Hickory Creek Monthly Newsletter
March 2022
Hickory Creek Wants Your Input on the Illinois 5 Essentials Survey
Important Dates in March
March 7th - 11th , 2022 - FSP Book Fair
March 17th & 18th , 2022 - Candor Health Presentations to 6th Grade Health Classes
March 18th - LWSRA Popsicle Sales during lunch
March 21st - 8th Grade Student Government Day - Village Board Meeting @ 6:00 P.M.
March 24th - LWSRA Wheel Chair Basketball Game for the Public Time TBD
March 25th - End of the 3rd Quarter
March 25th - 10:45 A.M. Dismissal and the start of Spring Break
March 28th - April 1st - SPRING BREAK
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 February
Student Council Partners with the Frankfort Lion's Club for a Personal Product Drive in the Month of February
Rebecca Caudill Party for Students Who Read Three or More Titles This Year
6th Grade
6th Grade ELA
As we approach the second half of the third quarter, students will continue to finish reading their third quarter novels. Students will also begin to write their own compare and contrast essays. Please make sure that all students have headphones for when we take the IAR assessment in the beginning of April.
6th Grade Math
Math students will be finishing up equations and moving into exploring signed numbers, the coordinate plane, and absolute value.
6th Grade Science
Students will be continuing their Chemistry unit and discovering how elements bond to form compounds/molecules. We will “How Can I Smell Things From a Distance?”
6th Grade Social Studies
7th Grade
7th Grade ELA
Seventh grade ELA students have been on a journey discovering what is more important, the journey or the destination. Students have been reading short stories, novel study and mentor text throughout the quarter while investigating protagonists' journeys and narrative techniques.
7th Grade Math
Math is finishing up expressions and will be moving into equations. Honors math is finishing up inequalities and will be moving into multiple representations of data.
7th Grade Science
7th Grade Social Studies
8th Grade
8th Grade ELA
In 8th grade ELA, we will be studying the Holocaust through Informational Texts and reading the memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel. We will culminate this study with The Butterfly Project.
8th Grade Math
Eighth grade honors students will be investigating Quadratic Functions. They will learn about the characteristics of parabolas and the various forms a quadratic equation can take. They will also explore the real-world applications of Quadratic Functions.
8th Grade Science
8th Grade Social Studies
PE and Encore
Spanish
Eight grade Spanish students are finishing up a unit on Family and Celebrations. They learned how to introduce and describe family members. They also learned how to talk about responsibilities each family member has when preparing for a party. The next unit deals with ordering food at a restaurant.
Seventh Grade Spanish students have been doing phenomenal in using past and new vocabulary to describe their likes, dislikes and personality traits. They have a lot more confidence in Spanish as they finished up their unit with a speaking assessment. We will continue talking about school schedules.
Sixth grade Spanish has started the quarter strong with learning about how to express their likes and dislikes. They are now working on describing themselves and others using a variety of adjectives and details.
Art
Eight Grade Drawing and Painting students are studying several realistic drawing and painting techniques developed during the Renaissance like chiaroscuro shading and linear perspective.
Seventh Grade students are studying types of balance and composition. They will use these ideas to create a hand drawn radial design and an illustration collage. They are also building masks from clay that represent an emotion.
Sixth grade students are studying basic color theory and elements of art which they will apply to a variety of projects. They will also design and build a clay pot using the coil building method.
Music
Sixth and seventh grade students are working on the melody and harmony and composing melodies and harmonies in noteflight. Student are also playing melodies on xylophones and metalaphones.
STEM
Seventh and Eighth graders are hard at work finishing all their Makerspace projects. Throughout this quarter, students worked at their own pace to explore the topics that most interested them. They researched coding, robotics, typing, 3D modeling and printing, video editing, engineering with our Maker Cart, subtractive manufacturing with our Cricut Maker, sewing and embroidery, and so much more! It has been a very busy quarter!!!
Sixth grade STEM students have completed their coding and robotics investigations and are eager to close out the quarter by exploring 3D printing and video editing!
PE
PE just finished up their volleyball and basketball units. Next up is Dance and Tchoukball to finish out quarter 3.
Health classes have completed their Mental/Emotional Units and will be diving into units of Nutrition, Personal Health/Hygiene, Drugs Alcohol and Tobacco, Safety, CPR/First Aid and Human Body Systems.
Current Seventh grade students will soon be receiving information to elect their upcoming 8th grade PE class for the 2022-2023 School Year. Not all students are guaranteed their first selection, but will have the options of Traditional PE, Competitive PE, and Fit for Life. To get into a PE class other than Traditional, students much reach a certain criteria that will be reviewed by the Physical Education Department.
