Hickory Creek Monthly Newsletter
April 2022
Hickory Creek News
Here are some important reminders for students when we return:
Cell Phones
Cell phones are to be turned off and out of site while in the building (they can be kept in backpacks, lockers or pockets, but should not be out. If students need to call home, they should come to the office so that our team is aware that they may be expecting a delivery or need to go home.
School Start Time
Hickory Creek classes begin at 7:45 A.M. Students are dismissed from morning supervision at 7:40 A.M. and given 5 minutes to get to their first hour class and be seated and ready for instruction. If students are not taking the bus, please be sure to allow enough time to navigate the morning traffic so that students being dropped off are in the building by 7:40, to give them time to get to class.
Dress Code
As the weather gets warmer, students should be mindful of the Hickory Creek dress code. Clothing must completely cover the torso to the mid-thigh. All clothing must conceal undergarments. Clothing must be free of graphics or text that is provocative, vulgar, profane and/or depict weapons, alcohol, or cigarette-relater products.
Important Dates in April
March 28th - April 1st - SPRING BREAK
April 4th - Return from Spring Break
April 6th - 8th - IAR Math Testing for grades 6th-8th and ISA Testing for grade 8.
April 8th - Power School Report Card grades will be updated and ready for online viewing
April 12th-13th - IAR ELA Testing for grades 6th - 8th
April 15th - No School
April 18th - No School
Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) Testing Dates
Save the Date
Please avoid scheduling any appointments on these days and ensure your child is present for school. Thank you in advance :)
April 6th - 8th
- IAR Math for all grades
- ISA (Illinois Science Assessment) for 8th grade only
April 12th -13th
- IAR ELA for all grades
Picture Highlights from March
LWSRA Wheel Chair Basketball Game Was a Huge Success! Thank you to all of our families!
8th Grade Graduation
Thursday, May 19th = 8th Graders will attend their class trip to Great America
Friday, May 20th = 8th Graders will participate in Graduation Practice in the AM and have a pizza party and social in the PM.
Sunday, May 22nd = Graduation will take place at 2:00 P.M. in the football stadium at Lincoln-Way West High School. Information about the ceremony will be sent out in April. There will be open seating - no tickets needed to attend.
Tuesday, May 24th = 8th Grade Dance at CD & Me (not a school sponsored event).
6th Grade
6th Grade ELA
Sixth Grade ELA will be reviewing for IAR that will take place mid-April for ELA and math. Students will also be starting 4th Q texts: Surviving Hitler or Shooting Kabul. Each text will cover a variety of skills and historical events that surround our 4th Q Essential Question: What if your world changed in a day? IAR testing in right around the corner, please make sure your child has working headphones. (no wireless)
6th Grade Math
Sixth Grade will be finding the area of polygons including: squares, rectangles, parallelograms, triangles, trapezoids, regular polygons, and composite shapes. After studying area, we will begin to study volume and surface area of prisms.
Honors will be moving into the 7th grade curriculum learning angle relationships.
6th Grade Science
6th Grade Social Studies
7th Grade
7th Grade ELA
Our Quarter 3 quest is coming to an end. In core, students worked hard examining the language used by Clare Vanderpool in Navigating Early alone with analyzing author’s craft and structure. Honors classes also analyzed author’s craft and structure in Murder on the Orient Express.
As Quarter 4 begins, students will review for the upcoming IAR test. Students will then begin their study of the three types of irony which they will apply to the short stories of O. Henry.
7th Grade Math
7th Grade Science
7th Grade Social Studies
8th Grade
8th Grade ELA
Honors ELA classes will also be starting Shakespeare--“A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
8th Grade Math
Eighth grade math students have finished our unit on Transformations and are looking forward to IAR testing when we return from Spring Break. Please be sure to have a healthy breakfast and get plenty of sleep! We are excited to see your progress! Dilations will be studied right before we leave for Spring Break and then volume will be studied right after Spring Break.
In Honors, we are in the world of Polynomials and Quadratics!!! After we learn all operations with polynomials, we will begin factoring including special products, difference of squares, and perfect square trinomials. Happy Spring! 😊
8th Grade Science
8th Grade Social Studies
PE and Encore
Spanish
Eighth Grade students ended the quarter with an awesome speaking assessment to take/place a food order at a restaurant. They worked in groups as either the waiter or customer. This wrapped up our 5B unit with a review of 3A vocabulary. The students will continue after Spring Break with learning how to talk about their houses and bedrooms.
Sixth and Seventh grade students leave our Spanish classes with a greater understanding of how to use Spanish to talk about their likes, how to describe themselves, and to be able to talk about their classes. We welcome our new quarter students after Spring break!
