Hickory Creek Newsletter
March 2023
School Goals 2022-2023
- We will continue to provide rigor and opportunity for academic growth to all students in grades 6th - 8th.
Social/Emotional Goal:
- We will support staff and student social and emotional needs and enhance the opportunity for growth in relationships.
Communication Goal:
- We will increase opportunities for family engagement both during the school day and through extra-curricular activities.
Safety Goal:
- We will provide a safe learning environment for staff and students in grades 6th - 8th.
Hickory Creek February Pictures
Important Dates
March 1st - Athletic Booster Hot Lunch
March 6th - 10th - FSP Book Fair
March 10th- LWSR Hot Lunch
March 13th - Band Boosters Party for Band/Orchestra Students
March 13th & March 14th - Candor Health presentations for Rodgers and Connolly 6th Grade Health Classes
March 15th - Chorus Booster Hot Lunch
March 16th - Student Council Spirit Day - Wear Green
March 17th - SIP Day - 10:45 A.M. Dismissal
March 17th - 7th Grade Springfield Trip payments due by 12:00 P.M.
March 17th - End of Quarter 3
March 20th - 4th Quarter Encore Classes begin
March 22nd - FSP Hot Lunch
March 24th - Quarter 3 Online Grade Reports finalized and ready for viewing. Honor Roll certificates sent home.
March 24th - Student Council Dance 6:30-8:30 P.M.- details will be sent out through Power School Announcments
March 28th - March 29th - ELA IAR Testing for all students
March 29th - Athletic Booster Hot Lunch
March 29th - LWSRA Wheelchair Basketball game 6:00 P.M. - Family event
March 30th - Student Council Spirit Day - Battle of the Fans -wear favorite band or sports apparel
March 31st- Last day before Spring Break- 1:10 P.M. Dismissal
IAR (Illinois Assessment of Readiness) Testing begins in March
ELA Tests: March 28th and March 29th
Math Tests: April 12th, 13th and 14th
ISA Tests: April 12th, 13th and 14th
It is crucial that students are in attendance on these days and are ready to perform their best.
8th Grade Graduation and End of Year Festivities
Other 8th Grade End of the Year Events to Look Forward to:
May 17, 2023 – Graduation rehearsal will be held in the afternoon (Class t-shirts will be distributed at this practice).
May 17, 2023 – Parent volunteers are planning the 8th Grade Dance for all students in the evening. This will be held at Zachary’s Red Barn at Konow’s (non-school sponsored event). The information on registration, times, etc. will be shared soon by the parent volunteers. There is a Facebook page created for this event called “Hickory Creek Dance Class of 2023.”
May 18, 2023 – All 8th Graders will be invited to a class trip to Great America in Gurnee.
May 19, 2023 – Graduation rehearsal in the morning. (Gowns, tassels, and medals will be distributed at this practice).
May 19, 2023 – Yearbook distribution, signing and pizza party for the 8th Grade Class in the afternoon.
Seventh Grade Field Trip to Springfield - Thursday, May 25th.
The Seventh-Grade class will be traveling to Springfield on Thursday, May 25th for a day of exploring and learning about our state history. We will be traveling with Hemisphere Travel for this experience.
Your child brought home an information packet that provides all necessary details. You will be receiving a packet on yellow colored paper, that is information for you to keep and a packet on white paper, which needs to be filled out and returned to your child’s first hour teacher by March 17th. The cost of this trip is $130.00 and can be paid online using the following link: https://www.myschoolbucks.com/ver2/prdembd?ref=ZZI454CNBLIPQZG_ZZW9QBF573AQ4S7
Payment and paperwork must be received by March 17th (at 12:00 P.M.). We are unable to accept late registrations. The cost of the trip includes charter busses, admission into sites, a class t-shirt and a pizza lunch.
Once registration closes on March 17th, we will know how many chaperones will be needed and will reach out at that time to secure parent volunteers. We are not able to take chaperone requests at this time.
We look forward to a wonderful end of year experience for your child!