Current Sixth grade students will also have the option of selecting to be a peer helper for Mr. Purpura’s Adapted PE class or carry on their PE experience at HCMS in a Traditional PE class for the 2022-2023 school year. Please reach out to your child’s PE teacher with any questions!
6th Grade SEL
7th Grade SEL
8th Grade SEL
Library News
Library
Stay tuned to next month’s newsletter for our building and the state-wide winners(s) of the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book award! Students and staff are reading furiously so we can vote in the last week of February. In the meantime, stop by the library for books about Women’s History, celebrated in March.
From Nurse Tammy
Note from the Nurse
Just a few reminders:
- Please remind your student to bring water bottles and lunches to school. Proper nutrition, rest and water help prevent headaches.
- The students do have access to their lockers so please encourage them to wear coats to school. Consider extra clothes in the locker for your student to change into in the event of a spill or tear.
- If you have outstanding medical forms (eye exams, hearing assessments, dental exams, recently received immunizations) please forward to nurse office or email to tbush@fsd157c.org
- Current Covid guidelines along with all medical forms can be found on the district website.
Wrestling
Girls Volleyball
Bowling
Music Programs
Band and Orchestra
Congratulations to all Band and Orchestra students who participated in this year’s Solo and Ensemble contest! We received our highest scores in years – including the most perfect scores HCMS has ever been awarded – and the adjudicators’ comments were extremely flattering!
Congrats also to the Orchestra students for their incredible performance at LWE’s 2022 Strings Extravaganza!
Band students pursuing music at LWE should note that the Band Audition Submission Instructions are now posted. Please visit:
https://www.lincolnwaymusic.org/bandauditions.html
… for instructions on how to download the HeartOut app and submit your band audition. You have until the end of February to submit your audition. Please direct any questions to Mr. Ruklic (cruklic@lw210.org).
HCMS Band and Orchestra students are currently hard at work on more music for their spring concerts, so make sure your calendars are marked for April 21 (ALL HCMS BANDS) and May 18 (ALL HCMS ORCHESTRAS). We can’t wait to show you what comes next!
Chorus
Congratulations to the cast of “The Addams Family” - spring musical rehearsals have begun.
All Varsity Chorus, Advanced Choir, and Show Choir members will be performing at the IGSMA District Choral Contest on March 12, which HCMS will be hosting.
Best Buddies
Our Best Buddies club has been planning ways to help promote Best Buddies and their “inclusion movement” for the month of March. Be on the lookout, for exciting news from several Best Buddies members. Our next meeting will be on Monday, March 7th!
Tiger TV
Tiger TV crews are hard at work rotating between the weekly broadcast in the studio and live streaming duties throughout the school.
The filming schedule for March is:
Week of Feb 28: Team 1 Broadcasting, Team 3 Streaming
Week of March 7: Team 2 Broadcasting, Team 4 Streaming
Week of March 14: Team 3 Broadcasting, Team 1 Streaming
Week of March 21: Team 4 Broadcasting, Team 2 Streaming
Be sure to tune in to any of our broadcasts by going to our school web page- all links are there.
NJHS
On February 11th, we had our second member meeting of 2022! At this meeting, the officers led everyone through a Valentine's Day project. Our project was having each member make a Valentine's Day card for Maggie DeVries. Maggie is 5 years old and has diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG which is a rare, inoperable brain tumor. We wanted to give Maggie kindness and love this Valentine's Day, and we were able to send her close to 200 Valentines!
We also had our annual “Heart Lollipop” sale during lunch to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation-thanks to our school’s generous students, we raised a total of $1,673.25! Great job, HCMS!
Finally, invitations for new 6th & 7th grade NJHS members went out the last week of February.
Our next member meeting is March 11th.
Mathletes
March is sadly the final month of Mathletes. The focus will be on practicing for the third and final round of the ICTM mail-in contest. We had an absolutely fabulous season and cannot wait to see how we performed in comparison to other Illinois middle schools!
Technology Club
Mrs. Allison and Mrs. Fletcher were disappointed to have to cancel two meetings due to inclement weather last month, but we are looking forward to holding four more weeks of Tech Club in March!
So far, Tech Club students have created code with blocks, Python, JavaScript, HTML, and C++. They have also explored robotics with Sphero and Lego Mindstorms, microcontrollers with Makey Makey, Micro:Bit, and Arduino, and so much more!
POZ Squad
Student Council
Students also spread the “Love for Maggie” by making her yarn hearts and cards. Please continue to check our Microsoft Teams page for upcoming dates, meetings and important information.
Chess Club
Congrats to those members who participated at State - it was a GREAT day!
Geography Club
Students of the Month
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