Regina Jr Sr High Newsletter
February 2022
From the Principal
February is now here and hopefully the end of cold weather will come with it. The cold weather has caused us to miss substantial time in January. We need to use President's Day and April 22nd as school days to make up for our lost time and meet the state requirement for instructional time.
Catholic Schools Week is this week. This week we celebrate the gift of Catholic education. Thank you to all of our students, parents, faculty, and staff (past and present) for helping make Regina Catholic Education Center such an awesome place!
We enter the championship season for our winter activities this month. This includes speech, wrestling, basketball, and the musical. Good luck to all of our students participating in these events!
This month's newsletter includes:
- Confirmation Dates by Parish
- Information about Discover Regina Night
- Information on Math Club
- Department Updates
Human trafficking is a growing problem in our society. Despite efforts from our government and law enforcement, the numbers continue to be staggering. Estimates show that almost 200,000 incidents of human trafficking occur each year. This month I offer a Prayer Against Human Trafficking that was in February's Give Us This Day.
O loving God, pour your merciful light into our troubled world.
Let it flood into the darkest shadows.
Bring salvation to the innocents who suffer under sinful abuse.
Bring conversion to the utterly lost souls who hold them captive and exploit them.
Give is all the strength to grow in the true freedom of love for you, for each other and for our common home. Amen.
Yours in Christ,
Glenn Plummer
Upcoming Events
Feb. 2: Rosary in the Chapel @ 7:30am
Feb. 3: Discover Regina (JH @ 6:00, HS @ 7:15)
Feb. 4: F-S/V Girls & Boys Basketball vs. West Liberty @ 4:30, PISA Cake Auction during Basketball games
Feb. 5: State Speech Competition @ 8:00am at CR Kennedy, Wrestling Sectionals @ 12:00pm at English Valleys
Feb. 7: JH Boys Basketball vs. Wilton @ 4:15 (7th-away,8th-home)
Feb. 8: F-S/JV/V Girls & Boys Basketball vs. West Branch @ 4:00
Feb. 9: Rosary in the Chapel @ 7:30am
Feb. 10: JH Boys Basketball vs. Durant @ 4:15 (7th-home,8th-away)
Feb. 11:
Feb. 12: ACT testing (7-3), Girls Basketball Regional (TBD), Wrestling Districts at Wapello @ 11:00am
Feb. 14: JH Boys Basketball vs. Tipton @ 4:15 (7th-home,8th-away), Boys Basketball Districts (TBD)
Feb. 15: 11th Grade Retreat, Girls Basketball Regional (TBD)
Feb. 16: Rosary in the Chapel @ 7:30am
Feb. 17: JH Boys Basketball vs. West Branch @ 4:15 (7th-away,8th-home), Boys Basketball District (TBD), State Wrestling (TBD)
Feb. 18: State Wrestling (TBD), Girls Basketball Regional (TBD)
Feb. 19: State Wrestling (TBD)
Feb. 21: JH Boys Basketball vs. Mid-Prairie @ 4:15 (7th-away,8th-home), RVC Speech Contest at Monticello @ 4:30
Feb. 22: Boys Basketball Districts, Regina Board of Ed. meeting @ 6:30
Feb. 23: Rosary in the Chapel @ 7:30am, Girls Basketball Regional (TBD)
Feb. 24: JH Boys Basketball vs. West Liberty @ 4:15 (7th-home,8th-away)
Feb. 25: HS Musical at CCPA @ 7:00
Feb. 26: HS Musical at CCPA @ 2:00 & 7:00, Boys Basketball Substate (TBD)
Feb. 27: HS Musical at CCPA @ 2:00
Feb. 28: Girls Basketball State (TBD)
Discover Regina Night
Confirmation Dates
St. Mary: Feb. 20th at 3pm
St. Wenceslaus (at St. Mary): Feb. 20th at 1pm
St. Thomas More: February 27th at 3pm
St. Patrick: April 3 at 10am
Coaching Opportunities
- JH Softball
- JH Volleyball
- JH Football
- JV Football
Please contact Mr. Hotek (taylor.hotek@regina.org) if you are interested in any of these positions.
Regina Spirit Days
We will have Regina Spirit days throughout the year. The dates below will be Regina Spirit Days.
Students are allowed to wear Regina Activities, Club, or other Regina clothing on these days. Bottoms can be jeans or any dress code bottom. (No sweatpants, yoga pants, or athletic shorts.)
February 4
February 18
March 4
March 25
April 8
April 29
May 6
May 20
No School Make-up Days
Monthly Adoration
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F054DAFA72CA75-eucharistic
Speech Team Moves on to State!
