The Eaglet

The Middle School is getting ready for a very busy two months.

Student Led Conferences are November 20th and 21st. Families can use this link to sign up by November 14th at 8 AM.

FRGMS will be having our annual Fourteen Festive Days of December. Please look for that communication coming the week after Thanksgiving.

The first Band and Choir Concert is December 12th. In addition, we have many basketball games in the next couple of weeks. Come support our students and their activities.

Student Led Conferences - November 20th and 21st

Thanksgiving Break - November 20th - 24th

Band and Choir Concert - December 12th

Book Fair - December 12 - 13th

Winter Break - December 21st - January 5th

There’s always something fun going on in the CLC! November/ December highlights:

• Miss Dana from Fox River Grove Memorial Library will visit MS literature classes in December. If your student wants/needs a ML card, applications can be found on the CLC Google Classrooms and hard copies are available in FRGMS’s CLC. Interested in FRGML’s up-coming events? Visit https://frgml.org/

• November genre spotlight: science fiction; December genre spotlight: fantasy

• CLC Bingo will officially start at the beginning of trimester 2.

• Staff guest reader at FRGML this month: Mrs. Bruns. Thank you for participating!

• D3 Reads! Communications can be found on Facebook and Instagram. If you have books to share, follow the directions on the posts.

• Trimester 2 AR goals are determined by the following criteria for all MS students grades 5-8: Current MAP reading levels, 12 weeks, 20 minutes per day. If your child doesn’t read independently for at least 20 minutes per day, he will not be able to accomplish his AR goal. How can you help? Put down the screens and promote reading at home. Give books as gifts.

• Scholastic Book Fair sponsored by FRG PTO will be at FRGMS on December 12-15. Students may bring money and visit during study hall and literature classes. The Scholastic Book Fair will be open after school hours on Tuesday, December 12 @6:00 before the band concert, and after school on Wednesday, December 13 3:00-4:00. Thanks in advance to FRG PTO!

Students are finishing up their Tchoukball unit and will be moving on to more of the indoor units - pickleball, volleyball, badminton, and basketball in the coming weeks.

The bands have been working hard to put together songs for the upcoming winter concert. This is also the debut performance for our beginning band students! The concert will be held on Tuesday, December 12th at 7pm, and it will include the Beginning Band, Symphonic Band, and the Choir.

The choir has been getting into the holiday spirit in preparation for our upcoming performances! On December 1st, the choir will be singing Christmas carols to kick off the Tree Lighting hosted by the FRG Memorial Library! Tree lighting, and our cheerful caroling, begins at 5:30pm in the Metra lot outside of the library. Additionally, the choir will also have their first concert of the year combined with the bands on Tuesday, December 12th at 7pm.

Art Club meets on Tuesdays after school weekly for 8th grade students who are interested. Kiddos have been enjoying this time having a true ‘studio’ experience. Art club caters to each student’s interests. Students are encouraged to select their media of choice and after that more in depth instruction takes place for each student.

Lit: Students will continue working hard on Accelerated Reader. We will also begin book clubs leading up to winter break.

GW: Students will be focusing on grammar and short pieces of writing for the rest of 2023. We will be doing a unit on Conjunctions and a unit on Prepositions. Our short pieces of writing will be QuickWrites where we will focus on writing stamina.

Math: We just wrapped up multiplying whole numbers. We will begin working on multiplying decimals the remainder of November and December.

Science: Students will be obtaining and combining information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment. With this information they will generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

SS: Students will be moving into material on Roanoke and the 13 colonies. Students will participate in projects and discussions regarding some of the first settlers.

STEM: Students will be learning about input and output of a machine and begin exploring coding.

Art: With the start of the new trimester students will be focusing on the element of art ‘form’. Students will be introduced to a variety of artists who have focused on sculpture as their main form of expression. Auguste Rodin, Joan Miro and Louise Nevleson are just a few of the artists students will learn about during this unit. Students will explore a variety of ways to manipulate paper and will finish with a lively sculpture focusing on the elements of art: line, value, color, space, and form.

Music: Music students just finished up the term with the ukulele unit! They learned about the parts of the ukulele and how to strum basic chords (C, A minor, F, and G7). Students were assessed on their performance of the fret warm-ups, strum patterns, and chord progressions.

Lit: As we start our second novel, The Stars Beneath Our Feet, we are learning new vocabulary, and reviewing the use of figurative language and story elements. This novel also gives our classes the opportunity to discuss topics like acceptance, death, diversity, and grief as we travel through the streets of Harlem with the main character, Lolly.

GW: Students just finished working through a noun unit. The next grammar unit will be pronouns. We begin narrative writing this week and will learn what components make an engaging story. Vocabulary.com continues with vocabulary words from our literature units. Please follow Classroom, Padlet, and PowerSchool for agendas, daily homework, missing work, and current grades.

