August 2018

Teachers faced their first two STEAM Challenges during the first days back to work.

Challenge 1: Lines go this way and that way- horizontal, vertical, curved or diagonal. Using only 25 lines, draw an awesome bridge. No line can be longer than 2 inches.

Challenge 2: Using 20 strands of uncooked spaghetti and 20 miniature marshmallows, build a bridge that spans a 10-inch gap between 2 stacks of books. Test the strength of the bridge by resting an index card at the center of the bridge. One by one, add pennies.

SMS teachers won the spirit award at Convocation to kick off the school year.

Students came back to school ready to learn, collaborate and be challenged. 8th grade students tapped into their critical thinking skills and were challenged with tasks to investigate geometric properties in math.

Cardboard collection began in preparation for our 1st Cardboard Challenge.

September 2018

8th grade students started collaborating and researching the northern factories and southern plantations. Students worked on Hyperdocs to collect their research and then they were tasked with recreating either a northern factory or a southern plantation.

7th grade math students worked to solve how many drops of water it would take to fill an Olympic sized pool. They focused on measuring, unit rates and proportions.

8th grade ELA students were tasked with remaking something to represent a novel they just finished. Students worked on being creative and utilizing their presentation skills.

7th grade hosted a Book Tasting to get students interested in various genres and authors. Each student got to view book trailers, read a sample from the text and write themselves a review on whether or not this book interested them.

Our first round of STEAM Clubs have begun!!! Students selected 1 of 35 clubs to participate in weekly based on their interests.

Cardboard Challenge preparation continues. Students began to plan and create prototypes to ensure their design would be successful.

October 2018

6th grade students finished up their character unit by creating and presenting Character Bags. Students had to analyze and think critically about the characters in their books. Students used Recap to present their projects.

6th grade ELA students were studying about authors pen-names or pseudonyms and created their own pseudonym.

7th grade math students wrapped up their unit on scale factors and scale drawings. Students were tasked with creating a "mini" version of themselves by measuring and converting their measurements to scale. Students then used Tinkercad to recreate their mini-me's and then they were able to 3D print their mini-me.

6th grade students finished their unit on radiation, conduction and convection and were tasked to create a project that demonstrated / showed conduction, convection or radiation.

November 2018

Spanish and Art collaborated and hosted a Dia de Los Muertos showcase where students presented their work in a wax-museum fashion. Students were able to walk through the room and learn about Dia de Los Muertos.

6th grade science took physical and chemical changes to a new level when they made pumpkins explode!!

We celebrated our first PBIS reward with Halloween Bingo, slushies and popcorn.

6th grade social studies mummified apples during their Ancient Egypt unit.

8th grade celebrated the end of the ELA unit of Edgar Allan Poe and social studies unit on government by conducting a mock murder trial to see who killed Edgar Allan Poe. Students played various roles that you would see in a court case, had 3D printed evidence, and written speeches with evidence from their learning to convince the jury.

7th grade World History dove into catapults while learning about the Black Death of the Middle Ages leading up to the time period of the Renaissance. Students worked through trail and error to see who had the best design.

7th grade science learned all about simple machines by being able to apply tools to learn how they operate.

PBIS field trip to the NASCAR Hall of Fame where students met driver Ryan Vargas and learned all about the STEAM in NASCAR. Students were able to participate in hands-on STEAM Challenges and learning.

8th grade students learned all about the Industrial Revolution and were tasked with building either a skyscraper, a plane or a truck. Each structure had to meet various requirements and had to have working parts built into it.

December 2018

December was a fun and fast and snowy month. We decorated our doors in STEAM theme, celebrated with another PBIS reward of hot chocolate and a movie, and created an elf video for our kids from our fabulous principal and assistant principal.

January 2019

Our 7th grade kicked off the new year with making book talks for book recommendations. They worked on summarizing and digital skills. These book talks will make you want to read these books!

Math 1 students kicked off the pythagorean theorm while creating Barbie Ziplines. Students had to measure the distance that Barbie would travel safely.

8th grade students learned the names of science tools and the importance of accuracy when measuring liquids.

7th grade math students created a presentation where they had to teach an audience how to solve 0ne- and Two-step equations. They were challenged with R.A.F.T. Where students have to choose the Role - Audience - Format - Topic.

8th graders working on qualitative graphs. They created videos of themselves and then graphed what they were doing.

February 2019

7th grade World History students created Chinampas. Chinampas are a type of Mesoamerican agriculture which used small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico.

6th graders studied cave art and then were tasked with creating their own cave art.

6th graders used the Makerspace to create visual representations for their vocabulary words.

Our awesome teachers working at McDonald's in Mt. Holly to help raise money for our school.

6th graders dissected squid in science class. Great partnership with the Schiele Museum.

6th, 7th and 8th graders participated in Tynker coding for Black History Month.

March 2019

Our Robotics team participated in RoboGaston at Forestview High School. This years challenge was growing food in space.

Our 7th grade Duke Tips students participated in an all day program from Gaston Stem Ed about Blackholes.

7th grade World History created an art project representing the Revolutions. Each letter represented something that happened during that Revolution.

8th graders were studying about water quality and how to determine the cleanliness of the water based off of what insects were found in their microhabitat sample.

6th graders learning about Elements in Science. Students created superheros with elemental powers.

We hosted our 1st annual Art Auction. 6th grade students created beautiful pieces of art work that were auctioned off to raise money for our Arts program.

Barbie Zipline part 2. Our 8th graders were learning the Pythagorean Theorem by ziplining Barbie.

6th graders hosted a Wax Museum after finishing their Biography Unit of Study. Can you tell who these students are dressed as?

6th graders created Paper Slide Videos after learning about the layers of the Earth.

The Sharks are Coming!! 8th graders began preparing to dissect sharks. They learned about finding the volume of a sharks stomach in math and then applied that in science class.

6th graders learning about S Waves and P Waves.

6th graders trying their hand at Stop Motion Videos. They created videos on the three types of volcanoes.

Our 6th graders are getting creative with Sketchnoting!

We celebrated the end of the 3rd nine weeks with a donut party. Great snacks and beautiful weather.