As many of you saw while you were looking through the papers your child brought home, Pocahontas Middle School came to visit today. While they were here they explained some of the ins and outs of middle school and a little of what your child can expect to do next year. It was an informative meeting and the kids were very engaged and had some good questions for the counselors.
You may have noticed a draft version of the course selection sheet along with a booklet. The "real" course selection sheet will be coming home soon with your child's courses outlined on them. All you will need to do is sign it and return it if you agree with the placements. If not, Parent Teacher Conferences should occur sometime during the week of Feb. 4, (we have not been given the exact date yet) and we can discuss any changes you feel are necessary during this time.
The planning guide booklet is also very important. You can use it to map out the classes you feel would benefit your child and see when he/she will take them. This book encompass the rest of your child's HCPS school career and should be kept as a reference for each year's course selection process. There will be a Rising 6th grade Scheduling meeting that will cover curriculum paths and review the planning guide on Tuesday, January 22 at 7pm in the PMS Auditorium. PMS will also host a Curriculum Carnival on Thursday, January 31 from 5:30-7:30 in the PMS Commons.
If your child has applied to the IB program at Moody Middle School, please sign the Course Selection Sheet for PMS so that we have one on file. When acceptance letters come out in March, the PMS sheets will be replaced with one from the IB program and will be sent home for you to sign at that time.
Next week, we are taking an Aquatic Safety field trip to the Patrick Henry YMCA. Due to the distance that we will be traveling, your child will need to bring a bagged lunch with no glass containers, as well as a towel, swimsuit, and bag to for their wet bathing suit. The price for this field trip is $4 and is due by Friday. Also, the permission slips are a little different because the trip does involve swimming. There are four pages that you need to review and sign.
In Math we just finished up our big unit on Algebra! For the remainder of the nine weeks, we're going to finish strong with graphing inequalities, elapsed time, and ratios. As each one of these are not huge units in and of themselves, grades will mostly come from classwork and quizzes. I will let you know if there is any type of end of unit test.
In science, we started the year making a dichotomous key for different creatures. It was a fun way to ease back into science. Tomorrow we will begin our exploration of cells, with particular emphasis on animal and plant cells. There will be a project to complement the unit, but it will not be as involved as the last game show menu.
For writing, the students are still enjoying their blogs and have spent some days this week uploading content and adding to their writings on them. The main goal for them at this point is to be writing cohesive 5 paragraph essays on a topic. This closely mimics the VA SOL test that they will be taking during the second week of March.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me. Have a great week!