Classroom Rules Poster

I am looking forward to a busy month ahead with just 3 weeks until spring break. Please make sure to keep an eye out for permission slips coming home many grades are taking field trips before spring break. Track has started and the musical production is underway so there are many exciting things coming soon.

Great job to our 6th/7th Grade Girls Basketball Team who came in second place in the conference!

As the weather improves, please make sure your child in in clothing the meets the dress code. Torsos and backs should be covered and shorts should be an appropriate length for all students.

Lastly, don't forget to take the 5essentials survey!!! Here is the link!

March 5th - 8th Grade Picture Retakes

March 5th - 5th Grade Report Cards mailed home

March 6th - 6th - 8th Grade Report Cards Online

March 7th - All grades take Field Trip to CGHS for The Addams Family

March 8th - 8th Grade Field Trip to MCC Career Fest

March 9th - Spring Fling

March 14th - 5th Grade Field Trip to Hemmens

March 15th - Erin's Law Presentations (Information will be sent separately)

March 25th - April 1st - Spring Break

April 2nd - School Resumes

PE students will be finishing up their badminton unit followed by fitness testing and basketball.

Art Club continues to meet on Tuesdays after school. Any student in grades 7th and 8th are welcome to join! Art Club allows students to explore a variety of media and project ideas at their own pace. Come check it out!

The Jazz Band rehearses on Tuesday mornings at 7:10am. This ensemble will perform at Cary Grove High School for the Combined Jazz Concert on Wednesday, March 20th at 7pm.

Solo and Ensemble Festival is at Cary Junior High on Saturday, March 9th. All students participating should be practicing their solos and working with Ms. Schneyr to make sure they are prepared with their music!

The District 3 Spring Concert will take place on Thursday, May 16th at 7pm in the middle school gym. This combined concert will feature the Algonquin Road School choir in addition to our choir and bands!

General: On Thursday, March 14th, all fifth graders will be going on a field trip to see the Elgin Symphony Orchestra! Students will experience the music of John Williams, Puccini, Rossini, and Tchaikovsky. The theme of the concert is “Storytellers of the Symphony.” Students should turn in their signed permission slips to their homeroom teacher by Friday, March 8th.

Lit: Students will be continuing Esperanza Rising paired with activities that practice compare & contrast, summarizing, inferring the meaning of unknown words, and general comprehension.

GW: Students will be completing a Compare and Contrast essay that links to our literature novel, Esperanza Rising. Students will also be working on vocabulary and spelling skills.

Math: We will be starting trimester 3 with adding and subtracting fractions. Fractions will contain like and unlike denominators.

Science: Students will analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.

SS: Students will participate in the American Revolution Unit.

STEM: Students will be beginning STEM and exploring technology skills.

Music: To prepare for our field trip to the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, music students will learn about the relationship between music and storytelling. We will explore music from great composers such as John Williams and Pytor Tchaikovsky, review the instrument families of the orchestra, and use our imaginations to create meaning from sound.

Lit: The students will be wrapping up the Cinderella unit in the next couple weeks. They will be responsible for creating their own original story or a summary of one of the cultural stories read. Our next book will be Refugee by Gratz. It will cover three different time periods of genocides. AR goals will be set for the new trimester in the next week. Please continue to follow your child’s progress in PowerSchool and encourage them to check Padlet and Classroom for assignments and agendas.

GW: The students finished the trimester with a look at propaganda techniques used for persuasion. The work will continue as they move into our persuasion unit, eventually writing their own persuasive piece on roller coasters. The project will be chunked and skills will be practiced in small steps. Vocabulary.com will resume to correspond with our novel unit in literature. The kids continue with the Six Minutes podcast. Our next grammar unit will be adjectives.

6th Math: Students are finishing up Chapter 5 on Algebraic Expressions. They learned how to identify parts of an expression, evaluate them, factor, and use the distributive property to simplify. They will then be moving into Chapter 6 on Equations.

6th Accelerated: We will continue to work on the Percent chapter. Our main goal will be percent of markup and discount.

