November Newsletter

Dear Parents/Guardians/Students: 

On behalf of the Waldwick Middle School faculty and staff, I would like to wish all of you a happy and healthy holiday season.  

I hope that you all have the opportunity to relax and enjoy the company of your family and loved ones.  Hopefully you can use this break to catch your breath, recharge your batteries, and enjoy yourself. 

To provide our students with an enjoyable break, there will be no homework assignments or projects given over the break. 

Be safe, be smart, and be well. 

Happy Holidays! 

Sincerely,

Michael J. Meyers 

Michael J. Meyers 

Principal 

MJM/mh

Math

In Ms. Vesper’s math class, students have been working on fractions and mixed numbers, including dividing fractions by multiplying by their reciprocals. They also learned to multiply and divide mixed numbers and apply these skills to real-world situations. After Thanksgiving Break, the class will begin working with decimals, focusing on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing them.

In Mrs. Serabian-Fitzgerald’s and Mrs. O’Brien’s classes, students have been learning strategies for multiplying and dividing fractions and mixed numbers. They practiced converting mixed numbers to improper fractions and simplifying results, preparing them for solving real-life problems.

In Mrs. Serabian-Fitzgerald’s period 1 class, students recently completed Unit 1 skills and moved on to prerequisite skills for Unit 2, including reducing fractions, converting between mixed numbers and improper fractions, and adding/subtracting fractions with like denominators. Students demonstrated their knowledge through class activities, a color-by-number project, and a quiz.

Math Honors

Students completed Chapter 2, which focused on fractions and decimals. They practiced dividing fractions by multiplying by the reciprocal and applied this skill to solve problems. After Thanksgiving Break, they will begin Chapter 3 on proportions.

Earth Science

Students in Mrs. Maul and Ms. D’Amato’s science classes are wrapping up their space unit. Students have been learning about what causes the seasons. They have been reading about how the Earth’s tilt and the amount of direct sunlight influence when we have different seasons. This is a strong segue into our next unit which is weather.

Students in Mrs. Presinzano’s Life Science classes have been studying symbiotic, competitive, and predator relationships in which living things interact in the natural world, and how species populations can change over time, but ultimately rebalance (without outside interference, of course!) 

Reading

Mrs. Del Piano’s and Ms. Gallagher's classes just finished their nonfiction bootcamp unit. Students made various projects including cooking videos, infographics, games, and dioramas. They are now beginning their short story unit and are studying point of view, tone, mood, and characterization.

In Mrs. Serabian-Fitzgerald’s Language Arts class, students have been investigating the structure of an essay. To help narrow down a topic for their first essay, students created an "All About Me" Canva poster and answered all about me questions. After deciding on a topic to better understand the purpose of a thesis, students learned a song to help them remember as well as arm movements to help better understand the structure of an introduction and conclusion. To demonstrate their knowledge, students completed a quiz and started writing their own personal essays.

In Ms. Sisco’s Language Arts class, students have continued to practice grammar, spelling, and writing skills through IXL. Additionally, students have completed Unit 3 of Vocabulary and will be moving on to Unit 4 of Vocabulary in December. We also practiced using the website Canva to create an All About Me page. This is the prerequisite for all students writing their Personal Essays. Students have also continued to journal throughout the month of November. In December, we are looking forward to practicing more IXL skills, starting our next Vocabulary Unit, and lastly, writing and editing Personal Essays. 

Enrichment

Students have been studying the importance of being a good citizen and productive member of society. Specifically, we have been discussing the importance of voting and how voter turnout can impact elections (ways to increase voter turnout were also discussed). Students completed an in-class persuasive writing assignment on whether voting should be mandatory in the United States. Students chose a position and had to defend it with specific reasons from various documents read in class. As a culminating activity for our Citizenship unit students chose a person from their own lives who has contributed to their community. They interviewed the person, wrote a speech, and created an award to honor that individual. Students gave their speeches in front of the class at the end of the month.

