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Middle School Matters – April 4, 2022

MSM

General Announcements

Important Dates:

Apr 28 – Fine Arts Night
May 06 – GrandFriends Day - details to come
May 12 – 5-8 Spring Concert at ACS
May 25 & 26 – 8th Grade Exams - ½ Days
May 25-27 – 5th Grade Spring Camp
May 30 – Memorial Day - No School
May 31 – Graduation Practice - last day for 8th Graders (½ Day)
June 1-3 – 8th Grade Class Trip
June 2-3 – 7th Grade Class Trip
June 7 – 8th grade Graduation 
June 8 – Last ½ day

Great FREE music opportunity: The U.S. Navy Band from Washington, D.C. will be performing a FREE concert on Wednesday, April 27, 7:30pm at Grand Rapids Christian High School. (Mrs. Van Noord will be going to this!)

Tickets are free but must be 'RESERVED' at our auditorium website, www.dcaw.org or follow this link to the event.

5th Grade

Willing to Wait: Willing to Wait will be taking place April 20-21. 

Spring Camp: Save the date - May 25-27. More details to come.

Art: 5th grade students will be working on assembling their Mark Roko inspired paintings that seek to express an emotion through using color. 

Bible: This week we discussed bits of my trip to Israel. We also began reviewing the life of Jesus. Matthew 5:43-45a is due Fri., Apr. 29.

Language Arts: This week students finished reading their biographies, and we continued to take notes on our research to prepare for a speech we will begin writing next week. Students will pretend to be their historical figures and write the speech in the first person. Once students complete the speech, we will create Flipgrid video recordings to record our speech performances! Please stay tuned for more information about the Flipgrid videos!

Music - Band: We gave a little spontaneous mini-concert this week - if you could not attend, ask for your own personal solo concert at home! :) There is a link above in MSM to a FREE concert of the US Navy Band at GRCHS!

Music - Choir: Pictures at an Exhibition projects are due next week - we have had a lot of fun hearing the music and imagining what some of the pictures might look like.

Music - Orchestra: Continue to fill out your practice records and practicing for the concert!

PE: We are wrapping up badminton this week and will be moving on to baseball/softball skills and games next week!

Science: This week 5th grade started studying nutrition systems by exploring what activates yeast and how that happens.

In addition, on Good Friday we took the opportunity to reflect on Jesus’s death in order to prepare them for the most important weekend of our faith. 

Social Studies: We started our unit on the American Revolution and are working on our Comparing Armies projects. Comparing Armies Project is due Wed, April 20.

6th Grade

Class Trip: Save the Date - May 27 - Details to come - we will need parent volunteers on this day - it will be the entire day. An email with info to come soon. Rain Date for this event is actually May 25 - we will check the weather the week of and make the call. If both days are rainy….we will just be wet. :)

Art: Due next week Fri, Apr 22, are the torn watercolor landscapes projects and artist statements. If students have not completed their project students can work before or after school or at lunch next week. Please check the homework calendar for sketchbook and project due dates.

Bible: This week we discussed bits of my trip to Israel. We also began a unit on the Psalms. Psalm 23 is due Fri, Apr 29.

Language Arts: The sixth graders have been working incredibly hard on their World Fair websites! I am so impressed with how creative they are and how quickly they learned how to use the digital tools and skills needed to create such a project. Students have the following due for rough drafts of their website pages: Land and Climate Page (Mon, Apr 18), People Page (Tues, Apr 19), Food Page (Tues, Apr 19), “Other” Page (Thurs, Apr 21) and About Me Page (Thurs, Apr 21). Paper rubrics of each page were handed out in class, however, the rubrics are also posted on Google Classroom.Thank you for encouraging your student to meet these deadlines!

Music - Band: Band video due by the end of April - The Hunting Song. It’s a great piece! There is a link above in MSM to a FREE concert of the US Navy Band at GRCHS!

Music - Choir: We are singing songs of Lent and Easter this week - and also songs from the Sound of Music.

Music - Orchestra: Keep practicing! The April Google Video is due Apr 28. 

PE: We are wrapping up badminton this week and will be moving on to baseball/softball skills and games next week!

Science: This week 6th grade explored force further by learning how to use a spring scale and learning how forces interact.

In addition, on Good Friday we took the opportunity to reflect on Jesus’s death in order to prepare them for the most important weekend of our faith. 

Social Studies: We started our unit on the Roman Empire and have been working on vocabulary and the geography of Ancient Rome. Rome vocabulary quiz on Fri, April 15! 

