Regina Jr Sr High Newsletter
April 2021
From the Principal
As you will see, the month of April has a lot going on, most importantly we enter the Easter season. The month of April, and into May, we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. This month I share a prayer (pictured below) from Catholic Relief Services for this Easter season and all year.
This month's newsletter includes:
- Information on tuition for the 2020-2021 school year
- Department updates
- Important ISASP information
- An article on the positive impact from attending religious celebrations
- School day change for April 23
- JH play information
- An article about our new Diocesan Superintendent
- Enrollment info. for a UI summer camp
Your in Christ,
Glenn Plummer
Upcoming Events
April 2: Good Friday - Noon dismissal
April 3: Holy Saturday
April 4: Easter Sunday
April 5: Girls & Boys Golf @ Tipton, Girls Soccer @ Regina
April 6: Girls & Boys Track @ Williamsburg
April 7: Senior trip (COPES Course)
April 8: Senior trip to St. Louis, Girls JH Track @ Mid-Prairie
April 9: Boys Golf @ Lake MacBride
April 10: Girls & Boys Track @ Bettendorf
April 12: Girls & Boys Track @ Wilton, Girls Golf @ West Liberty, Boys Golf @ Brown Deer, Boys JH Track @ Solon
April 13: Boys Golf @ Kalona, Girls JH Track @ Solon, Boys JH Track @ Mid-Prairie, Girls Soccer @ Regina
April 14: Boys Soccer @ Davenport
April 15: Boys Golf @ Tipton, Girls & Boys Track @ Benton
April 16: Girls Soccer @ West Liberty
April 17: Boys Soccer @ Regina
April 19: Girls & Boys Golf @ Durant, Girls Soccer @ Regina
April 20: Boys Golf @ Durant, Girls & Boys JH Track @ West Liberty, Girls & Boys Track @ Solon, Boys Soccer @ Columbus (Waterloo)
April 21: Girls Golf @ Maquoketa, Girls Soccer @ Davenport
April 22: Girls Golf @ Kalona
April 23: Noon dismissal, Boys Soccer @ Regina
April 26: Girls Golf @ Finkbine, Boys JH Track @ Regina, Girls Soccer @ CCA, Boys Soccer @ Bettendorf
April 27: Boys Golf @ West Liberty, Girls JH Track @ Regina, Girls & Boys Track @ Xavier, Regina Board of Education meeting @ 6:30
April 28: NHS Induction @ 7:00
April 29: Girls & Boys JH Track @ Wilton, Girls & Boys Track @ CCA, Boys Soccer @ Regina
April 30: Girls Golf @ Durant, Girls Soccer @ CR Washington
School Day Change for April 23
ISASP Testing Information
Information about the ISASP and practice exams may be found at https://iowa.pearsonaccess.com/test-prep/. Please let me know if you have any questions.
ISASP Testing - Student Honor Code
Student Honor Code for the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP)
The ISASP will be given to all students in grades 3-11. The results of these assessments are an important tool to help parents, teachers, and administrators monitor and evaluate student progress. Educational programming such as Talented & Gifted, Advanced Placement courses, and Senior Year Plus courses is determined, in part, by these results. These results are also used to compare our school to other schools in Iowa.
We expect all students to perform to the best of their ability and allow their classmates to do the same. In order to ensure that these results are meaningful and the testing process is fair for all students, we have established the following guidelines.
Electronic devices are prohibited in the testing room and should not be in the possession of students during testing unless such a device is called for in a 504 or IEP.
A student causing disruptions or distractions during testing will be removed from the test and will be required to make up his/her test(s) at an alternative time.
Students may not provide or accept assistance from other students. This includes copying answers or work, using prearranged signals to provide answers, sharing used scratch paper, and discussing items or responses with students who have not yet tested.
Students must turn in all used scratch paper and test tickets to the teacher in their testing room.
Students are expected to bring a book to read after their testing is completed. The teacher may also provide something for students to work on after testing is completed.
Kid Innovator Camp
New Superintendent of Schools
Rosary Every Wednesday
Chromebooks
Also, please remind your students to charge their Chromebook every night.
