Mr. Falk has finished going into the classrooms preparing the students for high school pre-enrollment. This included completing course requests for their freshman year and entering courses that are required to graduate on Naviance. He will continue to work with students individually or in small groups on completing their 4 Year Course Plan for high school. Please ask your student to show you their course plan. They can access it in Naviance.

High school counselors will be at Jardine on Monday, February 2 (rescheduled with snow day) to meet with the 8th grade students. This gives 8th graders a chance to meet one-on-one with a high school counselor. The counselors will look over their course plan, review their course requests for their 9th grade year, and enter the 9th grade course requests on Tyler SIS. The counselor will also answer any questions the students still have regarding high school.

An 8th grade student visit to their assigned high school will be scheduled to take place in May. Dates and times have not been finalized.

Student enrollment information will be shared with parents during the Parent/Teacher Conferences on February 15th and 16th on Zoom with Mr. Falk and Ms. Waldy. The Zoom links will be sent out soon. If you have questions regarding your student’s high school enrollment prior to conferences, please feel free to contact Mr. Falk at 730-8115.

Parents of 6th graders- your student will be coming home with a letter for what immunizations they will need for the following 7th grade year. T-dap booster and Meningitis are the immunizations needed for 7th grade. If your student receives these before next school year, please bring in their updated shot record to the school. No need to wait until next school year to update the information. Thank you!

If you have any questions, please let me know. 785-730-8107.

Topeka Public Schools has some simple tips to improve your health and wellness!

**Benefits of Exercise**

-Help you control your weight

-Reduce your risk of heart diseases

-Help your body manage blood sugar and insulin levels

-Help you quit smoking

-Improve your mental health and mood

-Strengthen your bones and muscles

-Reduce your risk of some cancers

-Improve your sleep

-Increase your chances of living longer

Welcome back students!!! We definitely are off to an interesting start of the year while dealing with Covid issues. Students and staff are coming and going as transmission rates are expanding. A positive Jardine offers is we are well staffed with permanent subs that came on board at the beginning of the year. These teachers help students stay settled as they are members of our Jardine community and the students know them already.

Another positive at Jardine is all of our support staff are in the building and here to help students get back to the business of going to school. We also have a full nursing staff on hand and available to assist families with health issues. So if any student needs help in any way they just need to ask. The social worker and counselors will be paying attention to our students to provide aid when needed.

Ronda Sparks, LMSW 785-235-7189

John Wooden once said, “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”

I would like to remind all students that want to participate in athletics that KSHSAA has a rule you must pass five of your classes before you can participate. This rule applies to the quarter before each season. For the sixth graders who want to participate next year, your eligibility will be based on your fourth quarter grades. The district has an eligibility rule that you must pass all classes in order to play during your season. We run weekly grade checks and if you are failing a class you have until the day of the game to pass that class. This does not mean waiting until 1pm the day of the game to turn in late work. Please be a student first and the rest will take care of its self. KSHSAA also has a rule on physicals, if you want to participate for the 2022-2023 season. You must have a physical on file dates after May 2022.

Boys basketball season has started, I would like to remind everyone about the expectations for spectators. All of our games you must be accompanied by a parent, parents must stay in order for students to attend. Students with any failing grades will not be allowed into after school events.

• Students reflected on their abilities by filling out a star to decorate the library windows. This star represents what they are good at and a goal they have for the semester.

• We’ve also been TASTING books. The students have been experiencing book tasting at the 2nd floor cafe. They’ve been reading three different books during their meal then checking out books to read. They were also given a snack to enjoy while reading to jazz music.

• If your student is having chromebook issues, please tell them to visit the library to talk to Ms. Gilliland

• Our Book Fair will be tentatively scheduled for the first week in May pending COVID protocols.

• Each student at Jardine is allowed to check out up to 3 library books at a time. The students are allowed to checkout anytime they have permission from their teachers.

• This year’s William Allen Whit e List can be accessed here. We discussed several of the book on the lists during the past couple weeks in library classes. https://wawchildrensbookaward.com/

Several of our Jardine musicians are participating in Topeka Youth Jazz Workshop for a 6-week clinic. The session will wrap up with a concert on February 13 in Washburn University’s White Concert Hall at 1:00 pm.

March 1—7th and 8th Grade Band will perform for the Boys Basketball Classic at HPHS. Time: TBA.

Reading AND Technology DO go together!

