Ellsworth MS Newsletter
Here's what's happening in MS this week!
April 22, 2019
Dear parents,
Please turn your Lancer Leap selection forms in to the office as soon as possible.
ENGLISH
6th Grade: Students completed a spelling quiz on Friday over contractions, in addition to starting the whole-class texts, Holes and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We will continue reading these texts, while students complete their annotations in their Thought Logs. Students will have a quiz over their reading assignment on Friday.
7th Grade: We started book clubs on Friday so your student will have a significant amount of reading to do in the next three weeks. Book clubs will meet during class every Tuesday and Friday until May 14. Some of the reading will be done in class but quite a bit of it will have to be done outside of school.
8th Grade: We will continue reading Soul Surfer this week and continue learning about people who have overcome obstacles. We will work on the format for writing letters and sending letters out to someone who has been facing a difficult time.
SOCIAL STUDIES
6th Grade: We will be finishing our analysis of documents to try to figure out who killed Julius Caesar. Students were introduced to this on Friday. We will also be exploring Rome’s Golden Age and looking at what daily life might have been like in Ancient Rome.
7th Grade: We will be finishing our analysis of documents to try to figure out who killed Julius Caesar. Students were introduced to this on Friday. We will also be exploring Rome’s Golden Age and looking at what daily life might have been like in Ancient Rome.
8th U.S. History: Last week, we studied for M-Step and took the M-Step on Wednesday and Thursday. The students reported feeling confident about the testing process and most questions. This week, we will be learning more about Manifest Destiny and tensions that occurred in the U.S. when Americans expanded westward. Students will also complete reading of the non-fiction memoir, Same Kind of Different As Me.
MATH
6th Grade: 6th graders have been evaluating expressions. Next week we will talk more about the distributive property and how to make equivalent (equal) expressions. There will be a test at the end of the week as we end our chapter.
7th Grade: We finished surface area last week. If students need to retake the quiz, they need to have all homework turned in. This week we will learn how to calculate volume of 3D objects including prisms, spheres and cylinders.
8th Grade: 8th graders finished our unit on transformations last week. We will have a test on Wednesday of this week.
SCIENCE
6th Grade: We will be reading about how fireworks work this week and discussing how chemical energy is transformed into thermal energy, mechanical energy, radiant energy, and sound energy. We will also be exploring a new ScienceWorld magazine. Students will also be introduced to a model roller coaster project.
7th Grade: We will be discussing adaptations in different species and how they’ve changed over time. Students will be looking a specific species (alive or extinct) to determine how they adapted to survive in their environment.
8th Grade: The 8th graders are starting their unit on Weather systems. We are learning about how clouds form, the different types of clouds, and how to predict the weather based on the cloud types. They will be doing the M-Step on Wednesday and Thursday during class. It is important that students try their best as these test scores reflect and are used to evaluate the school, their teachers, and themselves.
ART
Middle School Art: The students will be continuing to work on their multi medium animal art project. The are making an animal and dividing it into four different sections. Each section will have a different medium in it. We are working with Prismacolor colored pencils which allow us to blend and mix colors. The next square will be with Gouache paint.
MUSIC
Students are continuing work on band concert music. Concert will on May 7th.
SINCERELY,
The Middle School Team
7&8 English: Amanda Terryberry aterryberry@ellsworth.k12.mi.us
6&7th Sci, 6-7th SS: Sue Goslee sgoslee@ellsworth.k12.mi.us
6th ELA, 8th History Olivia Speicher ospeicher@ellsworth.k12.mi.us
6-8 Math: Erica Stuck estuck@ellsworth.k12.mi.us
8th Science: Clayton Faivor cfaivor@ellsworth.k12.mi.us
Art: Kurt Zimmerle kzimmerle@ellsworth.k12.mi.us
Music: Ashley Ford aford@ellsworth.k12.mi.us
PE: Laurie Yost lyost@ellsworth.k12.mi.us