Department Updates
School Counselor
Registration for the 21-22 school year is in full swing. We still have about 45 students who have not returned their paper registration approval with their parent/guardian signature. Please bring those to the high school as soon as possible.
I, along with the administration, have had the privilege of selecting special honors, in the form of summer leadership camp experiences for 2021. Congratulate these students next time you see them:
Hugh O'Brian Leadership Camp:
Ella Bryan
Matt Schomer
Rotary Youth Leadership Awards Camp (sponsored by the Iowa City Rotary) :
Jose Monestina
Lillian Santillian
World Affairs Summit (sponsored by the Iowa City Rotary):
Sarah Dockery-Jackson
Tierney Sueppel
Boys State (Sponsored by the local post of the American Legion):
Adam Boblenz
For 4-year college-bound Junior Students:
You should be considering and signing up for an ACT or SAT test in your near future if the colleges you are considering require this score. Many students decide to take the test more than once.
ACT: Register at act.org
SAT: Register at collegeboard.org/SAT
See me if you need assistance to sign up. Scholarship vouchers may also be available for qualifying students.
Mrs. Belknap
Library News
The last issue of the Toilet Paper highlighted the fact that March was designated as Iowa History Month, denoting the 175th anniversary of statehood. Several new books were highlighted and they have already been added to our library, Amazing Iowa Women and Amazing Iowa Athletes. While the athlete book mentions some of our more famous athletes like Dan Gable, most of the entries feature lesser known men and women. The same is true of the book about women.
Computer Applications
At the end of quarter three I had to say good-bye to the final Computer Apps students. ‘We took a little time to have keyboarding races and act a little bit silly for a while.
Learning Center With the year on the downhill slide, it is more important than ever for students to stay current in their assignments and study for upcoming tests. If you should have any questions, be sure to contact Mrs. Belknap in the next month. joan.belknap@icregina.com
Business
Personal Finance
The past few weeks the students have been learning about life after high school and consumer awareness. With our life after high school unit the students looked at understanding the long-term impact of student loans, developing a plan to attend college without acquiring debt and how to identify the educational requirements for a career choice. With the consumer awareness unit the students looked at ways companies compete for our money, strategies they use to encourage people to spend more money, evaluating financial decisions and the opportunity cost of making certain purchases.
This week and next we will begin looking at how bargain shopping helps with a healthy financial plan, how to negotiate deals on products/services and understanding the integrity and honesty when it comes to negotiation. We will also look at the best places to find great deals
Economics
The students are wrapping up our unit on supply and demand. In the end the students will be able to make analysis of how and why we make some of the purchasing decisions that we do in our daily lives. We focus on the idea of the concession stand to help the students make connections to the items we are learning about. The focus in this unit was getting the material to mean more than just a grade or something that I need to know because a teacher or school says so. A big challenge with this unit is that to truly understand the material is that a student can’t just memorize the terms and hope to understand them. To truly understand this chapter a student must be able to apply the knowledge they are gaining to real life situations and then make conclusions based on specific scenarios.
Introduction to Business
We are just wrapping up our third unit on marketing. The students are beginning to see how the whole marketing process applies not only to business but also to consumers. At the same time we are learning about the stock market through an interactive stock market challenge. Next week we will begin our unit on Entrepreneurship and starting your own business.
