Dear King Families,

I hope that everyone enjoyed the weekend and the beautiful weather yesterday. As we enter into the third week of school, your student should be settling into norms and school routines. Please remind your student that it is important to be at school on time. The first bell rings at 7:55 and students are tardy if they arrive after 8:00am.

We are excited to introduce you to our new leadership team and to continue to find ways to engage families in our work. Next Wednesday, September 25, from 6:00-7:00pm, we will be hosting a Parent Information Night at school for you to meet our new Assistant Principal, Craig Hanson, and hear about our goals and priorities for this year as well as new Initiatives at school. We will also discuss the many ways you can be involved at King, including volunteering in the classroom, sharing your expertise with students, and helping with King’s Faculty Talent Show and other fundraising efforts.

Matinicus at Camp Hinds with Rippleffect

King Middle School: School-Wide Expectations

Throughout the next few weeks students will be learning our school expectations. We are including these below so that you can discuss them with your student and reinforce them.

• Respect: being thoughtful of the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others
• Responsibility: acting independently and being accountable for your actions as a member of the King community
• Perseverance: trying your best even when things are difficult

Kineo kicked off their expedition "BugMainia!"

We will be highlighting a different expedition in each of the coming newsletters. This week is Kineo's turn!

Kineo's fall expedition is called BugMainia , and it focuses on insects. It is reckoned that some 90% of the estimated 9 million species on Earth belong to the class Insecta. Why are insects important to our ecosystem? What are the benefits and challenges of the interactions between humans and insects? This fall we will be working in concert with Maine Audubon to better understand insects and their place in a healthy ecosystem. We will be joining the work on re-wilding a portion of Deering Oaks, an ongoing project in tandem with Portland Parks and Recreation and Maine Audubon. We will head outdoors in the fall to collect data about the diversity of insects in some healthy habitats around Portland. Students will learn the mathematics of creating a scale copy in math class and draw a scale copy of their insect in art. They will also learn about the benefits and drawbacks of insects in social studies class. In science class they will be studying physical characteristics and life cycles of specific native insects. In Language Arts, students will focus on non-fiction structures and reading strategies and write a piece of informational text. For their final product, students will be creating field guides of insects found in Portland.

This expedition kicked off with guest expert Jon Wallace, who brought along many insects, including a stick bug and a tarantula. Fieldwork took place in four different location in Portland, where students wrote detailed observations of insects and conducted a bug count.

Check Fall Sports Schedules on our website

king.portlandschools.org

Tab under "For Students" -> "Sports and Clubs" -> "Fall Sports Schedules 2019"

Or CLICK THIS LINK

Useful Parent Information