Dear HKMS Families,

What an amazing week of student-led activities and fundraisers.  There are awesome pictures and videos of today's extravaganza which included a decathlon, door decorating, and student vs. staff volleyball  and basketball games.  The academic decathlon was an "amazing race" around the school that was live streamed by Mr. Dolecki who tailed each team.   These events are filling us with joy and the giving spirit of Mikey Friedman! We are ever so close to our goal of $5,000 for Mikey's Way and, with your help, I know we can get over the hump!  Between corporate matching, adopting a devise, or just getting your child involved in next week's activities, I know we are going to be able to fill a cart for a Mikey's Way Day at Smilow!

Report cards will be out and available for you to view Monday afternoon. We will send out a notification when they are all set.  As a reminder, the document linked here provides instructions with how you can access the T2 reports. The students have once again demonstrated tremendous growth over the course of the second trimester.  As you review their report cards, I recommend prompting your discussions with some of the following questions: How do you feel about your grades? Are you surprised by anything? What do you know now that you didn't know before this trimester?  What have you learned about yourself as a learner and student? What teacher comment means the most to you?  What do you hope to accomplish by the end of the year? Rather than looking at these grades as a destination, it is important to look at them as mile markers on the journey to being lifelong learners.  Keep the conversations going by checking out the classroom peeks section in this newsletter for updates across grades and content areas. 

Next week will be another thrilling one as we will celebrate our 60th anniversary, officially rededicate our school, and hopefully present the Friedman's with a check so we can sponsor a Mikey's Way Day at Smilow! 

I hope you all have a wonderful first weekend of Spring!

Sincerely,

Steve Clapp, Ed.D.

The Four-Way Volleyball Game Finals.  

The winners of the morning prelim rounds for 6th , 7th and 8th grade played along with the staff team today.  The 8th grade team was victorious!!

Mrs. Brodeur demonstrated how ancient mathematicians were able to figure out Pi.  By breaking a circle into wedges and aligning those wedges into a rhombus, for which they could find the area, then work backwards to use one side of the wedge (which is really the radius) to calculate for Pi.

French students were having a "conversation rotation". They talk to a classmate about a topic (here it's about their classes) for 3 minutes, until the timer rings, then they rotate to talk to a new partner--all in French, of course.

Where should we settle?  Students presented various physical features and weather patterns of regions of our country to help make the decision!

Much like 6th grade math above, Mr. Crawford demonstrated how Pi was discovered and how we use it to find the area of a circle!

Mr. Ferrante (our school's tech assistant) joined Mr. Fearn in PLTW to help students learn how to establish a "saving pathway" to Google Drive from PLTW's desktop computers.  It's a little tricky, but once the pathway is established, it is simple to save all their engineering designs, research, and projects! 

Thank you to the JBHS admin team for attending this week's PTO coffee! Big takeaway: The students who are the most successful in the transition to Barlow are those who know how to manage their time effectively.  For example, during Barlow's morning "community time" (15 minutes between periods  2 and 3), students who choose to go to the math/writing/academic center or attend an extra help session are far more successful than those who choose to go to the cafeteria to hangout with friends.