Global Studies

In Global Studies, students have started to study the wonders of archaeology. Classes have completed a wide variety of assignments to better understand how archaeological discoveries have enhanced our understanding of history and prehistory. Students conducted minor research on famous discoveries and watched documentaries on topics of interest from the world of archaeology. Other activities included analyzing artifacts, coins, and prehistoric tools and even observing real archaeological sites. Finally, to better connect archaeological discoveries to our last unit on geography, students are currently viewing where in the world certain discoveries and sites have been discovered on the world map. Yes sir, things are really starting to heat up in Global Studies!

Spanish

Students began with the Spanish alphabet and had a quiz on it. They also learned about greetings and several expressions related to greetings and farewells. We are progressing into learning numbers from zero to a million. Students will complete various practice activities on numbers. Students are showing a good understanding of these topics so far.

French

Madame Ralston’s class can count to 20 and recite the alphabet and spell words! They also can recognize classroom objects and colors. They are so eager and excited to learn. Toujours un plaisir!

Stage & Sound

Students are starting new cycles classes this month with the new marking period. In Stage and Sound, students will begin to learn about music by creating their own melodies on notation and various software programs through MusicFirst.

Art Appreciation

In sixth-grade Art Appreciation, we started off the marking period by creating Zentangle Name Tags. Students were asked to create their names in block or bubble letters and add fancy patterns to each letter focusing on their use of lines. Once completed they added color that enhanced their patterns. For our next project, we will be working with clay!

Pre-Algebra Apps

In Mrs. O'Brien's Pre-Algebra class, students have been enthusiastically diving into the world of equations. Students are tackling the challenges of balancing equations and finding solutions. Students will then use the skills learned in this chapter and apply them to solving inequalities. In Pre-Algebra Honors, students are on the cusp of wrapping up their unit on solving inequalities. Students have learned how to solve one-step, two-step, and multi-step inequalities and have also expanded their knowledge to include compound and absolute value inequalities. In the next unit they will be jumping into ratios and proportions.

In Mrs. Brennecke’s Pre-Algebra class, students have been introduced to solving equations. Students have learned how to solve an equation using inverse operations. Additionally, students have been modeling real-world situations using equations. Soon, we will be applying these same skills to solving inequalities.

Mr. Kelly’s Pre-Algebra class spent the month of November learning about rational numbers. They investigated how they were similar to and different from integers. They learned how to convert fractions to decimals and decimals to fractions. These skills helped when practicing how to compare and order sets of numbers in different forms. Once they understood those concepts, the students moved on to learn the rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing (Keep, Change, Flip!) rational numbers. The class practiced these skills and learned how to apply them to real-world situations, given that decimals and fractions are so prevalent in everyday life. Next up are expressions and equations!

Life Science

Ms. Runz’s Life Science classes continued our unit on Ecology and the Interdependence of Life by learning about biodiversity, human impact on the environment, the effects of invasive species, and endangered species. At the beginning of the month, students completed a biodiversity lab, in which students went outside and collected data on the number of plant and animal species in our WMS woods ecosystem. Students were tasked with analyzing whether the WMS woods ecosystem is biodiverse, based on the data they collected and then calculating the biodiversity index. We ended our Ecology Unit by talking about the carbon cycle as well as analyzing human impact on the environment, which included discussions on invasive species. To further discuss invasive species, students completed a hands-on lab in which students worked in groups to investigate the effects of the Lionfish as an invasive species on a specific ecosystem. Students also completed a project on an endangered species, where students researched a species of their choice using their knowledge of Ecology and worked together as a group to create a recovery plan for their endangered species. We look forward to beginning to learn about cells after Thanksgiving Break.

Reading

This November, Ms. Magner's classes began to explore Linda Sue Park's A Long Walk to Water, a novel set in Sudan that intertwines the true story of Salva Dut, a boy displaced during the Second Sudanese Civil War, with the fictional tale of Nya, a girl fetching water daily for her family. Students analyzed how the historical and cultural contexts shaped the characters’ decisions and the plot, identifying themes of resilience and survival while using textual evidence to deepen their understanding. By comparing the characters’ perspectives, making inferences, and connecting the story’s context to its themes, students gained insights into the setting, character choices, and global issues, building their skills in literary analysis.