English Language Arts
In 8th grade ELA, we are completing a unit on poetry before starting our last novel of the year, The Hobbit. In grammar, we are starting a unit on verbals, words that look like verbs but function as nouns and adjectives. In language arts, we are finishing our short research paragraphs and beginning work on our longer research paper. We are also wrapping up Before Columbus and beginning a unit on persuasive writing. We will start the persuasive unit with Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. English 9/Freshmen: We are reading excerpts from The Odyssey by Homer. We reviewed mythology prior to our reading. Along our journey with Odysseus, we are creating comic strips to document our travels and creative writing journals. In addition, we are preparing for the ISASP test by reviewing grammar, mechanics, and usage. 10th--just finished our debates over Julius Caesar. We put the main character, Brutus, on trial and had students act as lawyers for the character. Winners to be announced in class soon. Moving into our Dracula unit. English 11/Juniors: We are reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. We reviewed the Roaring Twenties prior to our reading, and we all enjoyed looking at some of the jargon used during that time period - it was the “bee’s knees” for sure! We are also preparing for the ISASP test by reviewing grammar, mechanics, and usage. AP English Language and Composition: We are in full test-prep mode getting ready for the AP test which is May 12th! We are writing rhetorical analysis essays, argument essays, and synthesis essays, as well as working on our multiple-choice test-taking skills. We are also reading The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Busy time! Senior English students will be in Hell [Dante’s Inferno] a little longer, but their free reading is coming along nicely In Creative Writing, students are given the scenario that Mr. Plummer has chosen them to give a speech about any topic for the whole school to hear. They are developing a persuasive, informative or entertaining speech for this purpose. AP Lit. students are drilling for the College Board exam and have recently finished Hamlet and Richard Wright's naturalist-turned-existentialist novel Native Son. They have now turned their attention to George Orwell’s 2021....er…. 1984. Soon they, too, will visit the nether world in Dante’s Divine Comedy..
Family and Consumer Science
Intro. to FACS
This is the first time I have taught this semester long elective, so everything is new and teaching it has been exciting and challenging at the same time! We started out the semester with a sewing project. Everyone got to choose their own sewing project. I had students sewing aprons, mermaid blankets, robes, sweatshirts, PJ shorts and even dog clothes! Hopefully your student told you what they made or you have seen the project. They did a fantastic job and were patient and willing to help as everyone got done at different times. We then moved onto the Independent Living unit, which is huge! We first discussed Communication, and then the often more important Non-Verbal Communication. They had to conduct some experiments by invading someone’s personal space, giving longer than usual eye contact and even some weird facial expressions while others were talking to them. It was interesting to hear how people responded to them. Hopefully everyone is a little more aware of their own non-verbals from now on. We just finished up some Adulting 101 Stations in which I set out 27 different stations and they had to work through them. They ranged from how to fold a fitted sheet, to how to jump a car to how to clean a kitchen sink (and had to figure out why I gave them a toothbrush in that station - yes, I’m THAT picky with cleaning), to how to tie a tie and even write a thank you and address an envelope. Hopefully they learned something! We will move on to a little bit of finances (not to overlap with Personal Finance class) and then a fun Monster Project that we will do with 1st graders. Hopefully students have enjoyed the class and we continue to offer it!
Culinary Arts 2
We have been travelling the country and now are onto the world. During this Global Cuisine Project, each student picked a country to research and presented it to the class. They were to pick a recipe from that country that we can make in class. So it looks like we will be making fried plantains, crepes, Japanese fluffy souffle pancakes, a Brazillian pave dessert and lots more! During this unit, I showed a TED Talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in which she talks really nothing about food but about the dangers of a single story - a stereotype. And while stereotypes are not always necessarily terrible, they are incomplete. Incomplete stories about someone or something. It is our job to finish the story and learn more about it so we aren’t fearful. Because fear leads to hate. Students summarized the lesson beautifully, “...when we only hear one part of the story it's an incomplete story and becomes a stereotype…..People are more than one story….that we put certain groups of people and things into categories and that we stereotype based on one idea of that group or person….stereotypes build boundaries….We are all more than one story”. I think it is a great lesson in cultures but also as humans.
FACS 1and FACS - Quarter 3
If your child was in FACS 1 during Quarter 3, we just finished up Friday. They completed their pillows and hopefully have brought them home. Many students were gone the week before Spring Break (or quarantined) and need to finish up, so hopefully they will be in communication with me about finishing up their pillow on their own time. Parents - if there is a zero in the gradebook, you might want to talk to your child about their pillow.
FACS 2 finished up with the cooking unit - who doesn’t love to cook? And of course they cleaned, so give them some jobs at home to do!
FACS 2 - Quarter 4
The new FACS 2 class will be starting this week. We will begin with the sewing unit by making a lanyard and a pillowcase using a French seam. They are more than welcome to use my fabric but many like to get their own fabric. The requirements for fabric will be coming home this week as well as a newsletter to you all on what they need to make one of these pillowcases. It will be a quick turnaround as many of these kids just took FACS 1 and will be “experts” in the sewing department without much teaching. I tell them it is like riding a bike. It will all come back to them when they sit down in front of the machine.
