish for?”
Goals of the Reality StoreSM
To help all students learn basic skills in financial planning, goal setting, decision-making and ca-
reer planning.
To clarify the need for students to examine their attitudes about their futures and their career ex-
pectations.
To motivate students to stay in school, stay away from drugs and other risky behaviors.
Recently 7th grade hearing and 8th grade vision screening was com-pleted by our corporation. These screening are state mandated and helpful with finding new problems as well as monitoring old ones. New referrals and follow ups to known problems are in the process of being completed and sent out to parents. Please respond to these referrals. If you have any questions about the referrals or in-formational letters please call Mrs. Brown, Taft’s school nurse at ext. 12081.
Our Fall Scholastic Book Fair is sched-uled for November 6-10, 2017. The
Fair will be open daily from 7:30a.m. – 3:00p.m. This event supports the Taft Media Center reading program, and new books are purchased with the
funds generated from this sale.
Thank you in advance for supporting Taft’s Fall Book Fair!
If you would like to make a purchase online please visit
http://www.scholastic.com/bf/taftmiddleschoolcrownpoint
The Crown Point Community School Corporation
garnered an “A” grade on statewide accountabil-
ity. The Indiana Department of Education re-
leased A through F accountability grades for
schools across the state. This year, the grades
were calculated in a way that focused on both
students' proficiency on the ISTEP+ and student
growth. Robert A. Taft Middle School re-
ceived an accountability grade of “B”.
The Robert A. Taft Middle School Spell Bowl Team competed in the Area Indiana Academic Spell Bowl Junior Division competition on No-vember 1, 2017 at Clifford Pierce Middle School in Merrillville. The Spell Bowl Team ended the evening with a first place finish. Marianne Gero-na, Rocco Jann, and Sanjana Kumar all earned near-perfect ribbons. Sampreethi Swaminathan, Lucas Dannels, Krisitan Maunes, Rosalie Degenhart, and Capitan, Daniel Sibincic, all received perfect ribbons. This is the first time that the entire team of Taft Spellers placed with a score of perfect or near-perfect, only missing 3 words out of 72 for the night. The team is coached by Liz Franklin. She stated that, “The entire team of 16 students has had one goal all season, and that is to place first at the state competition on November 11, 2017 at Purdue Universi-ty. This is a team effort. All 16 students push and encourage each other to do their best.” The other students on the team are Jackson Fronek, Chris Gloff, David Garrison, Charlie Hagerman, Ysabel Maunes, Tristin Pool, Travis Roiter, and Kennedy Silberhorn. Vickie Nelson has been filling the role of assistant coach this year.