Mr. Kelly’s Reading class began the month of November learning about a new form of fiction: Drama.  The class examined what makes drama unique when compared to the other forms of fiction (novels, short stories, etc.). The class read the classic murder mystery play, Sorry, Wrong Number.  They examined the impact the elements of drama had on the story and debated whether the story would be the same if it were just a short story.  The students then explored how nonfiction can be presented across different genres by listening to the old-time radio play version and watching clips from the Hollywood movie version of Sorry, Wrong Number. Using the three genres as the jumping-off point, the students engaged in discussions of which version was most effective at conveying the plot, theme, and characterizations from the story.

Additionally, the students presented their Quest community service projects in Reading, which tied into the King Arthur theme in Freak the Mighty. They all did an excellent job with their choice of good deeds and with their presentations.  More importantly, the students said that they enjoyed the experience and that they liked doing something good for someone else.

Ms. Sutter’s Reading class has moved on to their nonfiction bootcamp. Students are learning the components of a nonfiction text and have selected their first book for the unit. Together with Mrs. Krysa, the components of nonfiction will be broken down into small manageable tasks that will be built back together by the end of the unit. 

Language Arts

In Mrs. Edreos' classes, students are writing creative narrative endings. Throughout our creative writing units, they've focused on characterization, details, and conflict. Their narratives are filled with descriptive characters, each one created with detail and emotion.  Students also collaborated with partners to brainstorm ideas and then worked individually to write their endings in line with the story's beginning. They are now excited to move forward and explore different perspectives by writing prequels to already-created stories.

In Mrs. Krysa’s Language Arts classes, students analyzed different narratives and identified important textual evidence to support ideas. Students also compared and contrasted characters and identified elements of fiction in the different stories. We ended this month organizing our ideas to compose narrative endings.

Beginning of the US & Civics

In Mr. Immitt’s class, the students are in the Revolutionary War unit. Along with that, they watched the movie 1776 which was also a Broadway play. They discussed the historical accuracy of some scenes against the actual Declaration of Independence. After that, we will be finishing up the Revolutionary War unit and getting ready for the holidays.

Spanish

In Senora’s Barrios's class, we started November by celebrating the Day of the Dead. Students learned about the history and culture of this holiday. Students also compared the differences and similarities between Halloween and this celebration. Students created a paper skull from this lesson. Now, we are ending the month with a Thanksgiving role-play. Students were very enthusiastic about creating props for the role-play. Students performed different family members' roles and described their best friends in Spanish. Students had a blast in this project.

French

Madame Ralston’s class starts every class with a word of the day (mot du jour) and talking about the date and the weather. Currently, we have been working on “er” verbs and reading passages. Students have been learning about school and functional words to speak about school and their classes. They are curious and always come ready to learn!

STEAM

Students were first presented with a problem: An impending asteroid impact! We first learned about the wonderful state of Alabraska…and looked at two kinds of maps. Students brainstormed about how big a hypothetical underground safety cavern would have to be to save all 10 million citizens of Alabraska and where the ideal location would be to start building. We learned about dimensions and made conversions to figure out how much space each citizen would need. Currently, students are in engineering teams and are designing a cardboard structure that will hopefully survive the asteroid impact. Results tbd!

Financial Fitness

Students were introduced to what "financial fitness" means and how important it is to understand in our daily lives. We have now completed our first unit which involves picking a dream career and finding out all the important aspects of it. We researched how to get the career and what aspect of that career appeals to us. We learned about how important it is to start planning now for that dream in the future. We also picked out classroom jobs and understood why the job didn’t cover the rent on our desks. We learn about how different jobs pay different hourly wages.

Art Appreciation

In seventh-grade Art Appreciation, the students are creating clay monsters inspired by the contemporary ceramic artist James DeRosso. Students were asked to design and create a monster using various clay techniques. They are doing a fantastic job, and these monsters will only look better once they are completely finished and painted! 

