November 6th - November 10th

 

Dear Parents,

Parent-Teacher Conferences are just around the corner, and we can’t wait to see you! This year you will have the opportunity to schedule a 10-minute appointment with any or all of your child’s teachers on:

• Thursday, November 9th from 1:00-3:30 PM, and/or;

• Friday, November 10th from 8:00-3:15 PM

The sign-up form for each teacher will be open from Monday, October 23rd through Wednesday, November 8th at 5:00 PM. Click the link to make appointments with middle school teachers:

Boyer: https://forms.gle/1GRvx75d7WbDaJ847

Ferkol: https://forms.gle/no3hvekVGyQivZik9

O'Hayer: https://forms.gle/nBEA1YT4g46s4QYA7

Saviskas: https://forms.gle/niSxz9Th2TiWR3aA7

Lanfear: https://forms.gle/R7MCyjaoWhCtdwpM7

Taylor: https://forms.gle/qcchqtZP5ipYx5Sc7

Hallman: https://forms.gle/afH9PhJzxVStGb8c8

Insignares: https://forms.gle/orwgX3dMVCAUfoQU9

Brown: https://forms.gle/pBZowPMsX5g92JZv5

Byrne: https://forms.gle/EZbfnAD1J4ZyqemeA

Parent-Teacher Conferences are a great way for you and your child’s teachers to talk about how your child is doing academically, socially, and emotionally in school. Check out this short article with tips for what you can do to help make your meetings successful and productive.

Kind Regards,

Jack Cargile

Head of Middle School

Follow all the fun on our Middle School Instagram account!

Parents and students have an easy way to look at upcoming assessments and projects.  THIS LINK leads to a Google Sheet that will have the next 2 weeks of assessments.  The link below will lead to the 6th grade assessments, but by using the tabs in the lower left corner (shown below), you can navigate to 7th grade and 8th grade assessments, as well.

Different subjects will appear in different colors:

History is black, Science is green, ELA is blue, Spanish is red, and Math is pink.

Please bear in mind that Middle School Assessments may be added, removed, or changed at any time.  This Sheet will always be up to date, however - once a teacher assigns or adjusts an assessment, this Sheet will reflect that change.

Congratulations to all of our Volleyball, Cross Country, and Tennis teams for a great Fall Season! Please make sure that you turn in your jerseys to your Coaches asap.

HDS Boys Basketball Tryouts finished up on 10/30.

HDS Girls Basketball Tryouts were held on 11/1-11/2.

Basketball players will be notified of their selection over the weekend. Practices begin on Monday. Coaches will notify their team players of the times and locations.

Baseball meeting took place on 11/1. They will be holding a few weekend practices throughout the winter months to keep athletes conditioned.

**Please go to the HDS website and check the Events & Athletic Calendar for the most up to date information.

Contact Coach Bellairs if the events calendar hasn’t answered your questions:

bbellairs@hancockdayschool.org

Each middle school student is required to complete ten hours of community service over the course of the school year.  Please remember to list hours worked on a daily basis, do not log the total sum of hours worked over an extended period of time. Click HERE for a log form or see Mrs. Mannarino in the office.

1. Below is a volunteer opportunity, organized by the PA, for our Middle Schoolers outside of school!

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C094CAFAB2BABF5C34-second

2. Coastal Pet Rescue - email Emily Piette (emilyp@coastalpetrescue.org) 

As Learning Coach, I work with students, parents, and teachers to offer support and strategies throughout the year. Please reach out to me if I can be of any assistance to you and your child/ren. I will share ideas and strategies often in this space. My email is: tguggenheim@hancockdayschool.org. My phone extension is 327. I look forward to working with you! Tricia Guggenheim

10. How Much Review Is Best?

Review textbook chapters before teachers lecture about them in class. This process gives your brain enough knowledge to help you pay better attention in class. You can reduce study and homework time if you have a deeper understanding of the material.

This month, we invite parents to partner with us in teaching our students about both responsibility and respect. Middle school is a crucial time to continue the development of virtuous behaviors. 

Here are some strategies that you can use to at home:

How to Teach Your Child to Be More Responsible

Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns that you may have this year at amaher@hancockdayschool.org.