Math Club
High School Math Club meets Wednesday mornings at 7:30 am in Mrs. Hill's room. Students work together on problem-solving and participate in contests. Many students have already qualified for the State Math League contest.
If there are junior high students interested in meeting for a Junior High Math Club, please email Mrs. Hill (beth.hill@icregina.com).
COVID Guidance
Department Updates
Counselor's Office
From the Counselor's Desk:
In January, most students finished up semester one with flying colors. On Regina's inservice day, 15 sophomores and juniors took part in the ZAPS Doorway to College seminar for ACT test preparation. Congratulations to Juniors Jack Tierney and Carson Irving for being chosen to represent Regina at the Iowa Legions' Boys State convention this summer. Congratulations to Juniors Heloisa Sader-Tiexiera and James Nguyen for being selected to represent Regina at this summer's World Affairs Seminar, sponsored by the Iowa City Rotary Club. Congratulations to Sophomores Faith Boileau and Joseph Polyak for being selected to represent Regina this summer at the Hugh O'Brian's Youth (HOBY) Leadership seminar.
Looking ahead:
On February 4th, Mr. Moeller and I will be taking 16 Seniors on a trip to Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids for a tour.
The summer 2022 internship portal will be open from Dec. 13, 2021, through Feb. 11, 2022, for current high school sophomores and juniors. Internships are 60 hours in length and students can earn high school credit.
Save the Date: Monday, February 7, 2022 at 6:30 PM
Virtual Meeting: How to Earn College Credit In High School
Mrs. Zoulek will facilitate a presentation covering the various ways to earn college credit while still in high school. Learn all the various terms and what they all mean--PLTW, Academies, PSEO courses, Alternative Concurrent Course, AP.
Guest Speakers: Jon Weih from Kirkwood Community College and Haruhi Abbas from the University of Iowa
Target Audience: Students in Grade 8-11 and their families
For Girls in Grades 9-11: Registration is now open for UNI’s Young Women in Leadership conference, scheduled for March 9th. Email or sign up with Mrs. Zoulek if you are interested. Cost is $15. Scholarships are available. For 8th grade girls: Collins Aerospace invites 5 girls to attend their Young Women in STEM event in April. If your student would be interested in being one of the attendees, please have her see Mrs. Zoulek no later than February 14th. Also: Information will be out soon about course registration for the 2022-2023 school year.
English
English 7: We are diving into the 1960’s with The Outsiders! We will be reading about this group of young men and follow their journey of survival and self discovery. We will be focusing on various skills throughout the novel (plot structure, story arc, found poem, socratic seminar, etc). We will wrap up our unit with a Characterization Project.
English 8: We are wrapping up The Hobbit in the next couple of weeks in English 8. We will discuss archetypes and the hero’s journey as we finish the novel. In February, we will complete a mini unit on poetry while learning some of the basic literary elements of poetry. We will study poets such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Julio Noboa, and Alice Walker. This unit will help set up some of the themes for our next novel unit. In language arts, we are studying commas in complex sentences and other uses of commas. We are beginning to write short research paragraphs and will work on paraphrasing and using MLA citations as we learn how to avoid plagiarism.
English 9: Our next piece of literature is reading an excerpt from The Odyssey by Homer. We will study a bit of Greek mythology and the steps in the hero’s journey as preparation for our reading. In addition, we are continuing with our vocabulary study, as well as our grammar review. We are also reviewing the components of summary and paraphrasing as we gear up for the state English assessment.
English 10: We are beginning our unit for The House on Mango Street. We will be covering skills such as: style, vignette, theme, bildungsroman, juxtaposition, and symbolism. To wrap up this unit, the students will be writing a series of vignettes. We will continue with our grammar work through Quill on a weekly basis.
English 11: We are currently reading selected poetry from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Students will be presenting, in a group, a chosen poem from Dickinson. Following our poetry unit, we will be reading short stories from Stephen Crane and Ambrose Bierce representing the realism movement in American literature. We are also continuing our SAT/ACT vocabulary study, as well as our grammar review using Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.
AP English Language and Composition: We are finishing The Great Gatsby. In addition to the novel analysis, we will be writing a synthesis essay utilizing nonfiction articles on the top 1%. We are continuing our stylistic and grammatical review in preparation for the May AP test. We are utilizing the AP Classroom College Board website as well as our textbook to assist with preparation as well.
AP English Literature and Composition: “To be or not to be…” Hamlet is always an enigma. I am looking forward to this class’s solution. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all!”
English 12: The Canterbury Tales. We will give it a rush treatment this year because I am also working in collusion (yes, I could have said collaboration, but I rather like the cabalistic sound of ‘collusion’) with Mr. Moeller on the big Senior Seminar paper. After Canterbury Tales we will be experiencing Hamlet for seniors who are not in AP.
