Welcome to the Middle School Blog! Every other week the Middle School Team will post a classroom update in this space to help parents stay connected to the ongoing learning happening in the middle school hallway.
God Bless,
The Middle School Team
General Updates
1. Did you know that the SPX 8thgrade Class is hosting our annual Middle School Dance tonight! Door open at 7pm and close at 9pm. All 7thand 8thgrade students across the diocese are invited to attend! Admission is $7. We hope to see you there!
2. The Middle School Team would like to extend our Lenten prayers to you and your family!
Our School/Parish Lenten theme is “Radiate Christ.”
As we strive to Radiate Christ to others this Lent, here at school we will be hosting an almsgiving collection, called The Change Challenge!”
Students will be encouraged to bring in loose change and bills to place in Lenten Team Jars located in the main hallway of school.
We’ll be watching and sharing with excitement as the change in these jars grow with generosity throughout Lent!
Here are some important upcoming Lenten events/dates:
- 3-8thgrade will participate in Reconciliation on April 2nd
-On April 11ththe school will gather for Eucharistic Adoration in the Church.
-The school will attend a Veneration of the Cross Service on Good Friday afternoon at 1pm – all are welcome to join us!
3. Remember to check the Middle School Homework Site @ https://sites.google.com/stpiusxschool.org/middleschool
Daily assignments will be update by teachers each afternoon by 4pm!
4. We continue to have great participation in the Pius Academy program so far this year! Thank you to those who have been taking advantage of this great program!
For those interested in attending Pius Academy in the future, it’s offered on Tuesday afternoons from 3:00-3:45pm. Pick up takes place outside the main doors of the school (west doors).
Teacher Updates
6thgrade & 7B Language Arts with Mrs. Bartscher
6th Grade- The sixth graders have finished reading the novel and watching the movie titled Where the Red Fern Grows. Using the content of the movie and novel, the students will be writing a compare and contrast essay as we work on a study of the compare and contrast essay form. In addition to this, the students will also be completing their study of pronouns
April 5th will be the halfway point of the trimester for Accelerated Reader.
7th Grade- The seventh grade students are currently working on a study of nonfiction. They have started reading paired texts on volcanoes in theScopemagazine. Through this nonfiction study, there will be focus on vocabulary development, comprehension, and an understanding of text structure and text features In addition to the nonfiction study, the students will also be completing their study of pronouns
April 5th will be the halfway point of the trimester for Accelerated Reader.
Mrs. Bartscher
6-8 Math with Mrs. Gipple
6th Grade Math
These kids have been working with rates, ratios, unit rates, proportions and percents. The 2nd quiz for this chapter is next Tuesday, April 2nd. We will also review the whole chapter next week, have some time to work on Accelerated Math and then take the Chapter 7 Posttest next Friday, April 5th.
7th Grade Math
This class continues to work with geometry concepts. Before spring break we were working with different area and perimeter formulas, as well as, area and circumference of circles. Now we will explore 3 dimensional figures and work with volume and surface area. They will test over these concepts the week of April 8th.
7th Grade Pre-Algebra
This class just finished up the percents chapter. We have been working with ratios, proportions and percent applications. We have calculated percent of change, tips, tax, and simple interest. The 2nd quiz for this chapter is Tues, April 2nd and the posttest will be Friday, April 5th.
8th Grade Pre-Algebra
This class has been working with many types of algebraic equations and then was introduced to systems of equations. They have been working on isolating one variable and then substituting that variable in to solve for a second variable. We will practice and review these concepts most of next week and take the posttest next Friday, April 5th.
8th Grade Algebra
This class has been working with polynomials throughout chapter 8. They have learned how to perform the 4 basic operations with polynomials, concentrating mostly on factoring. They have the posttest over this chapter today and next week we will start working with quadratics.
Thank you everyone who helped us out for Pi Day! The kids had a great time and the pie was delicious!!!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mrs. Gipple
6-8 Religion with Mr. Tallman
Have you been thinking about adding to your social media footprint this Lent…why give it up when you can learn so much about your Faith and our great school by following our SPX Religion Class Twitter account?! It’s free and worth the effort…plus, you’ll get daily tweets from all of our middle school religion classes, including the very popular Religion Question of the Day (RQD) – Believe me, you don’t want to miss this! Follow us at @MrTallmansClass
6thgrade: This week the sixth grade classes wrapped up their investigation of the covenant with Noah. Illustrations of this covenant are due on Monday (April 1st).