Exploring Food & Nutrition

Chef Lafferty’s Exploring Food and Nutrition 7 students have started the new marking period off learning about safety and sanitation. Lessons include kitchen safety, safe food handling and storage, equipment identification, proper usage of the equipment, and the importance of communication and teamwork. The students have all practiced proper knife handling and cutting skills and did a great job. 

They’ve started cooking and have made mashed potatoes, popcorn snacks, sweet potato puree, and enjoyed some traditional Thanksgiving treats.

Happy Cooking!

Chef

Algebra

In Mr. Hascup’s AlgebraAapps class, we are finishing up our rigid transformations and graphing section and moving on to similarity and dilations. We will be having our unit test very soon. Our next unit will be on lines and linear equations. This unit will focus on rate of change and graphing lines.

Algebra Honors

In Algebra Honors, we just finished up our unit on lines. We will be moving on to exploring what happens when we have multiple lines and strategies for finding where these lines intersect in our next unit on systems of equations. We will be starting this unit once we return from break!

Algebra Concepts

In Ms. Vesper’s and Mrs. Sutter’s Algebra Concepts class, we are working on Chapter 2 which involves transformation, rotations, translation, and reflections. We are also working on combining the different transformations. In class, we recently did a "Who Done It?" involving these different transformations and finding clues. It was a clue game but in mathematics. When we return from Thanksgiving we will be working on dilations and how that works on the coordinate plane.

Mrs. Del Vecchio’s Math class has been working on Unit 2: Transformations. Students started out with a review of plotting points on a coordinate plane to create images and then moved forward to work on applying their old skills to new transformations on the coordinate plane. We have completed work with translations and reflections and are currently working on rotations.

Physical Science

Ms. Vacchiano’s students finished the Mechanical Energy Unit this month. Students completed the Rubber Band Lab and the Roller Coaster Design Project. These were opportunities for students to show what they have learned so far. In the Rubber Band Lab students were investigating to see if there is a relationship between “angle of launch” and Kinetic Energy. Students made a hypothesis and launched rubber bands at different angles. They collected information about distance and time and were able to calculate speed in order to determine which had the most Kinetic Energy. Students also created a 3D model of their dream roller coaster ride using cardboard toilet paper tubes. They used their knowledge of Kinetic Energy and Potential Energy and Newton’s 3 Laws.

Reading

Ms. McCann’s students are finishing up the Argument Unit where they have been practicing identifying the author’s claim and evaluating the supporting evidence. All of the articles read throughout the unit focus on the complicated topic of “Adulthood” and the ultimate argument “When Do Kids Become Adults?” For the end-of-unit project, students will be using all of the information, evidence, and reasoning presented in the articles and class discussions to synthesize their own claim stating, “Kids become adults when…”

Mrs. Del Vecchio’s Reading class wrapped up our first unit and is now currently working on our argument unit. We have practiced identifying the author’s argument and are working on evaluating the strength of the evidence. We have been reading through articles that focus on “adulthood” and preparing to get ready to argue the topic of “When Do Kids Become Adults?” We are in the beginning stages of starting our argument essay on this topic.

Language Arts

Mr. Smith’s and Ms. Gallagher's classes are currently wrapping up the Argument Unti with a persuasive essay. Throughout this unit, students have learned about how rhetorical appeals, such as logos, ethos, and pathos, can influence and sway a reader. Students also used their knowledge of rhetorical appeals to create a sales pitch for a product that they presented to the class. Lastly, students explored how active and passive voice changes a reader’s or listener’s perspective.

Mrs. Del Vecchio’s Language Arts class is currently in the Argument Writing unit. They are in the beginning stages of writing a formal written review of a topic of their choice. Students will also soon begin crafting a formal argument about a chosen topic relevant to teens. This project, however, will be in the form of a slideshow with graphics and captions to showcase their research supporting their position.

Early World History

In the month of November, Mrs. Turnbull’s Early World History students have been learning about Ancient Egypt. We began the unit by creating a map of Egypt’s geographic features and discussing the importance of the Nile River. We covered the different time periods and spent time on the polytheistic belief system as it relates to mummification and the pyramids. Finally, we wrapped up with a day on Egyptian achievements including hieroglyphics, temples, tombs, and art. The students took their unit test before Thanksgiving break and have since been working on our Ancient India unit!