Science
7th grade science - Mrs. Coffin
Busy month, January. So far this month, we finished our Rube Goldberg machines…with varying levels of success, but lots of learning! With the beginning of the new semester, the students have been sorting and classifying, critiquing models, and using thoughtful and appropriate scientific communications skills. We are beginning our next unit: Cells and Human Body Systems.
8th Grade Science - Mrs. Goldsmith
Science students are working with writing and naming chemical compounds. Everyone is making great progress! They will be doing an exciting lab where they will see all kinds of great color changes due to chemical reactions. The next unit we are doing is chemical reactions. More fun labs to come! The information they are learning right now is so essential to future science courses--they will use this skill many times in the future.
Earth & Space Science - Mrs. Coffin
The first semester of ESS basically covered Space. This semester, the focus will be on Earth. Students are finishing the chapter on Earth’s atmosphere. We will move into the layers of the Earth and how these layers work together to influence plate tectonics. Plate tectonics will lead us into earthquakes and earthquake mitigation. The students will attempt to construct structures that will withstand a 6.0 earthquake. Stay tuned!
Biology - Mr. LaKose
Biology students are investigating taxonomy and how we go about classifying living organisms. We will also discuss how viruses fit into this conversation, and begin with the simplest forms of life: bacteria. Students will perform a lab where they extract bacteria from yogurt bought at a nearby grocery store as well as swabbing various surfaces and applying it to a petri dish to see if anything grows!
Chemistry - Mrs. Goldsmith
Chemistry students have just completed their introduction to moles in chemistry. They were able to find compositions of elements within compounds as well as calculate empirical and molecular formulas. Students have done a great job with this topic! The next unit is one of the most fun of the year--chemical reactions. Students will become magicians (good chemists, actually) and be able to predict what will happen when two chemicals are mixed together. We will do a couple great labs as well as a group investigation into solving the identity of an unknown compound based solely on its chemical reactions!
Anatomy & Physiology - Mr. LaKose
Students will be finalizing their investigation on the physiology of muscle tissues and begin our investigations of the nervous system. The labs over the special senses (vision, hearing, etc) are traditionally a hit and should be again this year!
AP Biology - Mr. LaKose
We are in Unit 5 which is everything to do with DNA. Students have extracted DNA from their cheek cells, role played as Watson & Crick and built a model of the double helix, as well as researching the nuances of DNA replication, transcription, and translation!
Principles of Biomedical Science - Mr. LaKose
Unit 2, entitled “Clinical Care,” sees the students taking a variety of roles. This has included taking patients vital signs common at a typical physical, ensuring patient confidentiality by researching HIPAA laws, and even a newer development of health care: telehealth. The coolest lab was drawing “blood” from a synthetic arm!
Physics - Mrs. Goldsmith & Mr. Staab
Students are currently working on the projectile motion unit. Fun labs involving catapults and possibly nerf guns are involved! They will be applying what they have learned to real life situations. Unit 6 also involves circular motion and relative velocity. Relative velocity is a wonderful topic because it forces students to really think of situations from multiple frames of reference. Students are working very hard in class and doing a great job!
Social Studies
7th Grade Global Studies
The 7th graders will be finishing up their unit over Southeast Asia over the next couple of weeks. The students have completed a project in which they designed and created a Netflix series over a topic of interest from Southeast Asia while we also studied a chapter over the history and contemporary issues within China. As a concluding activity during the month of February, the students will be completing another mini-DBQ essay on water scarcity in China as well.
8th Grade Social Studies
We finished our Biography III reading book. The students studied the Revolutionary time period. They got to make their own stamp in the Art room for the Stamp Act. We watched video on the Founding Fathers. It has been a good semester with the 8th graders
We just finished our inventor unit: students selected an inventor to research
biographical information on. We did a small invention convention, where students invented something or improved on the invention. They were very creative in what they invented!
Our next unit is on the Election of 1816- James Monroe and 1824 with John Q Adams
AP US History
As 2nd semester started, we have jumped into Period 6 which covers the Gilded Age, Industrial Revolution, and the lingering effects of Reconstruction on American society. The students have also been working on a DBQ essay which will be due the week of February 7th. As we work towards the AP US History exam on May 6th, our main emphasis during this semester will be on APUSH writing skills required for the exam. At the conclusion of Period 6, the students will also be completing their first time-LEQ essay as well.
Regina Junior Senior High School
Email: glenn.plummer@regina.org
Website: www.regina.org
Location: 2150 Rochester Avenue, Iowa City, IA, United States
Phone: (319)-338-5436
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReginaEducation/
Twitter: @gap_4