Cortland Junior High School
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Junior High February Newsletter
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Upcoming Events
- 2/01 & 2/02 Junior High Musical
- 2/06 Written Round of Cortland Youth Bureau Spelling Bee, 3:30 p.m.
- 2/18-2/22 February Recess, No School for Students
- 2/27 Final Round of Cortland Youth Bureau Spelling Bee, 9:30 a.m.
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Family Engagement Survey
Recently letters were sent sharing information about the district's
Family Engagement Survey.
We hope you received the information about our continuing school improvement efforts and will take a few minutes to share your feedback by completing the 25 question survey. Surveys provide information which we use in the decision making and planning processes as we begin to prepare for the upcoming school year.
The survey will be open through
February 22, 2019
. Your response to the survey is very important.
Please take ten to fifteen minutes and share your ideas, experiences and feedback!
**Paper copies of the survey are also available at your child(ren)'s school. If you prefer to complete the survey on paper, please ask for a copy from the building office.
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Music News
The Junior High Band will be visiting Virgil and Barry Schools this month to perform and share their experiences with being in the junior high band. This trip serves as both a wonderful performance opportunity for the junior high students and the elementary students from those schools that get to play along with the junior high band. It also serves as a recruitment tool to get students excited about signing up for band and orchestra.
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Kindergarten Registration/Screening Dates
Steps to register your child:
- Child must be 5 on or before December 1, 2019. Children who turn 6 before December 1, 2019 must attend school.
- Parents are urged to call (607)-758-4106, prior to April 20, 2019, to make a registration/screening appointment and to receive a pre-registration packet.
- All students must have an appointment prior to the school registration/screening dates listed below!
ALL screenings will take place at Barry Primary School
Current dates for screenings:
- Thursday, June 27th, 2019
- Friday, June 28th, 2019
- Monday, July 1, 2019
There will be a Kindergarten Meet and Greet in the month of May.
- This is an event for parents AND their entering kindergarten student.
- There will be activities for students and students/families will get to meet all of our kindergarten teachers and other staff members
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Your copy should address 3 key questions: Who am I writing for? (Audience) Why should they care? (Benefit) What do I want them to do here? (Call-to-Action)
Create a great offer by adding words like "free" "personalized" "complimentary" or "customized." A sense of urgency often helps readers take an action, so think about inserting phrases like "for a limited time only" or "only 7 remaining!"
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Character Education Awards
The following students were nominated by teachers for demonstrating January's theme of perseverance.
Congratulations to:
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Physical Education Update
The JH girls will begin an Indoor Rec Games unit which will include multiple competitive large group games.
The JH boys will have an introduction to the weight room. They will learn about safety in the weight room and the basics of personal fitness.
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Topics Covered in 7th and 8th Grade Math
Math 7 will be beginning a unit on Probability. We will apply the concepts of the unit to situations that students will encounter throughout the day.
We will also continue to include algebra into all our lessons.
In grade 8 mathematics, we are just beginning a unit on systems of equations. This is one of those units with a lot of practical application! Hopefully kids will see “when they will have to use it” in real life.
Algebra just finished up our study on systems of equations. We are beginning our unit on exponents. We will be learning a whole bunch of mathematical laws.
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Foreign Language News
There will be a French Club meeting after school Thursday Feb. 7th in room# 134 (Mrs. Chapman’s room). We will be making Galettes des Rois. Sign up sheet is posted outside of Mrs. Butler’s room.
French class students will be participating in food preparation demonstrations and presentations this month. Details in Google Class. C’est bon!
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Social Studies Classes Explore Reform Movements
Students just started learning about reform movements in America. My student teacher, Ms. Davin, will start next week and she will be teaching units on Imperialism, World War I, Roaring Twenties, and Great Depression. There will be some great activities planned for these units.
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English News
The 7/8 Applied English class is currently finishing the last chapters of
The Outsiders
. Students have explored characterization, points of view and theme through discussions and reading comprehension activities. Students have worked on RAFT essays (creative writing assignments after being given specific Role, Audience, Format and Topic), Claims (stating their opinion and backing it up with explanations and evidence from the text), and poetry writing (after reading “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Walt Whitman). Our February plans include watching and discussing
The Outsiders
movie after finishing the book and reading our finished poetry out loud in a class Poetry Slam.
8th grade ELA students in Team 4 have just started reading
The Diary of Anne Frank
play. The class explored facts about WWII and Nazi Germany to gain background knowledge necessary to understanding the text. Students are also working on understanding the difference between indirect and direct characterization. Students have been learning to write Cornell notes to help them study this. Independent reading book projects are due February 13th. This project is no longer a homework grade but will be considered a test grade. Students should be done reading a book of their choice by February 6th. Students are to write a short scene with dialogue from two of the characters in the book. Please ask your child about the book they are reading and encourage them to share their scripts with you.
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Scheduling Process
The 2019-20 scheduling process will begin at the start of the new semester. Mrs. Constantino and Mrs. Pomeroy will be visiting classrooms to speak with students about graduation requirements, 9th grade course selections, New Tech High, 9th Grade CTE programming, curriculum guides, 8th grade requirements and 8th grade course selections. Parents are encouraged to contact their school counselor with any questions.
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Students Study Mental and Emotional Health
February begins our unit on Mental and Emotional Health. Students will engage in numerous activities that range from Self-Actualization exercises to developing and practicing coping skills. Officer Reyngoudt will be in to speak on the topic of Emotional Intelligence and we will work on daily journaling exercises in our Emotional Intelligence workbook/journal
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GeoBee Competition
Christian VanPatten won Cortland’s local National Geographic GeoBee.
Christian is a fifth grade student at Parker Elementary that won our district-level Geography Bee on January 24th. The National Geographic Bee is held in more than 11,000 schools around the United States and in the five of the U.S. territories.
Christian edged out, the runner-up, seventh grader Mya Romans in the championship round. Seventh graders Tara Knickerbocker, Griffin Morgan, Rileigh Madden, Ella Starinsky, Matt DeRado and eighth graders Elizabeth Hurd and Emily Marshall were all finalists in the competition.
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8th Grade Science
The 8th grade science class has been on fire lately! This unit is all about heat and students have gotten to try their hands at using Bunsen Burners to show that heat is energy! Everything from dancing snakes to conducting colors, ask a local 8th grader: what’s in their science?
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School lunch is a nutritious &
delicious option!
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Stay Tuned for Our Newsletter Next Month!
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