Health & PE
Health has finished up the mental health unit focus on eating disorders, types of depression and suicide. We will be starting the alcohol unit next week.
9-12 P.E. - We are in the middle of a spikeball unit right now. It is a newer, up and coming net sport that has several different gameplay modifications. Along with that, the high school classes are going bowling once a week for 3-4 weeks at Colonial Lanes. Tons of fun! Students have learned how to keep score of bowling with a pencil and paper...the "old school" way! We have also completed a variation of fitness based workouts prior to playing spikeball. Students wear heart rate sensors most class periods to track and analyze their individual heart rate data during physical activity. Can't wait for the warm weather to take advantage of being outside again!
Mathematics
Mrs. Welter
Pre Algebra: In Pre Algebra, the students have finished up our Pi Day activities where they made a pi day cityscape (pictures included) and a circular scavenger hunt. We also did a project about women mathematicians for the month of March. Students made kahoots for us to play and learn about many fantastic women in Math. The students started the geometry unit. Angles will be our focus through mid April and then we will do Area and Volume.
Mrs. Hill AP Calculus AB and BC: Both classes are finishing up initial coverage of the required material for the AP Exam. We'll start going back to topics that students want to spend extra time reviewing and start doing practice exams. The AP Exam is Tuesday, May 4th. High School Calculus: We're getting ready to start a unit on Connecting Derivatives to Graphs of Functions. Statistics: We are learning about the chi-square distribution and will move to the chapter about t-distributions next.
Music
I'm hoping that in May we will be able to have some form of performance from your student musician. This all depends on the quarantine situation. Junior high students have been working hard on jazz band music and rhythm reading with bucket drumming. High school students have been practicing some cool bucket drum pieces and doing a great job on developing their music skills. If we are able do some form of concert it will be no longer than a half hour with all protocols in place. Stay tuned for updates!
7-12 Choir
We had a rousing success with our production of High School Musical 2. Congratulations to everyone involved. Plans and decisions are already in the works for next year's musical. Look out for announcements in the coming weeks.
The choir program will be presenting a recorded concert in May. The students are hard at work on two sea shanties and some fun pop songs. Be on the lookout for a YouTube link so you can share this fun program with friends and family across the world.
Science
7th grade science - Mrs. Coffin
7th graders will be finishing up their Ecology unit and then we are jumping with both feet into our physical science unit! This will end our school year. We will learn about force, momentum, speed, and Newton’s Laws. All of this will end with a Rube Goldberg project!
8th Grade Science - Mrs. Goldsmith
Science 8 students are in their chemistry unit. We just finished up states of matter and pressure. Students got to see some fun demonstrations involving marshmallows (and Peeps, just in time for Easter), ping pong balls, bubble races, and the very dramatic crushing of pop cans by just the normal air around us! We will move on to atoms and the periodic table. We will be ending the year discussing Space and Earth Science (weather, etc).
Earth & Space Science - Mrs. Coffin
We have almost completed our earthquake resistant building project. We will be testing our final constructions when we return after Easter. Moving forward, we will pull all of our understanding about Earth’s spheres and biogeochemical cycles together. To end the year, we will be learning about human impacts on the environment and how we can mitigate this impact. Parents, there is going to be a wonderful lab opportunity for you to get involved with your Freshman child during this unit! Stay tuned for more information.
Biology - Mr. LaKose
Biology students have finished up their investigations on the diversity of Kingdom Protista. We are transitioning into our investigations of the higher eukaryotes, starting with Fungi. A student favorite lab is up next as we’ll be making homemade root beer using yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and their products of fermentation!
Chemistry - Mrs. Goldsmith
Chemistry students have just completed their unit on Stoichiometry, or “chemistry math.” They did a terrific job overall on the test--I’m so proud of their hard work. I’m also happy to say that there has been no loss of learning this year for chemistry students--we are right on track for where we would be in a non-pandemic year! We are just starting the Solutions unit and will move on to Acids and Bases next, which includes a couple great labs including a titration competition for the title of Master Titrator! The photo is from our Stoichiometry (Salt) Lab, where students made their own salt from sodium carbonate and hydrochloric acid. They tasted their results at the end!
