Winding Down

As the end of the year approaches, several annual events take place.

Laptop and Book Collection: Friday, June 4 *Bills will be issued for any loss or damage of materials. Payment must be received in the office in order to participate in end-of-year activities.

Step Up Day: Wednesday, June 9 *Homeroom lists will be posted outside Wednesday morning. Students will report directly to their “new” homeroom. Current 7th graders will spend their day in 8th grade. You will have your normal day 5 rotation Unified Arts.

Field Day: Friday, June 11 *At 7:40, you will report to your 7th grade homeroom. After announcements, you will be dismissed to your team ambassador/home base.. Don’t forget your sunscreen, a hat and/or sunglasses, sneakers, water bottle, and layered clothing. Unless there is inclement weather, we will be going outside.

Last Day: Monday, June 14 *This is a little less than a half of a day. We’ll have start the day in the gym with a grade 7 farewell assembly, and we will finish the morning as Black Bears with some team activities. You will not be fed lunch. Report cards will be sent home.

Attention Parents: Feedback Requested

I have created a brief questionnaire about internet use, math programs, and standardized test results. I would be very grateful to receive a lot of feedback from parents. This survey will take approximately 5 minutes. Your answers will be completely confidential, so please answer each question as frankly as you can. My hopes are to create even stronger communication between home and school and parent and child. Our involvement makes strong influences on our young people.

To take the survey, please click on this link. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/873FCQZ If by some chance, the link does not immediately bring you to a cheerfully yellow survey, please copy the address into your browser.

Open House Presentations

On the night of Thursday, April 1, room 213 will hold a series of introductions to some of our “Zany Technologies” that are outlined on my linked page. Students will be running learning centers to guide parents, siblings, and the community through several of our programs that we use daily on the Black Bear team. You will receive opportunities to see how each of these programs works as well as have access to your student’s user name and log in if they have not already shared that with you. Please feel free to pop by in between viewing our wonderful iMovie presentations to find out what all the buzz has been about!

6:00 Black Bear Webpages and Studywiz

6:30 All things ALEKS

7:00 Encompassing Compass Learning

Compass Learning

To view an example account, please log in to Compass Learning as studentlayman with a password of student34.

Students will be receiving their individual log in names and passwords on Thursday, March 18th. We will be using Compass Learning a great deal in math class to both support current content and setting personal goals to better prepare for the NWEAs, which we will take again in May.

For additional information on Compass Learning, please access the “Zany Technology” page, ask a Black Bear, or attend Open House on April 1 for a brief overview of this wonderful application.

Scorpions become Black Bears

This year, the Leonard Middle School communities have all had name changes. After a lot of consideration and input from students, teams, and faculty; the entirety of L.M.S. has changed their team name to reflect an animal that is native to Maine. After a lot of thought and great suggestions, we’ve settled on our new team name– the Black Bears.

Default Accounts For Studywiz and Gizmos

Since we’d like parents to be as connected as possible, and understand that it would be nearly impossible to keep track of extra passwords, default accounts have been set up for Studywiz and Gizmos. Please check my “Zany Technology” page for information on these crucial programs as well as to discover the user names and passwords. Please understand that these are for viewing (and practicing) purposes only and that no work should be submitted through these accounts. The ability to send email has been shut off from the Studywiz account, but users can still access emails that teachers send. (Please do not delete these messages once they have been read, since other users may try to access them as well.) The entire Black Bear team hopes that this will open the lines of communication more for increased success of our students and their families.

*Social Studies/Science Swap

The tentative date for students to switch from social studies to science is scheduled for Monday, January 25th. Student schedules will not change except that they will report to Ms. Weatherbee for science instruction for the remainder of the year. Please remember that students needed colored pencils for Ms. Weatherbee’s classes and that their social studies binder will become their science binder.

Homework Policy and Incentive

Homework will be assigned to students on Monday (due Wednesday) and Wednesday (due Friday) of each week. This allows two nights for students to complete work, as well as opportunity to meet with me should they need additional help. School policy states that homework shall not count for more than 15% of a student’s grade and that all work must be passed in. I do strongly emphasize the importance of their efforts on homework. Therefore, I have created a “Homework Incentive” to help boost student’s on-time and completed assignments.

Homework that is on time, completed, and set up properly will be allotted a sticker (to be placed on an index card to accumulate). Students must be present in the room at the time of sticker distribution. As students accumulate 10 stickers, they are given a homework pass that will excuse them from one future math homework assignment. Homework passes must be surrendered at that time, but students are issued an automatic 100% on that assignment. There are no expiration dates on passes. Even better: every 15 stickers earned will warrant a quiz pass. This works just like the homework pass, but this time they get out of a quiz. (Please note there is a review quiz every Friday.) Students may not trade a quiz pass for a homework pass. Stickers and passes are both students’ responsibilities to keep track of.

What You can Expect to Learn

Over the course of the past several years, the fabulous math teachers at Leonard Middle School have sat down together to ask the questions, “what do students need to know, and when?” There are several avenues that parents and students may find answers to these questions and all our students can expect to learn and master this year.

First, we have aligned “secure goals” with our math program, MathThematics, at Leonard Middle School. Secure goals are the skills we expect students to master, or be phenomenal with, by the end of a certain unit or grade. *Our first quiz of the year reviewed math topics that should have been mastered in the 6th grade. We will be building and expanding on this content, as our math course is a spiraling program. This means that topics are introduced, reinforced, mastered, and revisited over the three year course in grades 6 through 8.

No Child Left Behind has mandated Grade Level Expectations for each of the subjects. To access this information, please scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the link for mathematics. There is a down loadable form for the 2007 GLE for mathematics. In accordance with NCLB mandates, students take the New England Compacts (NECAPS) in October of each year on their previous year’s instruction. To find out what students will be tested on, please download the PDF of NECAP Standards.

We are also using the new Maine Learning Results. Please be aware that these are by “grade span” which is designated as grades 5-8.

Supplies You’ll Need in 7th Grade

Greetings to in-coming Scorpion students and families. On Step-Up-Day, you received a list of supplies that you will need for all four of your classes: language arts, math, social studies, and science. In case you lost this list, here is a total of all the supplies you will need for your seventh grade year. (Preparation does account for a percentage of your grade in each class.)

• Mechanical pencils (all subjects)
• Filler lead and erasers for the pencils (all subjects)
• 1 box of colored pencils (science)
• 1 pack of index cards of any color or size (language arts)
• 1 binder of at least 2″ width to be shared between language arts and math
• 1 binder (1″ should suffice) to be swapped between social studies and science
• 1 package of 5 separators with tabs (for social studies/science binder)
• Yellow highlighter (science and language arts)
• 2 large book covers (math and social studies)
• 3 packages of college ruled lined paper (to be shared between all subjects)