Team Notes:
We have had a wonderful week getting to know your students! They have done a FIN-tastic job of adjusting to life as a middle schooler and as a 7-O Shark! Thank you all for entrusting them to us. In the coming weeks, will be spending more time building relationships, letting them know expectations for classes, and learning more about each student. Please know that we are happy to answer questions and address concerns; our contact information is at the end of this message.
Each week, we will try to provide you with a brief recap of the past week's highlights and foreshadow what may be coming up. This will go out as an email using the messenger feature of Infinite Campus. (If you have two children on the team, you may receive this twice; there's not a quick fix for this. My apologies.) We will also post it on our blog.
Speaking of our blog, you can check it out at http://oms7-osharks.blogspot.com/. We plan to use this as the place we post homework daily, pictures periodically and any messages/information that we want to get out to you.
Students got a lot of information about team policies, etc this week. We will continue to teach expectations and discuss how things work in Hawaii 7-O in the next few weeks. There will be handouts coming home with them and some will need to be returned. One of them, the parent information sheet, went home in Geography class. We ask that parents/guardians take a few minutes to tell us about your student. The sheet is double sided so that we can get more than one perspective on a child. If you need additional sheets, we can email or send them home. Thanks for your help in getting to know our students!
The Dane County Literacy Run is coming up on Sunday, September 22. OMS has had the largest team for the last two years and therefore, has won $1000 to be used to purchase library books. This has become a bit of an OMS Legacy as we promote this event as a way to give back to the community. Last year, almost 200 students, parents, families, and friends joined our team for the 5K run, 10K run or 5K walk. This downtown event draws thousands from the Madison area; even Bucky and the UW Marching Band are on hand! Although we organize a team, we are not 'official' chaperones and there is not transportation from OMS. Rather, most students carpool with a parent who has decided to participate or who waits downtown somewhere for the kids to participate. Forms went home with interested students and more are available. Every participant needs to complete a form. Please contact Laura Stoller at lms3@oregonsd.net with questions. We hope you'll join us!
We hope that we will see many of you Open House as it is a great time to answer questions. Open House is this Monday, September 9, 6-730pm. We would love to meet the JAW-some parents of our students. (Shark jokes courtesy of Mrs. Van!)
English (Totzke): This week we have spent some time getting to know each other and the class itself! We brainstormed our class expectations together, so the students hopefully feel some ownership in the class. We also went back to the basics of grammar to remind kids of the parts of a sentence. Our next challenge is to look at sentences that look like they could be complete sentences, but actually aren't. Next week, we will continue to look at sentences as well as start our first unit: short stories! I look forward to meeting you and working with your kids! Happy Reading!
English (Rigell): https://sites.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/oms-enriched-english/home/homework
FACE: We have started off this week getting to know each other and the school. Our first unit in FACE will be communication. It is very fun to see what classes are able to get a 5 work message around a telephone circle of 30 kids. We will be closing this week off with a lesson on listening. I have really enjoyed getting to know your kids.
Geography (Stoller): This was a great week to get to know one another! Students took a pre-assessment so I could get an idea of what skills and knowledge already exist and where we need to focus our learning. Students began to find out a little bit more specifically how things work in Geography class. The first summative assessment, creating a Dream Classroom was explained today and is due next Thursday, September 12. Ask your child what makes his/her classroom so special! Atlas orders are due next Tuesday, Sept 10 for anyone interested. Next week, students will have a geography syllabus to bring home and have signed. Students will also be signing up to present a current event one time this quarter and may be scheduled as early as next week. Feel free to ask your student the date that he/she has to present! Finally, we will be taking some time to discuss the events of 9-11. Your student will likely be coming to you to ask some questions about your recollection of that day. It's the first of many tough topics and issues we address as part of our study of the world.
Geography (Howe): We've had a great first week here in Geography. We've worked hard on learning class room expectations, as well as team building and discussion activities to get to know each other. We also went through our Current Event process and even did a practice event so that we're comfortable with the process going forward!
Math (Stauss): During the first week of school, students in math focused on getting to know each other while participating in a number of team building activities. Students will regularly work together in groups throughout the year as they learn about content, and establishing successful team behaviors is integral to their success. Next week we will begin to cover different shapes and their characteristics which include accurately measuring and predicting angle measures.
Math (Krueger): See separate IC email and blog post
Science (van Steenderen): Last year the Oregon School District adopted the Next Generation Science Standards written by NSTA. The Middle School Standards were separated by grade level (6, 7, 8) and teachers are now working on implementation. The subject matter has changed somewhat but more importantly the bar has been raised for student expectations. Our students will be asked to: conduct investigations, develop models, gather and synthesize information, construct scientific explanations, and present arguments. We are excited about this challenging curriculum. Our first unit is the Nature of Science which was new to us last year. We'll be looking at how scientists work, how observations are different than inferences, how scientific knowledge is revised, and how to set up experiments. This unit sets the stage for the rest of the year. The 7-0 student sharks need a composition notebook for class. This will be used to create our own science textbook since we don't have one. 7-0 is looking forward to a "fin-tastic" year!
Science (Howe): This week, the students have been through and learned a lot of necessary, procedural norms for our science classroom. They've learned about why we keep a science notebook, as well as how to set it up and what to put in it. Today, we're learning about sustainability and how OMS is helping in that cause. Students have an assignment to draw their idea of what a scientist is in their "environment." If it isn't finished during class, it will be due Monday so that we can share out.
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Andrew Dolejs (Special Education) - acdolejs@oregonsd.net
Kelly (Eickert) Manzeck (Special Education) – kjmanzeck@oregonsd.net
Alex Howe (Geo and Science) - abhowe@oregonsd.net
Bryan Krueger (Math) - bmkrueger@oregonsd.net
Katie Stauss (Math) – kmstauss@oregonsd.net
Amanda Rigell (English) - akrigell@oregonsd.net
Jeri Shumaker (Tech Tools) - jsh@oregonsd.net
Laura Stoller (Geography) – lms3@oregonsd.net
Caitlyn Duffy (FACE) - cmduffy@oregonsd.net
Tiffany Totzke (English) - tntotzke@oregonsd.net
Debe VanStenderen (Science) – ddv@oregonsd.net
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