Music
Sixth and Seventh grade music students will begin exploring the world of music starting with rhythm! Throughout the course of the quarter, students will work with various instruments to understand and appreciate music more. They will be playing world percussion instruments, Guitars, ukulele Xylophones, Metallophones, and digital creation software such as Soundtrap, and Noteflight!
STEM
This month, 8th grade Engineering and Design students are completing their Makerspace projects and exploring how the STEM concepts learned throughout 3rd Quarter will translate to their next four years at Lincoln-Way East. They will also begin to research various STEM career pathways.
Seventh grade STEM students will begin exploring the MakerSpace! Throughout the course of the quarter, students will work at their own pace to explore the topics that most interest them. They can choose between coding, robotics, typing, 3D modeling and printing, video editing, engineering with the MakerCart, subtractive manufacturing with the Cricut Maker, sewing and embroidery, and so much more!
Sixth graders will begin the quarter by exploring Engineering, Homerow Keyboarding, Coding, and Robotics.
PE
Health will soon be concluding, final units and topics are Communicable Diseases and Sex Education (8th grade), Alcohol and Tobacco (7th Grade), Safety, CPR & First Aid (6th Grade).
Along with our health curriculum the 6th graders will be receiving a presentation about "the beginning of life" and the science behind reproductive systems from Candor Health group.
6th Grade SEL
7th Grade SEL
8th Grade SEL
Library News
Library
The winner of the 2022 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award for the state of Illinois is The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart! Thank you to all the HCMS readers for participating, the Education Foundation for providing the books and everyone who helped make the voting celebration a success! Next year’s list is available now in the library.
As we go into the 4th Quarter it is more important than ever for students to return their library books on time. ELA classes are in the library every week to return or renew books as needed. Please add library book returns to your end-of-the-year check list.
From Nurse Tammy
Note from the Nurse
Wrestling
Girls Volleyball
Bowling
Best Buddies
Tiger TV
As always, the TigerTV students are hard at work this month curating content for our weekly broadcasts and organizing live streams of our school’s events.
This month’s assignments are:
Week of April 4 – Team 1 (studio) and Team 3 (streaming)
Week of April 11 – Team 2 (studio) and Team 4 (streaming)
Week of April 18 – Team 3 (studio) and Team 1 (streaming)
Week of April 25 – Team 4 (studio) and Team 2 (streaming)
Remember that weekly broadcast links and live streaming links are posted on the HCMS website every week!
NJHS
In place of our March membership meeting, members needed to complete a “Leadership” activity that was sent out through Teams. The activity included five questions that asked our members to reflect on the ways they feel that they are leaders and how their leadership is shown in and out of the classroom.
The deadline to submit applications for the Outstanding Achievement Award was back on March 23rd- students who applied will be notified in May if they are one of the 500 students across the nation to win the award! Good luck to all!
NJHS will also be supplying all Hickory Creek students some “treats” during the two weeks of IAR testing this month!
Letters of acceptance for new 6th & 7th grade members were sent out on March 25- congratulations to our new inductees! The official induction ceremony will be held in May.
Our next membership meeting will take place on Friday, April 22nd.
Mathletes
Coaches Jeglinski and Rutovic want to congratulate all the 21-22 Mathletes on a phenomenal season!! We are so very proud of your efforts and perseverance throughout the year. We hope that our 8th graders will pursue Mathletes in high school next year. To our 6th and 7th graders: we look forward to seeing you next year in November!
Scholastic Bowl
Good luck at Regionals at the end of the month!!
Student Council
Students of the Month
We would like to recognize our Students of the Month for February 2022. Each grade level and team selected two students, who encompassed this month’s character trait: Perseverance!
6A
Kate Bohms & Cayden Burgess
6B
Abby Gierasinski & Brendan Roach
7A
Ximena Hernandez & Jyaer Patterson
7B
Madeleine Keedy & Andrew Richter
8A
Jackson Bremmer & Paige Neiswonger
8B
Abby Kramer & Aidan McLaughlin
ENCORE
Sophia Stanek & Kris D’Ambrosio
PE
Matt O’Rourke & Caroline Marneris
Congratulations again to our Students of the Month for February 2022.
We would like to recognize our Students of the Month for March 2022. Each grade level and team selected two students, who encompassed this month’s character trait: Responsibility!
6A
Tyler Spychalski & Olivia Santiago
6B
Jacob Wagner & Maryann March
7A
Alyssa Hart & Tyler Pucek
7B
Sean Powers & Emily Rudolph
8A
Alyssa Duran & Alex Hartman
8B
Tyler Rea & Tommy Leyden
ENCORE
Taylor Ossowski & Josh Baud
PE
Wren Walker & Joe Harrington
Congratulations again to our Students of the Month for March 2022.