6th Grade Field Trip
Black History Month Celebration at Hickory Creek
Attendance at Hickory Creek
If your child is going to be out for an extended time, please complete the attached form and have your child bring it to each teacher, while collecting missing work, and get it signed. https://4.files.edl.io/bbab/08/21/20/144043-e70fd2b5-79e5-4142-8807-65560fc63082.pdf
6th Grade ELA
6th Grade Math
6th Grade Science
6th Grade Social Studies
7th Grade ELA
Wow our Seventh Graders’ journeys this year have been successful, and many lessons and memories have been found along the way. Throughout the third quarter students have continued to follow the journeys of characters in their whole class novels and their independent novels. In addition, students have been finishing the journey of their protagonist characters in their narrative writing. The skills the authors of our novels have been modeling for students have been a great help with students own narrative writing piece this quarter. For example: figurative language, dialogue, symbolism, sentence structure, punctuation, character development, word choice and structure.
ELA novel: Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool
Honors novel: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Throughout the novel units, the students have been exposed to numerous informational texts that focus on strategies and skills.
7th Grade Math
7th Grade Science
7th Grade Social Studies
8th Grade ELA
8th Grade Math
Students in honors math will be reviewing 8th grade geometry standards, completing a statistics unit, and beginning an in-depth study of quadratic functions.
8th Grade Science
8th Grade Social Studies
Spanish
8th Grade students have been hard at work learning about families. We love how they have embraced this chapter to introduce their family members and use new vocabulary to talk about celebrations. We learned about Quinceaneras, birthday parties and more that led us to a writing assessment where the students showed off their vocabulary knowledge and grammar skills. We will end the quarter learning how to order food at a restaurant.
7th Grade Spanish students wrapped up our first grammar unit on Personal Pronouns. We will finish up the quarter with another grammar unit on the verb “ser,” and our final vocabulary list! Students will learn to describe their classroom and the location of various items.
6th Grade Spanish students had their first Speaking Assessment and did awesome! Their task was to talk about their personality and hobbies. We will wrap up Quarter 3 learning to talk about school schedules
Art
6th grade artists will wrap up 3rd quarter by designing and making a stamp to create a repeated pattern on a printing project. They will also finish up their coil pots by decorating them with glaze.
7th grade artists will finish 3rd quarter by painting their mood masks using colors that match the emotion they are representing. They will also practice planning strong composition through creating a collage.
8th grade drawing and painting students will continue their semester by building on their new skills in form, texture and shading by creating a landscape painting in watercolor.
Music
STEM
The 6th Grade students will be rounding out their quarter of STEM working with 3D printing software to design a personalized keychain. They will also get a crash course on the basics of video production by creating a short video using WeVideo.
The 7th Grade students will be rounding out their quarter of STEM working on product design via the Cricut vinyl cutting machine as well as developing their video production skills further with the use of WeVideo.
The 8th Grade students are well underway in their Engineering and Design course. In the month of March they will create a choice project using materials from the classroom Maker’s Cart. They also will also work as a group to find a solution to the microplastic problem that is found in common products such as microbead facewash.
PE
In PE students have finished basketball and the Olympic sport of Team Handball. The last unit that classes will finish the 3rd quarter with is dance. For competitive PE they will be playing Floor Hockey.
Tiger Time Advisory
Tiger Time
- Monday - Tiger Time TV viewing
- Tuesday - Executive Functioning Skills
- Wednesday - "WIN Day" - What I Need Help With Day
- Thursday - SEL Lessons based on the Second Step Curriculum
- Friday - Team Building
Second Step Social and Emotional Upcoming Lessons
6th-8th Grade Lessons
Nurse Updates
From the Desk of Nurse Tammy
Library News
Library
The 19th HCMS Caudill Voting & Celebration was a big success! We had 167 students/staff who read 3 or more of the nominated titles and 5 students who read all 20 nominees—several of them for multiple years! We all came together on Friday, 2/24 to celebrate our reading accomplishments and vote for our favorite title with a pizza lunch and a raffle! We are happy to report that our students read more than 700 books for this program!