7th Grade

Art: 7th grade students have their Lego portraits due Thurs, Apr 21. If students have not completed their project students can work before or after school or at lunch next week. Please check the homework calendar for sketchbook and project due dates. Next up, students will be learning about American sculptor Lousie Nevelson and then work on creating an assemblage sculpture. 

Bible: We are finishing up our unit on Biblical Leadership. Students will be creating presentations on the characteristics of leadership and how we can model them at school. Bible Memory is Deuteronomy 31:7-8. It is due Thur, Apr 21, 2022.

History: We’re in the midst of our study of the Civil War. Next week we’ll spend time investigating the technology of the war and how it affected people’s lives (and deaths!). 

Language Arts: As of Fri, April 15, the 7th graders will have officially wrapped up the research portion of the ProCon project. By Wednesday, April 20, we will have our outlines finished and officially be drafting our persuasive essays. 

Math - 7th Math: We are finishing up a unit on measuring figures. Students have been practicing the skills of finding area, volume, and surface area of figures. Next week, students will use these skills to build a cardboard city. Please remind your student to bring in cardboard boxes on Monday!

Math - Algebra: We will continue practice using radicals and learn how to use the quadratic formula. 

Math - Pre-Algebra: Pre-Algebra students are start a unit on Probability and Statistics. We will be doing some review from previous years and adding onto it.

Music - Band: On Thurs, Apr 21 our 7th band has been invited to play for the Cascade Christian Church Soup/Sandwich lunch for their Senior's group. We will give a 30 minute concert, will share some favorite scriptures and blessings and talk a little about our faith, and will have lunch with them - they are treating us to a soup and sandwich lunch - SO NICE of them!  It will be very fun to do this for and with them. We plan to dress nicely this day for the concert.

Please could we have permission for your 7th band student to attend?

Please fill out this form to grant permission.

There is a link above in MSM to a FREE concert of the US Navy Band at GRCHS!

Music - Choir: We are singing songs of Lent and Easter to prepare for the Good Friday Chapel.

Music - Orchestra: Keep practicing! The April Google Video is due April 28th. 

PE: We are wrapping up badminton this week and will be moving on to baseball/softball skills and games next week!

Science: This week we finished up our simulation that we started before spring break. With that we learned about bioaccumulation, trophic levels, and what makes a sustainable ecosystem. Next week we will be preparing to release our salmon into the Grand River. We will be traveling in ACS buses to Chief Hazy Cloud Park on April 22. We will spend the afternoon performing water quality analysis, life cycle simulation, and releasing our precious fish. If you are available to help with this, please let me know! We need a couple parent volunteers and would love for you to help guide students in completing a station on Graduation Day.

Will you please click to complete the Salmon Graduation Parent Permission Form by Mon, Apr 18. 

8th Grade

Art: 8th graders will be continuing work on their Milestone paintings. We will be picking color schemes and begin painting next week. Please check the homework calendar for sketchbook and project due dates.

Bible: We continue to work on our Plumb Bob projects - an artistic rendering with the words….praying about and working through our choices and God’s word….also thinking about Lent and Easter and Holy Week - and soon we will be writing our speeches.

History: This week we finished up our brief study of the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression of the 30s. Next week we begin World War II.

Language Arts: This coming week, we will be finishing The Diary of Anne Frank and continue working on the Rights of Passage Art/Language Arts project. 

Math - Algebra: We will continue to learn about probability with a quiz next week Wednesday. As we near the end of the school year, students are also working on exam review assignments to prepare for exams.

Math - Geometry: We will continue to learn about circles this week and continue to review for the final exam. 

Math - Pre-Algebra: Pre-Algebra students are start a unit on Probability and Statistics. We will be doing some review from previous years and adding onto it. This is tentatively the last unit that we will have before we start studying for our final exam.

Music - Band: We are performing for GrandFriends Day May 06. Our Spring Concert is May 12. Band Exam is due by May 5. Quite a few are completely done with this already. WAY TO GO! There is a link above in MSM to a FREE concert of the US Navy Band at GRCHS!

Music - Choir: We will be learning our songs for Graduation, and doing a review of music from our years at ACS, and also a gaze into some music history.

Music - Orchestra: Keep practicing! The April Google Video is due Apr 28.

PE: We are wrapping up badminton this week and will be moving on to baseball/softball skills and games next week!

Science: We completed our rat dissection keynote and turned that in this week. We started working on our Planetary Science Review. This is due on Apr 25. We also started learning about the nervous system, specifically our sensory receptors this week. 

Athletics 

Games are scheduled to start next week for our baseball and soccer teams. Track/Field practice is underway and will have our first meet in the upcoming weeks. 

We are currently in need of some officials for some girls soccer games this spring, email Mr. Meyaard if interested ()