The Topeka Public Library has some fantastic apps that allow students to both read and listen to novels! In fact, there are THREE different novel based downloads that are available to students using their Chromebooks! If you have a Topeka Public Library card, you can enjoy any or all of the following!

· Hoopla Digital

o Free audiobooks, eBooks, and comics! You can download them right to your device so that WIFI isn’t necessary in order to enjoy a great story.

· Overdrive

o Thousands of great eBooks and audiobooks! New titles are added every week!

· Flipster

o Check out hundreds of magazines online! This includes children’s magazines!

Go onto the Topeka Public Library website and check out the downloads!

www.tscpl.org/downloads

Here's what's happening in Language Arts .......................................

6th Grade: Ms. Appelhanz/Ms. duBois/Ms. Wooten: Unit 3; focus on: Main Idea, Fact & Opinion, Cause & Effect, Homophones, Vocabulary, Affixes, & Context Clues. Novels: “The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963” & “Freak the Mighty”

7th Grade: Ms. Bisconer/Ms. Morlock/Ms. Wooten: Unit 3 – we will be diving into point of view, word parts, and adding to our repertoire of figurative language with personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia. Novels: “A Girl Named Disaster” & “Al Capone Does My Shirts”

8th Grade: Ms.Bisconer/Ms. Pumford/Ms.Watson: The 8th grade is working on a historical fiction novel study of Mississippi Trial:1955. We're focusing on issues of racial equality and the Civil Rights Movement. Once we have finished that, we will be starting Collection 4 where we will examine what it means to be an adult.

ESOL: Ms. Scott: Students in the ESOL program begin the month of February with the Kansas English Language Proficiency Assessment (KELPA). This exam takes place in 4 sections. English Learners must demonstrate their proficiency in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These scores are used to make scheduling decisions for the following school year and to ensure that students are receiving the proper supports in the classroom.

After KELPA, students will dive into their Quarter 3 PBL projects, which center around the driving question: How do decisions affect our identities? We began this unit talking about things that make up a person’s identity. We also did an in-depth literary analysis of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” as our narrator reflects on the choices he’s made in life and the impact they had on his journey. Through these activities and the completion of their projects, students will have an opportunity to reflect on their own unique paths toward adulthood and how every decision, no matter how small, can have consequences.

Newcomer: Ms. Shelton: Newcomer students will be taking the Kansas English Language Proficiency Assessment, (KELPA) February 7-11 with make-ups to follow. We have Parent/Student/Teacher Conferences on February 16th and 17th. Our Newcomer 1 students will be learning about Library and Technology Resources, and the Newcomer 2 students will be learning about the community.

6th grade

Students are still learning forces and how they affect matters.

Students will analyze the relationship between forces and their effects on matter. We will investigate the nature of charges and determine factors that affect the strength of electric and magnetic forces. Forces that act at a distance (electric, magnetic, and gravitational) can be explained by fields that extend through space and can be mapped by their effect on various objects.

*****

7th grade

We are working through Chemistry concepts, ideas and labs. Learning about states of matter, changes of states, chemical processes and chemical equations through labs, classroom work and using our HMH eBook. Then, we will be moving on to geologic processes and history of the Earth.

*****

8th grade

We have finished our unit over space, and are now headed from the immensely large to the very small. Chemistry tends to be a little more difficult, but can be a lot of fun. This unit opens itself up to several possible labs, but requires the students to be more responsible. Safety will be very important during these labs, and I must be able to trust the students in order to do them. Although rare, I have had groups where they were unable to maintain a certain level of safety and labs had to be removed and alternative work was done instead. There will be a few fun demonstrations that will melt solids, freeze water within seconds, and explode!

*****

In 6th Grade Ancient World History, we have been learning about the civilization of Ancient Greece. We have discussed the development of four different forms of government, the geography of Greece, and the early peoples of Greece. Our students will be making travel brochures as we compare and contrast the two rival city-states of Athens and Sparta. Our next unit will explore the civilization of Ancient China.

*****

7th grade Social Studies are discovering Kansas History. We have been examining the Early People of Kansas, the Native Americans. Students will soon be learning about explorers to the area, and how their presence and discoveries played a role in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. History is complex and often many things are happening at once. Behind the scenes in the United States Congress, the stage was being set for Bleeding Kansas through legislative acts that shaped the land and the people of Kansas in its early years, just prior to statehood. It was a violent, and wild time on the frontier, and Kansas was integral in the fight over slavery. Students will learn about the people who fought against slavery in our state, those for it, and the battles that ensued. We hope our students learn about the great adventures, people, and their contributions to our Nation.