Spanish

Students in Mrs. Wohlberg’s class continue perfecting their Spanish pronunciation by reading aloud and acting out situations. They will finish reading the novel Tumba and will soon start learning vocabulary for the vacation unit. They are currently doing a great job finishing up their house project and will start to present them next week. They had options of working on an ideal bedroom, recording a video of their house, presenting a house for sale, or creating a tiny house. They will present their project entirely in Spanish to the class!

French

Madame Ralston’s eighth-grade class always starts the period with the word of the day (mot du jour) and locating that word in a sentence. Currently, they are working on the past tense! They will be able to tell stories in the past! They also just did a unit on parties and celebrating. They learned how to plan for a party and what it entails. They finished the unit with dialogues about a specific function they were planning.

Creative Coding

The Creative Coding students started the marking period by designing the personal computer of their dreams using Micro Center’s online PC Builder tool, as well as learning about the fastest-growing technology careers. The students have just started learning the programming language, JavaScript. As they learn more they will be able to creatively design their own unique programs. The students are excitedly anticipating all of the fun programs they will create as they learn more advanced programming concepts and code.

Technology/Manufacturing

In Mr. Blatt’s Technology and Manufacturing classes, students are being introduced to the engineering design process and the impact of technology. They are always looking at how technology and tools impact everyday lives. They are looking at real-life examples of the design process. Students built a simple support for books to keep them one inch off the table. They used morphology charts to brainstorm creating a new soap and wrote marketing about the product.

They are now researching seven resources of technology and teams are designing a Google Slides presentation explaining a technological project. Soon, projects like the one-card-tower will be designed, documented, and built. Later in the class, students will work on engineering drawings and eventually design/build display cases for an art project to apply the design process hands-on.

Art Appreciation

The eighth-grade Art Appreciation class started off the marking period working on graffiti art. The students' goal was to create their names in a graffiti font style, and then add elements to the design that represented them. They did an awesome job!

ESP 6 students are drafting scripts for podcasts they are producing for NPR’s “2025 Student Podcast Challenge.”  Their podcast topics are inspired by our class reading of Stacy McAnulty’s book, Where Are the Aliens?  ESP 7 students just completed testing the water bombs they constructed based on our class reading of Temple Grandin’s book, Calling All Minds.  The students enjoyed constructing their water bombs out of paper and crayon wax.  They had a great time testing their completed projects by filling them with water and making them explode.  The students hypothesized what would occur before testing and enjoyed reviewing what they learned and would try differently if they were to do it again.  ESP 8 students are working in pairs to build wind turbines.  The students have created their initial builds.  Next,  they will experiment using different materials, shapes, and orientations for the blades to maximize the electricity the turbines generate.  ESP 8 students Nicholas Balducci, Amelia Brown, Kylie Byrnes, Jacob Lim, Anisa Park, Camryn Piekarz, Alessandro Stellari, and Leonardo Stellari competed in the November Brain Busters meet at Ho-Ho-Kus Middle School.  The students enjoyed testing their knowledge of academic trivia against teams of students from Ridgewood, Cresskill, and Ho-Ho-Kus and look forward to competing again soon!

Chorus students are very excited about their upcoming Winter Concert, which will take place on December 10th at 7:00 PM. Be on the lookout for a detailed email from Mrs. Serwin regarding concert protocol and dress code. We are looking forward to singing some wonderful winter and holiday music!

Band students have been hard at work preparing for the upcoming Winter Concert on Tuesday, December 10, at 7:00 PM! Recently, all band students participated in “sectional” rehearsals, as shown below.

Mr. Laccitiello’s and Ms. Royston’s Physical Education classes started the marking period with a team handball unit. Students are eagerly awaiting our Pickleball unit, which begins right after the Thanksgiving recess.

Art Club

To finish up this year's Fall Art Club, the students created paintings that looked like glowing neon signs.