The winning titles for our building were: tied for 3rd place was All Thirteen by Christina Soontornvat and Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson; 2nd place went to Katie the Catsitter by Colleen AF Venable and Stephanie Yue; and the winning book chosen by HCMS students was When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed!
State-wide results will be released later this month. Thank you to everyone who made this program work, especially the Education Foundation who funds our program here at HCMS, our staff for helping to promote reading every day, and our students who read the books!
The 2024 RCYRBA list has been chosen and students are encouraged to start reading from the list now for next school year!
Pictures from this year's Caudill Party - Thank you to the Education Foundation!
Extra Curriculars
Band and Orchestra
Chorus
Good luck to all the Varsity Chorus, Advanced Choir, and Show Choir members on their performances at the IGSMA District Choral Contest on March 11!
Rehearsals are in full swing for this year’s spring musical, “Shrek the Musical.” Applications for stage crew will be available the week of March 13-17.
Student Council
POZ Squad
Best Buddies
National Junior Honor Society
Our NJHS meeting was cancelled for the month of February, however, the members completed an activity to tell us what Citizenship means to them. We have over 150 members and it was wonderful to read how much they value their community and show great citizenship through volunteer work. We are proud of all our current members and the leaders they are becoming!
We are excited to welcome new members in the next few months. The application for new invitees will close on Friday, March 3rd.
We also have some members applying for the NJHS Outstanding Achievement Award. The application is due by March 29th. Good luck to all applicants.
Our next meeting will be Friday, March 10th.
Geography Club
Mathletes
Tech Club
Tech Club is underway, and all participants are engaging in a wide variety of coding, robotics, and even engineering! The students are allowing their creativity to show through as they dig deeper into all the technology HCMS has to offer!
Yearbook picture will be taken on Thursday, March 2nd!!
Scholastic Bowl Team
Art Club
Debate Club
Chess Club
Tiger TV
Tiger TV is HCMS’s AV Club! We live stream games and events which can all be found directly on our YouTube Channel. We also produce a weekly broadcast with many great segments such as: Week in Review, Upcoming Events and Announcements, Joke of the Week, Teacher Feature, Special Feature, Random Facts with Humans, and more. . There are five production teams and many students that are in the club stream, take pictures, and create video edits. To see a list of all the students please check out our TEAMS page. We also have a YouTube Channel where we post our weekly broadcast, plus individual features from past episodes. Please check out our channel and subscribe using the link below.
Cheerleading
Wrestling
The team ended a solid dual and tournament regular season. Regionals were held on Feb 25th. We had a strong showing sending 7 wrestlers to Sectionals on March 4th to compete to go to State in Dekalb on March 10-11. Good Luck Wrestlers!
Sectional Qualifiers
135 - Thomas Esposito - Regional Champion
155 - Jonathan Lowe - Regional Champion
167 - Justin Powers - Regional Champion
185 - Colten Johnson - Regional Champion
HWT - Paulie Cortez - 2nd Place
80 - Timothy Lorimer - 3rd Place
95 - Lucas Ankarlo - 3rd place
Regional Placers
75 - Declan Schleder - 4th Place
90 - Nathan Smith - 4th Place
100 - Trey Slager - 4th Place
112 - Enzo Basso - 4th Place
215 - Owen Major - 4th Place
Girls Volleyball
Varsity wrapped up their regular season 9-10 and took 3rd place in the DPVC tournament. Good luck to both teams during Regional bracket play! JV plays on March 1st and 2nd and Varsity plays on March 7th vs. Matteson Huth.
Students of the Month for January - High Academic Achievers
We would like to recognize our Students of the Month for February 2023. Each grade level and team selected two students, who embodied this month’s character trait:
HCMS students persevere when times are tough!
6A - Phoebe Thorsen and Austin Drees
6B - Daniel Walker & Samantha Pacis
7A - Joey Las & Nora Bellaci
7B - Emersyn Hughes & Dean Burns
8A - Hannah Herring & James Kramer
8B - Madeleine Keedy & Dominick Lokes
ENCORE - Kaitlyn Nass & Cami Nass
PE - Kale Spurlark & Anne Gabey
Congratulations again to our Students of the Month for February 2023!