Science: Students will construct and present arguments using evidence to support the claim that gravitational interactions are attractive and depend on the masses of interacting objects.

They will also conduct an investigation and evaluate the experimental design to provide evidence that fields exist between objects exerting forces on each other even though the objects are not in contact.

SS: In social studies, 6th graders are learning about the wonders of ancient China. Our next stop is Rome: Republic to Empire.

Health: Third trimester students will be learning about various body systems including - respiratory, circulatory, muscular, skeletal, digestive, and nervous.

Art: I am excited to start off the third trimester with a new group of sixth graders! Students will begin this trimester learning about the art and life of African American artist, Alma Thomas. Students will take time to examine her artwork and will have the chance to mimic her style of painting as they create their own unique work of art. During our time together this trimester we will work with and learn about: 3d materials, chalk pastels, pencil shading, art history and graphic design.

Music: Music students will begin the trimester by focusing on music literacy, which is the ability to read and write musical notation. By learning to demonstrate steady beat, read rhythmic notation, and read pitches on the Treble Clef staff, we will prepare ourselves for a semester of collaborative music-making! Musical vocabulary to be highlighted: beat, rhythm, meter, and pitch.

Lit: We have just started our new novel, A Long Walk to Water, which is part of a new ELA curriculum that we are piloting. This bestselling novel is based on a true story that is told from two perspectives and takes place during two different periods in time, but both take place in Sudan. One narrator is a young boy who has fled his war-torn country and the other is a young girl who is struggling to survive.

GW: Students finished the pro/con research paper and oral debate in Trimester 2. Trimester 3 project will be a creative paper. We will look at descriptive writing and narrative elements. We continue listening to the Six Minutes podcast. Grammar will move from commas and parallel structure to a review of sentence structures and types.

7th Math: 7th grade is working on Chapter 6 on Percents. In this chapter, students enhance their ability to convert between fractions, decimals, and percents. They learned how to use the percent proportion, the percent equation, finding percent change, discounts and markups, and simple interest.

7th Accelerated: We just wrapped up our unit on Exponents and Scientific Notation. In March, we will begin Real Numbers and the Pythagorean Theorem.

7th Algebra: We will wrap up our unit on Exponential Functions. We will begin our unit of study on Polynomial Equations and Factoring.

Science: Students will discuss the pros and cons of artificial selection through research and debate, which will wrap up the unit on Genetics and Evolution. The following unit will have students focus on the movement of energy through the ecosystem and food chains.

SS: Students will continue to see the growth of our nation from the 1820’s to the 1860s.

Art: I am excited for the third trimester and working with a new group of seventh graders! We will start the trimester off with a mixed media artwork which focuses on the majority of the elements of art as well as the principles of design. This design based artwork will help students move forward as artists in a number of ways. This trimester students will work materials including but not limited to: chalk pastel, water color, color pencil, pen and ink, and more. Students will have the opportunity to learn about typography as well as be introduced to a number of artists both past and present.

Lit: As the second trimester comes to a close, the 8th graders continue their study of Latin American Folklore with the novel Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

GW: The third trimester begins with 8th graders researching possible future careers. We will be heading to a Career Quest field trip at McHenry County College on March 8th to further explore the topic.

8th Math: We are currently working on exponents. After that, students will move into Surface Area and Volume.

8th Algebra: We will wrap up our unit on Exponential Functions. We will begin our unit of study on Polynomial Equations and Factoring.

8th Geometry: Students will be moving into Trig in our next unit. It is important that they have their calculator each day.

Science: Students will summarize what they have learned throughout the unit by analyzing natural disasters and presenting the precautionary steps that countries can take ahead of time. The following unit will have students discover how the interactions between the air, ocean, and land impact weather and climate.

SS: Students are learning about the cause of the Great Depression and the Government's attempts to end it. Students will also be watching and analyzing the movie The Grapes of Wrath. Students will be creating a game board, incorporating the concepts of the Great Depression into the project.

STEM: Students will begin this trimester learning about gears and coding that is essential for their understanding of how robots work.