ALGEBRA 1 - Mrs. Taylor

Students wrapped up their mini project, slope in real life. The goal included graphing, tying slope formula to the graph, equation and to a table of values. 4.7 will start Chapter 5. Students will dig deeper into slope. Their first quiz will be 11/14 (4.7, 5.1-5.2).

ADVANCED ALGEBRA - Mr. Lanfear

Next week in Advanced Algebra, we will continue the second part of Chapter 11 by discovering and practicing the distance formula (11.5) and having a quiz covering 11.3-11.4 on Tuesday.  Because of parent-teacher conferences, Thursday is a half day for students and there is no school for students on Friday.

GEOMETRY - Mr. Lanfear

Next week in Geometry, we will explore the rest of the special line segments in triangles by learning about medians and the centroid (5.4), altitudes and the orthocenter (5.5), and triangle inequalities (5.6).  Because of parent-teacher conferences, Thursday is a half day for students and there is no school for students on Friday.

ELA - Mrs. Boyer

We have OFFICIALLY begun Macbeth!!! We will be reading the week of November 6th, 13th and the 27th. If your child misses a reading day, they will be responsible for reading on their own. They may come in and listen to the dramatic reading on my computer from 7:30-8:10 am. Your child will NOT have Reading Checks for HW, but they will have WORKBOOK PAGES each night. 

Your child will not have original reading to complete at home, but they will be asked to interact with the text after in-class reading. 

Assessments: 

Macbeth Mini Quiz (Characters Act I - II) Monday, November 13th

Macbeth Act I - II Quiz Friday, November 17th

**It is incredibly important that your child stay on top of their ANNOTATIONS for Macbeth. My room is open every day at 7:30 am for readers if they were unable to read in the evening. Please help your child by reading and discussing with them! :) **

PHYSICAL SCIENCE - Ms. Hallman

We have had a great week in science this week learning about ions and chemical reactions. Next week, we will continue working through balancing chemical equations and do a color changing lab experiment on Thursday. Wednesday we will have a quiz over balancing chemical equations. Friday is a conference so I look forward to seeing some of you then! As always, the key to success is active recall and engagement in class. Ensuring basic understanding before going home should be a primary goal of each day of learning. 

US HISTORY - Mr. Saviskas  

This coming week we will be wrapping up 1862 and entering into 1863. To start, we will talk about the Emancipation Proclamation and how the war began to change its focus from preserving the Union, to anti-slavery. To go along with this, we will be doing a short in class project “mind map,” which will help students organize the topic and their thoughts while expressing their artistic talent. I am so excited to see what they come up with!

ADVANCED SPANISH - Ms. Brown and Mr. De Cardenas
For students enrolled in Ms. Brown’s class, please see the following bullets to know what we have on our agenda for the coming week!

• TEST on unit five on Monday, Nov 6th. 

ALGEBRA 1 - Mrs. Taylor

Students wrapped up their mini project, slope in real life. The goal included graphing, tying slope formula to the graph, equation and to a table of values. 4.7 will start Chapter 5. Students will dig deeper into slope. Their first quiz will be 11/14 (4.7, 5.1-5.2).

PRE-ALGEBRA - Mr. Lanfear

Next week in Pre-Algebra, we will begin the second part of Chapter 4 by learning about the product and quotient rules of exponents (4.5).  Because of parent-teacher conferences, Thursday is a half day for students and there is no school for students on Friday.

ELA - Ms. Ferkol and Mrs. Boyer

We will begin our third unit of the year: Voices of the World. This will be a Book Club Unit. Students will be asked to choose a book from the following list: Thirst, The Breadwinner, The Night Diary, The Only Road, Just a Drop of Water, and Amal Unbound. Within their Book Clubs, students will be asked to create a reading calendar, complete mini lessons, complete activities and assessments based on their books. 

For our first activities, we will be designing a vacation with a budget to our chosen novel’s country! :) Ms. Ferkol and I are so excited to see these kids dive into this real world activity!