Anatomy & Physiology - Mr. LaKose
Still plugging away at the nervous system, students will be testing over the central nervous system and transitioning into the peripheral nervous system. We will perform labs on observation & dissection of the brain and spinal cord, as well as learning each of the cranial nerves!
AP Biology - Mr. LaKose
Students are testing over unit 6 this week, covering Mendelian inheritance, human genetics, as well as linkage. We have two units to go, Evolution and Ecology, then much review before our AP exam on May 14th!
Principles of Biomedical Science - Mr. LaKose
We are wrapping up Unit 2 (Clinical Care) and transitioning to Unit 3 (Outbreaks & Emergencies). In unit 2 we walked through a typical day of a medical care provider (see below). We have seen various medical issues such as diabetes, neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), and Turner Syndrome. Our last case of the day is Indie Stewart, who just gave birth to a 3 week early preterm baby. Students are using their knowledge of the previous cases to apply it to an overall patient history report for Indie’s baby!
Social Studies
Government: Students are learning about the Legislative Branch. Some focal points are learning about who their senators and representative are here in Iowa as well as their governor on a state level. The big components of this unit are understanding gerrymandering, how a bill becomes a law, and the difference/similarities between the Senate and House of Representatives.
World History: Students are learning about the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment period. Students are each designated an important person during this time period that changed the way people thought about science, politics, and life. Students will be competing in a March Madness type format to see who is the champion of the Scientific Revolution/Enlightenment period. Students are writing persuasive paragraphs and making a persuasive slide to exemplify their person to persuade their classmates to vote for their person to move on.
AP World History: Students are learning about World War 1 and World War 2. Students will be competing in a March Madness type format to see who, what event, or country is the champion of the time period 1900-1950s. Students are writing persuasive paragraphs and making a persuasive slide to exemplify their person to persuade their classmates to vote for their person to move on. Students are also learning about the cause and effects of both major wars.
AP US History: Mrs. Wallace
In AP US History, the students are already almost done with Period 7 which covered the expansive topics of WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. We will be cruising into Period 8 towards the first part of April while studying the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and the end of the Cold War. Our goal is to conclude Periods 8 & 9 by Friday, April 16th in order to leave 2 1/2 weeks or so for final exam review and a full in-class practice exam as well. The students recently just completed an in-class timed DBQ essay and I was overall very pleased with their essays! A reminder that the AP US History exam will take place in-person at Regina on Thursday, May 6th at 8 am! The end is in sight....all of their hard work will soon pay off!
7th Grade Global Studies- Mrs. Wallace
As the students have returned from spring break, we have now started our unit on Southeast Asia. The students will be completing a project in which they design and create a Netflix series over a topic of interest from Southeast Asia while we also complete a chapter over the history and contemporary issues within China. As a concluding activity during the month of April, the students will be completing another mini-DBQ essay on water scarcity in China as well.
8th Grade US History - Mr Kahler
Students just finished up the DBQ lesson on "Was the US justified in going to War with Mexico", they did a fantastic job as usual on the DBQ. It has been impressive reading their essays they have written for the final essay this year.
We are moving on to our Oregon Trail lessons, they will have a "pack a wagon" assignment, always a fun lesson to see what they would take in their wagon.
Then we will do our intriguing scandals project, they have a topic to research and write a paper (they will need note cards for this project)
US History
Students have been working on questions for a trivia game that we will play in class.
General Psychology
Students are taking an exam over Sensation and Perception this week and moving into the unit on sleeping and sleep disorders.
AP Government
Students will be taking the Unit 4 exam, starting Unit 5 and reviewing for the AP exam on Monday, May 3.
Spanish
Spanish I – Unit 4.1-2 in Avancemos 1. The students are learning a variety of vocabulary related to clothing, colors, numbers to discuss prices of items, weather descriptions during the seasons, and discuss what clothes they prefer to wear. Students are learning Stem-Changing verbs of -ar, -er, -ir with Direct Object Pronouns. Students discuss weather conditions and clothing appropriate for each season. They have learned to use direct object pronouns when referring to persons or things that have been already mentioned in previous sentences.