Next week classes will begin to look at the covenantal story of Abraham and Sarah. Watch for details of this bible study coming home next week!
7thgrade: This week the 7thgrade classes started a study of Jesus, His Mission, and our relationship with Him. We started by talking about portraits of Jesus, while discussing how we envision Him. This unit will continue into next week!
8thgrade: This week the 8thgrade class took the ACRE Test, which is the diocesan standardized religion test offered in 5thand 8thgrade. The ACRE test assesses the students’ understanding of Catholic Doctrine and Practice. Results are usually returned in late May.
Next week classes will begin working on their Holy Week reflection project. This year the 8thgrade has decided to create a life-sized rendition of the Crucifixion scene. This will be put on display in the Church narthex during Holy Week!
Have a blessed weekend!
Peace,
Mr. Tallman
6-8 Science with Mrs. Erickson
6th Grade: We started working on Cells yesterday. We will discuss the parts of the cell and what they do. We will be creating a project for this unit comparing the cell to something. In the past students have compared cells to everything from a factory to a school, a family, and even a car! This project will be due around April 9th. We will also have a test around April 5th over cells. After our cells unit we begin discussing processes that happen within the cell.
7th Grade: We just finished our Digestive System unit today with a test. Over the weekend and into early next week we will be creating projects to showcase our understanding of how the organs in the digestive system work together. We will then have a very brief unit over the Urinary/Excretory System. This unit will also be a four day unit as we will be focusing on just the one system. Our test will be around April 5th, with a project due the following week. We will then move onto a discussion of the Nervous System and talk about how our bodies are being controlled.
8th Grade: We are in the middle of our Heat and Heat Technologies unit. This unit builds on the concepts from the previous energy unit. Monday we will be doing a short lab to determine how much energy 1 marshmallow gives our bodies by creating a homemade calorimeter (device that measures heat). Our unit will wrap up at the end of next week on April 5.
Remember all materials can be found on google classroom as well as my website MrsEricksonScience: https://sites.google.com/view/mrsericksonscience/home
Mrs. Jaci Erickson
6-8 Social Studies with Mr. Klein
6th Grade:
We will be taking a test on Eastern Europe on Monday. After that, we will continue our journey across Europe by looking at Northern Europe.
7th Grade:
We will continue reviewing for the test on Southeast Asia on Wednesday. We will finish up the unit with looking at Australia after that.
8th Grade:
After we are done with the War with Mexico and Manifest Destiny next week, we will begin the build up to the Civil War by comparing the economies of the Northern States and Southern States.
Mr. Klein
7T & 8th grade Language Arts with Mrs. Pedersen
7 Tallman- The seventh grade students are currently working on a study of nonfiction. They have started reading paired texts on volcanoes in the Scopemagazine. Through this nonfiction study, there will be focus on vocabulary development, comprehension, and an understanding of text structure and text features In addition to the nonfiction study, the students will also be completing their study of pronouns
April 5th will be the halfway point of the trimester for Accelerated Reader.
8th Grade- Students are finishing up the research portion for the decade project. Students researched a particular part of a decade. They completed at least 5 source cards and 35 content note cards in order to write an expository paper. Next week we will begin discussing the parts of a research paper.
Students continue to read To Kill A Mockingbird. They finished up the Part One assessment this week and have begun reading Part Two. We will continue to work on vocabulary, character development, plot, figurative language, and comprehension of the chapters.
Students are reading an individual book from the dystopian genre. They need to be finished reading their specific book by April 19. Please check with your child about his/her progress. Students must make an appointment to discuss their book with me when they are finished reading.
Have a great weekend.
Mrs. Pedersen
A note from our Librarian, Mrs. Reister:
All 3rd-5th grades and Middle School students are invited to join the Brown Bag Book Club!
This Spring, we will all be reading the same book, Save Me A Seat,by Sarah Weeks!
Grades 3-5 will be meeting at Unit 2 lunch on Wednesday, May 15.
Middle School will be meeting at Unit 3 lunch on Wednesday, May 22.
Sign up is on the library door if interested!
Thank You for reading the SPX Middle School Blog!
Our next blog post is scheduled for Friday, April 12th, 2019
