AIG News ~ March & April, 2023
Margaret B. Pollard Middle School
Important Dates and Links for Families
Important Dates:
January 30, 2023 ~ District Scripps Spelling Bee @ Seaforth HS at 6:00 PM
March 5, 2023 ~ Regional Spelling Bee Winners will move on to the Scripps State Spelling Competition. This year, our school was represented by Ryan Serem, and he went on to win 8th place at the NC State Scripps Spelling Bee competition! Way to go, Ryan!
Week of March 27th-31st ~ NC Check-In Tests for both Math and READING ~ ALL GRADE LEVELS
April 7, 2023-April 16, 2023 ~ SPRING BREAK for all administrators, teachers, and students ~ Enjoy your time off and we will see you on Monday, April, 17th!
Week of April 17th ~ STAR MATH TESTING ~ ALL grades
Week of April 24th ~ STAR READING TESTING ~ ALL grades
EOG Testing will take place during the last two weeks of May and EOG testing makeups may move into the beginning of June, if needed.
SUMMER AIG PROGRAMMING: Attend the Parent University session in a few weeks to learn more about this offering. PLEASE READ BELOW FOR MORE DETAILS.
Links:
Meet Your AIG Teachers
AIG News and Announcements
AIG TESTING:
- AIG testing session dates were set up for the beginning of February, and all make-up sessions were completed by the beginning of March.
- All AIG testing data will be compiled and submitted to the county before the beginning of April.
- Parents and students will be informed about the results by the beginning of June, 2023. Letters will be sent home to families at that time with the testing results and all AIG identification decisions.
- The MBP AIG teacher emails are: bbell@chatham.k12.nc.us, eliner@chatham.k12.nc.us
- Feel free to email us for any clarification or with any questions about the AIG testing process.
PARENT UNIVERSITY SESSIONS:
There is one upcoming Parent University session scheduled and it will be held on the following date:
- April 25, 2023 ~ 6:00-7:00 PM at Horton Middle School - The focus of the meeting will be the summer enrichment activities that will be offered for gifted learners in Chatham County
- We highly recommend signing your AIG child(ren) up for this summer program as it is not only engaging, but also very educational.
- This year, the program will run for 2 weeks and one week has been planned to take place at Triangle Training Center in Pittsboro.
Please add this date to your calendar and we look forward to seeing you there!
Geography Bee Information:
The National Geographic Geography Bee had been a yearly tradition at Pollard. Unfortunately, National Geographic discontinued doing this.
This year, due to student interest in geography, we decided to bring it back!
All 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students studied and prepared in their Social Studies classes. On March 16th, we all participated in the MBP Geography Bee. There were 35 questions focusing on maps, landmarks, and landforms from the United States and all over the world. After the scores were tallied, these were the top twenty finishers. They all got at least 31/35 questions correct!
6th Graders
Carter Mospan
Tyler Patterson
Glen Bonine
7th Graders
Mason Pooley
William Forester
Brooks Boyd
Petra Ferguson
Liam Stinnett
Claire Prehodka
Ben Taylor
Owen Cammett
8th Graders
Caitlin Campbell
Gavin Ramos
Jacob Cutts
Owen Mergliano
Grady Perchinisky
Jonah Birken
Caleb Serrano
Charlotte Lloyd
Ezennia Adibe
Caitlin Campbell (8th grader) received the highest score in Round 1!
Some interesting results…
695 students took the quiz.
The average score was 20 out of 35.
Only 129 students correctly answered that Baghdad lies on the Tigris River.
87% of the students correctly answered that the Eiffel Tower can be found in Europe.
The championship round will be held at 8:15 a.m. on 4/06/23 in the Multi-Purpose Room. Families are invited!
What's Happening in AIG?
7th Grade Reading:
AIG Reading students began the third quarter choosing a Science Fiction novel and participating in Literary Circles. We also took some time researching the science behind science fiction. For the remainder of the third quarter we have been attending to poetry and verse; reading, writing and performing. This will be our focus until spring break.
8th Grade Reading- The 8th grade students have completed their Dystopian Petal Maps, which are graphic organizers with petals that radiate out to create flowers. The petals had higher-level (DOK 2-3) questions that were answered for two different dystopian stories. Students had the choice to read two stories from a total of five that were provided. Students worked in pairs and groups to complete the work, and these are now prominently displayed on the walls in our AIG classroom. We have started our WWII Book Club Unit and students have been working on a variety of choice menus for this time period so that they will have a strong background knowledge before reading their chosen books from the following three (3) choices: Irena's Children (true account of Irena Sendler's impact during WWII), The Boys in the Boat (true account of the 1936 U.S. Men's Olympic Rowing team and their impact on the games and Hitler's response), and Code Girls (Women who were tapped to decipher secret codes and ciphers during WWII for the U.S. military in Washington D.C.). All of these books are the Young Readers Editions to ensure that they were written for middle school students. Students will continue to work on their choice menu activities as they are reading their books in their book clubs. There is a Google Site that has been created for these book club books, and it is linked in the 8th Grade AIG Google Classroom if you'd like to ask your child to share it.
6th/7th/8th Math:
The M.B. Pollard AIG Math students that work with Ms. Bell have had a very productive quarter. In 8th grade we’ve worked on understanding the characteristics of algebraic functions through graphs, tables, two points, and equations. AIG differentiates by working with students to recognize how these representations are interconnected. This connection is vital to students' full grasp of algebra. Students are showing significant understanding and speaking with a math vocabulary that is far beyond where they started this year. Their progress is notable.
We have also looked at a few of the math skills that are important in the real world. Namely the Pythagorean Theorem and finding the value of irrational numbers using rational numbers. These two concepts are skills that people use throughout life and students have enjoyed applying them.
Seventh graders finished up their algebra and inequality unit with complex equations that had AIG students recognizing how equations and inequalities are related to each other and how to solve for an unknown given complex numbers. Third quarter is also when 7th graders work on statistics and probability. In AIG we ask students to take the algorithms they learned to find probability and understand what they are measuring and whether these data points are legitimate. We are making sure that the data is not biased, experiments are designed well, and how to then use the results data meaningfully. It has been a very practical unit and one that was new to the students. It’s been a lot of fun to explore this together as it allows many hands-on opportunities to collect and analyze data. Finally, with Pi Day and circles being a part of 7th grade; we worked on applying the concept of Pi to real world problems that require understanding how circles are measured.
Sixth graders that come to AIG with Ms. Bell may be the most excited of all! They have been hard at work this quarter entering the world of Algebra! We first solidified our coordinate plane expertise so that we could “see” our equations. Next, we learned to write algebraic expressions in order to translate real world scenarios (AIG concentrates on doing this efficiently), simplify those expressions, and in AIG we spent time analyzing how various rational number inputs affect the output of algebraic expressions, equations, and graphing. We stretched this understanding to inequalities as well. Students have learned considerable algebraic vocabulary. These concepts are vital as they prepare students to connect algebraic functions to their data collection, and then share those results in a way that is meaningful.
Margaret B. Pollard Middle School
Website: https://sites.google.com/a/chatham.k12.nc.us/ms-bell-s-class/home
Location: 185 Granite Mill Boulevard, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Phone: (919) 969-0070