For the Week of 1/22 - 1/26

A Message from Dr. Clapp
Classroom Peeks
Drive to Thrive
Happenings
Get Involved!
Community Clicks
and Upcoming Events

Dear HKMS Families,

Congratulations to Mr. Dolecki, Mrs. Gidley and all of our band and orchestra musicians for this week's amazing performances! It was a wonderful instrumental concert on Wednesday night. Check out the happenings section of this week’s newsletter for lots of pictures and videos.

We are officially past the halfway point of the 2023-24 school year! As of Thursday, HKMS students have had had 450 academic classes and 180 FPA classes with 90 ELT's and 8 advisory lessons. This all translates to 32,400 minutes, or 540 hours of instruction. Our sixth graders have completed their first half-school year, while out 8th graders are looking at their last 1/2 year of middle school. Our 7th graders are now exactly halfway through their middle school years!

Besides all of these fascinating statistics, the midway point is the perfect time to check your child's grades in PowerSchool (link here). Barring any more snow days, trimester 2 officially ends on March 12, which is a bit more then 6 weeks away.

Just below this message is a memo about the upcoming NWEA testing coming up on February 6th & 8th, for all of our 6th and 7th grade students. This assessment gives us key insights as to how the students are progressing at our midpoint. As you may remember, we gave the NWEA test to sixth and seventh graders in September as our initial benchmark. We are expecting between 3-6 points of growth in both reading and math. Once the tests are completed and the testing window closes, we will be sharing individual reports with you via PowerSchool. Please check out the memo below for more information.

While the concerts left us breathless this week, there were also a ton of middle school teaching and learning moments that will take your breath away as well! I hope you enjoy it all in this week's newsletter.

Wishing you and your family a wonderful weekend!

Sincerely,

Steven Clapp, Ed.D.

NWEA Map Winter Parent Letter HKMS letterhead

A glimpse inside of the terrific teaching and learning going on this week at HKMS!

Grade 6

Our young mathematicians are converting fractions, to decimals, to percents and solving challenging problems involving ratios along the way!

French students working on their pen-pal letter to their counterparts in France!

Grade 7

Dr. Baca's scientists are trying to diagnose the ailments of a 13 year old girl with acute abdominal pain. Students analyze the reported symptoms, decide which system is being affected, then select tests that can be run to confirm their suspicions. Great investigative work here!

Seventh grade social studies students are learning about 4000 years of Chinese civilization and dynastic rule.

Grade 8

The (hopefully not) lost art of notetaking from a textbook was happening in math classes this week! After completing the big midterm early in the week, math classes pivoted to new topics and started by hitting the books!

Our 8th-graders met with the Barlow counselors this week to sign up for their high school classes! We are so appreciative of the counselors spending the whole day with our students and getting to know their families!

FPAs

The pickleball tournaments are in their final rounds! As these games are in progress, Mrs. Tiani is meeting 1:1 with students for a serving assessment.

8th Grade artists are in the early stages of creating 3D letters for their autobiographical architecture projects.

Advisory

While 8th graders continued to develop their Capstone Personal Interest Projects, grade 7 got organized with a locker cleanout and grade six students took on an Equation Analysis Test! See if you can figure out the answers.

This week the math club took on the problem below. Mr. Crawford, who runs the club, then sent it out as a challenge to the staff (with the winner receiving a Starbucks coffee!). In addition to one of our sixth graders solving it in under two minutes, Dr. Pocchiari, one of our math paraeducators, took the staff prize. Can you figure this one out, without "Googling" the answer?

(answer will be in next week's newsletter)

Events, activites, and other occurrences that happened at HKMS this week outside of the classroom.

Another Amazing Evening Concert !

Wednesday night the instrumentalists had their turn as they took the HKMS stage for a terrific night of orchestra and band songs! Below are several videos and pictures. A complete video of the whole night is being spliced together by our music directors and should be available next week.

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 15.MOV

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 2.MOV

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 14.MOV

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 12.MOV

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 9.MOV

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 7.MOV

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 9.MOV

1-25-2024 Instrumental Concert 4.MOV

Even when the weather keeps us inside for all of lunch, thanks to some generous gifts from the PTO, our students still get to play! Check out some of the new games on the stage that students were enjoying this week!

The HKMS School Climate Committee is planning a mid-year check-in!

Click on the letter below for more info!

Letter about Climate Check-In

The Musical Extravaganza of Awesomeness

Our in-school community celebration of music is one of the best days of the school year. Every single student gathers with their music group, even general music, to show off what they have learned during the first half of the school year. We sit in a huge circle and let music fill us with joy for the morning. This event truly lives up to its name!