Sandwich Middle School
March 2019
SMS Student Qualifies for National Spelling Bee
6th Grade News
March is here, and at last, the spring time and warm weather that we have been looking for seems within reach. During the month of March our 6th graders will have just as much to look forward to. We will be taking our annual trip to Medieval Times in Schaumburg on March 13th! You should have seen and returned permission slips already. This trip is a culmination of our units in Social Studies and Language Arts.
In Social Studies, students will be continuing their breakdown of the European Middle Ages.
In Language Arts, classes will continue to practice using informational texts and will also be studying Greek mythology. We will also be looking at how the Greek and Latin languages influenced our own language. Instructional Language Arts classes will be working on a unit on pronouns and also will continue practicing using informational texts. AT classes will be writing an argumentative essay.
Science classes will be wrapping up their unit regarding populations and how organisms interact. We will then explores the different biomes of the world.
Math classes will be starting to work with both 2 and 3 dimensional shapes finding area, surface area and volume; along with getting ready for PARCC testing.
Instructional Math students will wrap up solving unit rate problems and begin working on identifying properties of percentages and proportions.
Also, 6th grade hosted a career day in February. Presenters from a wide range of careers volunteered to give our students a little sneak peek into the future. A huge THANK YOU to those who took time out of their busy day to spend with the students. Ask your student what they learned about the careers of our presenters!
Don’t forget- Ozzy’s Reading Club will be concluding the beginning of March. Students who are currently participating will need to finish reading their final 200 pages by March 10 for a “Homerun”. The Kane County Cougars game will be April 16th!
Be sure to check in with your students and make sure they have all the school supplies they need to finish out the school year strong!
Students of the Month for 6th grade are Luigi Colin and Alyssa Stacks! Keep up the great work!7th Grade News
It’s been an exciting month in Social Stuides. We started by weaving our way through the Jacksonian Period and the birth of the modern presidency. We focused on the social and political impacts of America’s growing power around the world. From there, we have moved on to the birth of Manifest Destiny and the quest to exapnd west. Along the way, we tackled the Texas Revolution and the War with Mexico.
In science, we are finishing up our Astronomy unit. We will finish out the Astronomy unit with a group model project that will be completed in class. We will then be moving on to the Biology unit learning about cells and their organelles.
As we begin the back nine of our school year in Language Arts, we will continue to develop new word strategies. Information text and sources will season our readings, as will our experiences with R.A.C.E. response exercises. This month we will analyze text structures, technical passages, and visual components of everyday passages. Yes, there is an art to reading those confusing directions and advertisements. As our writing experiences continue to expand, our expectations for proper grammar will increase, too. The novel, The Giver, will be the main focus over the next few weeks. The students will apply there learning to the novel reading and responses.
In the math classes, we just finished up our unit on measuring figures. During this unit, the students learned how to find the circumference and area of circles. We then learned how to find the area of composite figures and the volume and surface area of prisms and pyramids. The last concept we worked on in this chapter is finding the volume and surface area of three-dimensional composite figures. We are wrapping up this chapter with a project. The students will be creating a geometry collage using the terms and shapes that we learned during our 2 geometry chapters. We will then move on to the next chapter over probability.
In pre-algebra, we just finished up our chapter over graphing lines. During this chapter, the students learned how to graph linear equations, find the slopes of lines, and how to use slopes and intercepts to graph. They also learned how to use point-slope form, direct variation, graphing inequalities with two variables, and lines of best fit. Now that we finished up this chapter, we will be moving on to probability. During this chapter, the students will learn about theoretical and experimental probability, using a simulation to model an experiment, and the fundamental Counting Principal. We will also learn about permutations, combinations, independent and dependent events, and finding the odds of an event.
Our students of the month are Tyler Lissman and Peyton Dudzik.
8th Grade News
The students have been busy preparing for the IAR tests which will begin on March 11. The math tests will be from March 11 to March 13. The reading portion of the test is March 14 and 18. It is imperative that your student have a good healthy breakfast and get plenty of rest during that time period. Also, in language arts we are reading the novel, The Watson’s Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. The language arts AT class is working in their My Perspective literature book. In science, students will be busy studying marine habitats and adaptations of animals living there. In general math, we are preparing for IAR testing. Please encourage your students to come in for help to fine tune their math skills. In math, the students are graphing functions. In social studies, we are studying The Great Depression and WWII.
Please note that on April 9, the students will attend the IVVC orientation where they will experience what IVVC has to offer.
The Students of the Month are Ruby Ramirez and Dan Reedy. These students go above and beyond the normal expectations and always make us smile. They have winning attitudes and a strong work ethic.
Explore Team News
All Explore students continue to work hard in their individual subjects. With the third quarter coming to an end students don’t have a lot of time left to complete projects and get grades. All Explore teachers are starting to prepare for the annual Fine Arts Festival, which will be held Thursday, May 2 at SMS. The festival is an opportunity for the community to see all the hard work SMS students do in the Explore classrooms. Please mark your calendars!
The Explore student of the month is Maddie Hill.
Physical Education News
Hello from the Physical Education department. Students have been busy working on their Fitnessgram testing and accomplishing numerous goals throughout this quarter. Fitness classes have been working diligently on increasing strength, cardiovascular, and flexibility levels. In sports oriented class, we currently finished up our golf and hockey units and are very excited to partake in the Olympic unit. All students will be involved with our Olympics in which 10 different countries will participate in events such as tug-o-war, snowball throw, curling, and many other exciting events. We have a student who has gone above and beyond showing great traits such as respect, hard work, helpfulness, dedication, motivation, and many more. This student is Max Cryer. We are proud to call him our student of the month. Keep up the good work!
News from the LRC
The LRC is always hopping in MARCH. The place will be filled with green and frogs and hopes for warm weather. We will be leaping into good books!
We just finished the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Award Program. 79 READERS read 365 BOOKS and 48 of those READERS qualified to attend the voting party. Congratulations to everyone who joined the fun. Six students read ALL 20 Caudill nominees. “Well done you” to Max Cryer, Danny Duffey, Jakob Duffey, Johanna Freemon, ,Josefh Hernandez, and Cerelia Lesko. Thank you to the Sandwich Education Foundation for making the program possible. Caudill will begin again in October 2019 with twenty new nominated titles.