Spanish II - We are finishing the month of with March with quizzes on names of stores/places and what you can do or see and direct object pronouns. In April we will learn demonstrative adjectives and pronouns as well as interrogative words. Students will also learn how to ask questions that may not have a question word. Our next vocabulary will be on clothing and how to shop for clothes. We will close the unit with an oral presentation. We will continue practicing present, past, present progressive tenses. We will introduce the preterito progressive. Spanish II - We will start April with a unit/vocabulary on Survival Spanish. Students will learn to navigate their way around Spanish speaking countries by asking questions about services and directions to places. We will continue with the preterito and the imperfect, and we will learn the conditional tense. If time allows it students will be introduced to the imperative/command form tú and nosotros subject pronouns. Spanish IV – Unit 5. 1-2 of En Español 3. The students are learning a variety of vocabulary related to household responsibilities, Human Rights, The Environment, Professions they wish to study, etc. They are also studying Demonstrative Adjectives, Indirect and Direct Object Pronouns, Stem-Changing verbs with both IOP and DOP, etc. They are learning the Future Perfect Tense of regular and irregular verbs to express ‘what will have happened’ in their lives by a certain time in the future.
Theology and Via
Boland, Conlon VIA: Our VIA’s have wrapped up our study of vocations, where we learned about the different callings we can have in life. In early March, we had a wonderful zoom meeting with Sr. Stephanie Baliga, a young sister who works at Mission of Our Lady of the Angels on the westside, Humboldt Park area of Chicago. The students asked her a wide array of questions and her answers were enlightening as to the daily life of a religious sister. We are continuing to study and learn more about Lent and Holy Week. The students are looking forward to the Stations of the Cross Prayer Service on Friday, that they will be able to attend in person!
Rouse VIA: we finished up learning about the Ten commandments and how to interpret and apply them to our lives.Next we will be covering the topics of Death and Dying and how God fulfills his promise of eternal life with him.
Sprengelmeyer Via:In our Via we have wrapped up our unit on human dignity and have begun our unit on vocations. We learned about our basic vocations as family members, community members, and caretakers of the planet. We are now exploring the vocations of marriage, religious life, and single life. We were able to join Mrs. Conlon’s Via and other Vias in a Zoom meet with a young sister in Chicago. She helped us understand the daily life of a nun, breaking some stereotypes along the way. This week, we are delving deeper into Holy Week and discussing the meaning of Holy Thursday and Good Friday.
Welter VIA: In Via the students have finished up Holy Week information and also worked on information about St. Joseph since it is the year of St. Joseph. We will continue with learning about the Bible and the Ten Commandments. After this we will be reading the book Heaven is for Real to allow for discussion about heaven and death. We continue to analyze the Gospel each week.
Theology 9 students studied the Paschal Mystery during Lent and are hopefully deepening their knowledge of the Trinity. The ultimate goal is to progress to a deeper relationship with Christ.
Theology 10 Students have been studying the Gospels, what the style is for each Gospel. When they wrote and to whom did they write. We have an upcoming project on researching each Apostle, what their life was like and the where and what they preached about Jesus. After Holy Week, we are watching a video on the timeline of events of Jesus leading up to the passion story.
Theology 11: The students have learned about St. Joseph and St. Patrick. They made shamrock depictions of the Trinity to show how they would explain the Trinity to someone younger than them. (pictures are included) We will continue with the Sacrament of Marriage and the students will be doing a project about wedding cultures around the world. After the Sacrament of Marriage we will look at challenges within Marriage and then each student will interview a married couple. This will be the final project for the Marriage Unit. The rest of the year then will focus on the vocations of priest and deacon. We continue to analyze the Gospel each week.
Theology 12: Seniors wrapped up their study of the Sacraments and have been preparing for their Stations of the Cross Prayer Service this Friday. We continued to reflect on the Lenten journey and how to apply it to our lives. Finally, the seniors continue to have incredible discussions each week over the Gospel of Mark. Looking ahead, we will be starting our study of Catholic Social Teaching.
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