This unit will be over Thanksgiving and Winter Break. It is NOT expected that your child read over breaks…but it is expected that your child stays on top of their reading during school days. 

As we continue with our novel studies,  it is expected that your child will read for 20-25 minutes at home each night. This will be the majority of their homework. 

Please stay on top of the assessment calendar and Google Classroom assignments. 

LIFE SCIENCE - Ms. Hallman and Ms. Insignares

This week we learned about the history of the cell and next week we will continue learning about the organelles and make up of eukaryotic cells. This chapter has some cumulative elements so if there are concepts that have been confusing in the past, it is important they review that. We will have a quiz on Wednesday over the information we have learned thus far. We will also begin discussing the cell project that will be the largest project these students have completed this far. Conferences will be next week so please continue to sign up for those! I look forward to seeing some of you then! 

US HISTORY - Mr. Saviskas

This week we will be moving further into the American Revolution and focusing on the core reasons for the independence movement. From the French and Indian War, to the Intolerable Acts and the Boston Massacre, our lessons will focus on the whys and hows of Revolutionary America.

US HISTORY - Mr. O’Hayer

Next week we will continue our study of the American Revolution. Students will examine events that led the American Colonies to declare independence, events as they unfolded during the war, and how the war shaped the lives of Americans in the new nation. Students will also continue working on the project: Building Your Colony. Please checkdue dates in GC.

ACCELERATED MATH - Mrs. Taylor

I gave students fraction bell ringers and problems that I have not reviewed yet and they knew the content before I began. This unit will be quick and easy for them, I am hoping. The first quiz has been moved to 11/8. Add-Subtract fractions and mixed numbers with unlike denominators and Multiplying fractions and mixed numbers 5.1-5.3.

PRE-ALGEBRA - Mr. Lanfear

Next week in Pre-Algebra, we will begin the second part of Chapter 4 by learning about the product and quotient rules of exponents (4.5).  Because of parent-teacher conferences, Thursday is a half day for students and there is no school for students on Friday.

EARTH SCIENCE - Ms. Insignares

Next week in Earth Science students will be presenting their pollution poster to the class and teaching us what they learned about their affected marine animals. We will also have a quiz on 11/8 about ocean structures and characteristics.

ELA - Ms. Ferkol

Heading into next week we'll be diving into a few key components of the dystopian literature genre. First we will look at dissecting different types of dystopian archetypes and identifying them in our books. After we spend some time identifying and clarifying these complex character structures, we will look at the systemic problems our characters are facing and wonder how they might overcome these despite their challenges.

As we begin this unit, there will be a few changes to our regular routine that you should be aware of. The first is that students will be utilizing a gray folder for this unit instead of their blue ELA binders. Throughout the unit, this folder will be filled with anchor charts and activity pages that students complete to reference as they study for assessments. The most important document within this folder will be the GROUP READING SCHEDULE. It will be located in the very front of their folder and will serve as your child’s weekly reading homework pages. As this is a book club unit, student books will likely move along at different paces depending on a variety of factors such as complexity, ability, and interest. Please be on the lookout for an email with more in-depth details relating to notable routine changes for this unit!! 

This unit will be over Thanksgiving and Winter Break. It is NOT expected that your child read over breaks…but it is expected that your child stays on top of their reading during school days. 

INTRO SPANISH - Ms. Brown

We had a wonderful end of the trimester by flexing our cultural competency skills in class given the rush of the Halloween holiday! We watched videos of two YouTube creators sharing their love of history, baking, and traveling to give us an insight into the cultural practices and perspectives of those who celebrate the infamous Día de los muertos. 

We work very hard in class, so having a mini-break to observe and discuss this fun topic was a welcomed endeavor (and convenient given that so many kids were K.O. by their Halloween fun and treats)!

As we jump right into a new trimester, please see below for details coming up!

• Test on unit four on Tuesday, Nov 7.

• Starting unit five on Wednesday, Nov 8.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

WORLD HISTORY - Mr. O’Hayer

Next week in World History students will shift focus from Greek Philosophers to one of the most influential people of the Ancient World: Alexander the Great. We will also be starting our examination of one of the most dominant empires in the ancient world: Rome.