*****

8th Graders have been busy learning about how the United States expanded through Manifest Destiny. We are getting ready to begin the discussion of the causes of the American Civil War and then the Civil War. As always, please ask your child what they are learning about in their history class.

6th grade is working on unit 4. It's all about expressions and equations. Students will be developing a deeper understanding of the mathematical properties with applications. They will revisit order of operations with the addition of exponents and parentheses. 6th graders will be introduced to the concept of letters that replace numbers and writing expressions using mathematical language. Finally, students will understand and practice the distributive property. This is a wonderful unit that introduces students to more mature abstract thinking and the development of foundational concepts for future mathematics!

*****

In 7th grade math, we are finishing up our unit over “Expressions and Equations”. After taking the unit test, we will be transitioning to our 4th Module, “Percent and Proportional Relationships”. Module 4 parallels Module 1’s coverage of ratios and proportions, but this time with a concentration on percent.

Problems in this module include:
-simple interest
-tax
-markups and markdowns
-gratuities and commissions
-fees
-percent increase and decrease
-percent error
Additionally, this module includes percent problems about populations, which prepare students for probability models about populations covered in Module 5. If your child needs additional support in math, please consider after school tutoring.

*****

8th grade math student are finishing their unit on finding slope and graphing linear equations. The summative assessment for this unit will be during the first week of February. Our next unit will be taking skills learned in unit 4 and applying them to functions. During this unit, students will identify the function rule that assigns each input, x-value (domain), to exactly one output, y-value (range). They will also be expected to compare properties of two linear functions represented in a variety of ways (algebraically, graphically, numerically in tables, or by verbal descriptions). The equation y=mx+b will be used to define a linear function, whose graph is a straight line as well as examples of functions that are not linear. A final component of this unit will be to use functions to model relationships between quantities. Students will determine the rate of change (m- slope) and the initial value (b- y-intercept) of a function from a description of a relationship or from two (x, y) values, including reading these from a table or from a graph. Finally, students will be analyzing a graph and determine the domain values for which the function is increasing or decreasing, linear or nonlinear.

The second half of unit 5 deals with statistics. Students will construct and interpret scatter plots for bivariate measurement data to investigate patterns of association between two quantities. They will describe patterns such as clustering, outliers, positive or negative association, linear association, and nonlinear association. For scatter plots that suggest a linear association, they will construct a line of best fit and create an equation for the line of best fit. Students will explain that the slope and the y-intercept represent in terms of the data on the graph.

*****

In 8th Grade Algebra, students have been working on solving a system of equations by using graphing, substitution, and/or elimination. In a system of equations, there may be one answer, no answer, or infinite answers. If the two equations have different slopes, the equations will intersect at one point, and this point is the (x, y) solution to the system. If the two equations have the same slope and the same y-intercept they are simultaneous lines and will have infinite solutions. Every solution to one equation will also be a solution to the second equation. Finally, if a system of equations has the same slope but different y-intercepts, the lines will run parallel to each other, thus never crossing. In this case, there is no solution to the system of equations.

From systems of equations, we will move on to systems of inequalities. This will involve graphing a line using either a solid line or a dotted line, and then shading above the line or below the line, depending on the inequality. Only areas that are shaded for both inequalities will represent areas where solutions are located.

We wanted to give an update to the end of last semester. In December, we finished getting baselines on students’ physical fitness/skills. Again, we encourage all students to do their best. The only thing they competed against was stopwatches, tape measures and/or the pull up bar. Congrats to these over achievers.

*First semester classes are 6 & 8th grade only.

Physical Fitness Highlights Part II:

Shuttle Run

6th - Nasiyah Thomas 9.0

8th – Kiemara Marshall 9.3

Standing Broad Jump

6th - Nasiyah Thomas 7’1”

8th – Janae Jones 6’10”

Gavin Alderson 7’ 1”

Owen Gallegos 7’ 3”

Keimara Marshall 7’ 4”

Quortey Hailey 7’ 4”

Pull-Ups

6th - Nasiyah Thomas 12

Marion Collins 16

8th – Coalton Zoch 15

Eduard Minero 15

Jordan Stewart 16

Owen Gallegos 17

Aiden Flanagan 18

Flexed Arm Hang

8th – Audrey Smith 48.8

Kayrie Shipley 1:15.6

We also invited students to participate in a push- up contest. The 6th and 7th grade students with the most perfect push- ups were:

6th- Ricardo Dowd 30

7th- Levi McGee 35