Mark your calendars for the Junior High Concert Band Winter Concert on December 13th! Students are to wear black on the bottom and white on top. Please start planning for that!

Come help the Music Boosters! We are always looking for creative ideas and volunteers to help support our music program K-12. No serious time commitments or money required! Come to our next meeting on Wednesday, October 5 @ 6:30 in the bandroom! Snacks and a free music t-shirt will be provided!

The String Orchestra and String Lab students have instruments in their hands and are ready for a year of making music!

String Orchestra lessons are now underway and lesson calendars can be found on the Google Classroom page. Lesson calendars are living documents so check back for adjustments.

An after school string group is starting on Monday, October 17th at Randall Middle School. Students from grades 5-12 are invited to play together from 3:15-4:15. There will be a bus from the JSHS at 2:45 to Randall for any students who need a ride.

The Homer Youth Orchestra is looking for new members! This free ensemble meets on Sundays at the Homer Center for the Arts and has 3 different level ensembles plus lessons available. Check out their website for more information!

Homer Youth Orchestra Website

Homer Youth Orchestra Sign Up

Mrs. Constantino and Mrs. Pomeroy are “ Getting to Know” their 7th Graders by scheduling times for a meaningful conversation with each student 1:1. Empathy interviews are a great way to just listen and understand our students. We are committed to building relationships with our students and we value these connections!

In Home and Career Skills, we are working on our first unit, The Process Skills. In this unit students are learning about citizenship and leadership, teamwork, wants, needs and values, how to use their resources, time management, decision making, goal setting, and bullying. Students completed a Values Activity and will soon begin working on their Goal Project. Thinking 20 years into the future is difficult for 7th graders to do! Officer Reyngout will be in to teach an important lesson about bullying later in the month.

In Team 4 ELA, we are working on our first unit, Close Reading. Students are learning about Ellis Island and immigration while practicing and reviewing the skills of analyzing, citing textual evidence, questioning the text and themselves, annotating, and explaining their knowledge to others. If interested, have them show you the Close Reading Packet!

We are off to a great start with Team 4 in health class! We are doing a unit of study on Drugs/Alcohol and have met our first community guest speaker, Regina Cuddeback. Officer Reyngoudt will do his first lesson on September 26th…looking forward to a great semester!

In 7th grade ELA, we just finished up our mini-unit on grammar review. Students are currently working on their Everyday Superhero essays, where students are writing about someone in their life who they see as a hero. Next up, we will be starting our next unit on the novel Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park.

Math 7 began the year exploring iReady. We have started by applying ratios to scale drawings/maps.

In Math 7A, we began the year with a unit on Integers and Rational Numbers. Then we will move on to a unit on Algebra.

In 8th grade math we are starting our first unit of iReady-geometry! We will be learning about the different transformations we can do with our shapes. Students will be practicing rotating, reflecting, and translating shapes so be sure to ask them about it while they are completing their homework!

In 8th grade social studies, we started the year getting to know each other and then dove into our lessons on 9/11/2001. We viewed a powerful primary source documentary of 9/11 and discussed terrorism and how America has changed since 9/11/2001.

21 years #NeverForget. Next up, we will review the concepts of the Civil War and begin our unit on Reconstruction.

8th grade science is off to a great start. We have been learning about how to be safe in a lab setting and are starting measurements in the metric system. We have been in the forest a few times for our new Forest Friday initiative where we are getting out and taking atmospheric, hydrologic, and biosphere data. We look forward to continuing this project.

In Ms. McAndrew’s class, we have been working on word problems and math vocabulary. In ELA, we are working on decoding skills and writing stories. In social studies, we are learning about geography, and the students have been teaching Ms. McAndrew all about the Smartboard and how it works!

The Library and Makerspace are busy again this year! 7th graders have had library orientation and are checking out books and using the online databases. In the Makerspace, they are getting into problem-solving, building, exploring and creating using the Keva planks, physics wall, Legos, and the 3D printer. We’re looking forward to getting the library windows decorated with Halloween window paintings.