Southridge Middle School
January 2016
Happy New Year
"Oh, the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...."
Those famous words are wonderful to hear during the Christmas season, but they seem to have described the beginning of 2016 perfectly this year. As we welcome everyone back for the start of the second semester, our schedules have been changed by those gently falling white snowflakes. In order to make up the four days of school that we have missed this month, the following Snow Make Up days have been established:
Snow Day-------- Make Up Date
January 11--------- February 15
January 12------------- March 18
January 20------------- March 28
January 22---------------- April 18
Any additional snow days will be added to the school calendar at the end of the school year in May.
Middle School Bowling
SMS Motto
DECEMBER Student of the Month

JANUARY Student of the Month

ISSMA Instrumental District Contests
6th Grade Band Concert
ISSMA Vocal District Contest
SMS Mission Statement
Valentine's Dance
Academic Bowl Cookie Competition
Academic Bowl Preliminary Cookie results are in! Several students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades competed Wednesday, January 27th, to be entered into the Academic Bowl Cookie competition. This was a preliminary round. Only one person from each grade will compete during Academic Bowl, but we have first and second place finishers for our school wide competition. The first place winners will have to create their cookies at school by themselves the day prior to Academic Bowl, which will be April 30, 2016 at Wood Memorial Middle School.
6th Grade
1st place -- Ana Hewitt
2nd place -- Hunter Eckert
7th Grade
1st place -- Baileigh Schneider
8th Grade
1st place -- Chaney Barrett
2nd place -- Tatiana Delgado
Congratulations to each of these students. It looks like they might be strong competition for the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Betty Crocker!
Sports News
Pep Session Pictures
Junior Achievement
Junior Achievement of Southwestern Indiana is empowering young people to own their economic success. Our volunteer-based K-12 programs foster work and career readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy skills, and use experiential learning to inspire kids to dream big and reach their potential. JASWIN serves 11 counties and over 26,000 students in Southwestern Indiana and Southeastern Illinois and began in 1964. Junior Achievement in Dubois County provides over 170 JA programs serving over 4000 Dubois County students. For more information, visit www.jaswin.org.
We are on the lookout for Junior Achievement volunteers for our 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classrooms. This is a great way to be involved with your student's classroom! Volunteers would visit the classroom during the classroom day for 6 visits (1 x a week for 6 weeks) for about 40 minutes each visit. Students learn things like what not to do in a job interview, what are career clusters, what is a global economy, and all the way to, what is insurance and why would I need it? Teachers are wanting to host volunteers starting in the next 2 weeks at various class times and hope to be done by spring break. JA would provide training and material to mentor the students in the classroom. Anyone interested or wanting more information can contact Ruth Wilson, Program Manager, at 812-425-8152 or ruth.wilson@ja.org.
myON Books
Through the Hoosier Family of Readers Initiative, students and their families across the state of Indiana will have unlimited access to reading material on myON, giving families an opportunity to share rich literacy experiences together regardless of their socioeconomic status or whether or not there is a proficient reader in the home.
myON has more than 4,000 digital books ranging from illustrated and picture books to chapter books, graphic novels, literary non-fiction, photo and informational texts spanning multiple eras and cultures.
Books are available online 24 hours a day. Students can download up to 20 titles for offline reading using free mobile apps for iPad and Android tablets.
How to Log In
1. Go to https://www.myon.com/school/hoosier/
2. Enter the School Name: Hoosier Family of Readers
3. Enter the user name read and the password read
4. Click the green Sign In button
Click on All Books to browse through the entire myON Library and enjoy reading. ACCESS RUNS THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2016.
Library News
The Middle School Library has been undergoing "spring cleaning" this year. We have deleted some books in order to make more room on our shelves. In doing so, we discovered some "lost" books, and some we didn't know we had. The reference and nonfiction sections are pretty well finished. Our next task will be the fiction section.
Even though it looks like we have gotten rid of almost all of the encyclopedias, our students do have access to World Book Online. We can access this resource through the Huntingburg Library. For access to World Book Online, go to www.worldbookonline.com.
For the User Name type huntingburg, and for the password type books. This can be a very valuable resource tool for the students.
There are several new books that will be added to our shelves in the next week or so. Some of them seem to be generating a great deal of interest. There are also many books that are missing from our shelves, either from being overdue or lost. If you happen to find one of our books at home under the bed or under a pile of clothes, in the backseat of the car, or wherever else a book can hide, please return it to the library. New books can be expensive, and replacing lost ones takes away from some other new and exciting books we might want to purchase.