6th Grade Math: 6th Grade math is wrapping up our chapter on Ratios and Rates and will be moving into the chapter on Percents.

6th Grade Acc Math: We finished our chapter on expressions. We will spend the next several weeks working on equations and inequalities.

Science: Students will develop a model that predicts and describes changes in particle motion, temperature, and state of a pure substance when thermal energy is added or removed.

SS: Students are returning from visiting the pharaohs and mummies of ancient Egypt. We will soon be heading over to the other side of the Mediterranean and paying a visit to the home of democracy, ancient Greece.

Health: November 10th was the last day of the first trimester and students turned in their google slides Health projects. In the 2nd trimester, another group will be coming in to learn about the following body systems - skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory,and digestive.

Music: Trimester 1 music students just finished up the term with the ukulele unit! They learned about the parts of the ukulele and how to strum basic chords (C, A minor, F, and G7). Trimester 2 students will begin by focusing on music literacy, which is the ability to read and write musical notation.

Art: With the start of the new trimester students will be focusing on the element of art ‘form’. Students will be introduced to a variety of artists who have focused on sculpture as their main form of expression. Auguste Rodin, Joan Miro and Louise Nevleson are just a few of the artists students will learn about during this unit. Students will explore a variety of ways to manipulate paper and will finish with a lively sculpture focusing on the elements of art: line, value, color, space, and form.

Lit: We continue to read Flush and discuss our responsibility to protecting the environment and standing up for our beliefs, even when it is difficult to do so. Our next novel will be The Outsiders. First trimester is done, so students will set new goals for Accelerated Reader. You can follow your child’s progress by having them sign in to Renaissance - this is bookmarked on student computers.

GW: The students just finished a unit on sentence structure and are making their way through comma usage. Vocabulary.com continues and incorporates our vocabulary words from literature units. The 2nd trimester project will be another research project. This will be a two-sided current event paper. Students will use the research skills learned in the first trimester to complete the paper which will then become the basis for the scripted oral debate. Please follow Classroom, Padlet, and PowerSchool for agendas, daily homework, missing work, and current grades.

7th Grade Math: 7th Grade math is wrapping up our chapter on Expressions and will then move into Equations & Inequalities.

7th Grade Accelerated Math: We have been hard at work on graphing equations. The students will continue working on linear equations throughout the remainder of November and into December.

7th Grade Algebra: We will continue to work on linear functions. Students are working on transformations and translations.

Science: We have been exploring what plants need to survive, grow, and reproduce in their environments. Students will continue learning about plants and how they reproduce, as well as developing models to explain mutations and genetic variation.

SS: Students will continue learning about the United States Constitution.

STEM: Students will be learning about the design process and begin exploring how design decisions are made.

Art: With the start of the new trimester students will be learning about the art and life of Charles McGee, an African American artist who was based in Detroit. McGee played a big role in the civil rights movement during his lifetime and his art often depicted symbols of peace and unity. Students will be creating a sculpture based on his works and focusing on the elements of art: color, line, space, shape and form.

Lit: As we approach the holiday season, we will read Charles Dickens’ classic novel, A Christmas Carol. This bestseller was published in 1843 and will allow students to explore unique character development, practice summarizing skills, and review the different elements of a story. The various themes presented throughout the novel will allow students to engage in class discussions to further their interpretations and understanding. All 8th-grader students will receive their new accelerated reading goal and should be working to meet that goal before the end of February.

GW: The 8th-grade students have been working on being better arguers by writing their argumentative essays. They focused on creating a claim and supporting it with logical evidence and reasoning. We will continue working on grammar and punctuation in class and will soon be delving into career research.

8th Grade Math: Students are continuing to learn about linear equations. We will then move into systems of linear equations.

8th Grade Algebra: We will continue to work on linear functions. Students are working on transformations and translations.

8th Grade Geo: Students are diving deeper into lines and working on proving them. We will then move into triangles and geometric shapes after break.

Science: We are diving into Earth’s Geologic History by looking at the exciting history of our planet. Students will then explore how plate tectonics and seafloor spreading introduce change to the planet by analyzing and interpreting data.

SS: 8th graders are learning about how America became a world power. We will look at how the events in the rest of the world played out in the lead up to WW1.

Health: 2nd Trimester Health students will be studying the the following topics: Effects of drugs & alcohol use, injury prevention and emotion and mental health in teens.

Spanish: This class is an introduction to the Spanish language that includes cultural competence (history, Spanish speaking countries, traditions) and beginning Spanish (the alphabet and Spanish phonics, numbers, telling time, the calendar, and the weather and seasons).

STEM: Students will be beginning to learn about the different types of materials needed to make creations and work on coding basics.