NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2008
October
● November: Save the Date: ·
9/26 –
Kaynor/Wilcox Visit 10am ·
9/30 –
Picture Day for TMS students – Grade 6 ·
10/1 – Picture
Day for TMS students – Grade 7 ·
10/2 – Picture
Day for TMS students – Grade 8 ·
10/3 – Life
Skills Class to ·
10/6 – BOE
Meeting @ Tyrrell 7:30PM ·
10/7 – T.M.S.
Open House for parents with the last names
A– L from 6 – 9PM ·
10/9 – Project
Explore Gr.8 - FDR ·
10/10 – Gr. 8
– ·
10/13 – No
School ·
10/15-17 –
Mile Run @ W.H.S. ·
10/16 – T.M.S.
Open House for parents with the last names
M– Z from 6 – 9PM ·
10/20 – BOE
Meeting @ Wakelee ·
10/21 – Bus
Driver Appreciation Day ·
10/28 – TMS
PTO Meeting 7PM OPEN
HOUSE DATES: October 7th – A-L 6th Gr. 6:00 -8:00 PM 7th Gr. 7:00– 9:00 PM 8th Gr. 6:30 -8:30 PM October 16th – M-Z 6th Gr. 7:00 -9:00 PM 7th Gr. 6:30– 8:30 PM 8th
Gr. 6:00 -8:00 PM
Platinum Team News
The Platinum Team would like to extend a warm welcome to parents and to
students as they begin their middle school career. We look forward to getting to know all of
you. We have included some information to help make your child’s transition to
middle school as smooth as possible.
Please ask your child who they have for their academic subjects, as some
students may have a teacher on the Diamond Team.
The Assignment Pad in middle school is extremely important. Without it, even the most organized 6th grader may have trouble
keeping track of their work, projects, etc.
Below is a piece on the usage of the Assignment Pad in middle school:
The Assignment Pad in Middle
School
Tips for students:
Ø Set up your planner the week
before. Draw lines and label your classes in order.
Ø Write down EXACTLY what the teacher has
written on the assignment board.
Ø Use the monthly calendar to plan out
long term assignments. Don’t wait to do the whole thing.
Ø Check off each assignment as it is completed
Tips for Parents/ Guardians:
The natural consequence of
not using the assignment pad for students is not having materials or
assignments for class on time. This will affect your child’s grade in a
negative way. Many students, especially 6th graders new to
TMS, do not see this consequence until it is late in the marking period. The pad can also be used as a great means of
communication between school and home, and a way for you to know what is going
on in school (test, quizzes, projects, etc…). Here are some tips to help your
child at home:
Ø Ask your child to show you their assignment pad every
night.
Ø Be sure that there is something written in each subject area of the pad—even if it is completed in school, the assignment should be written in or if there is none, “none” or “no homework” should be written in.
Ø Make sure you add long term projects to the family calendar and work on it a little each night.
Ø Praise your child and tell them how responsible they
are for using this tool appropriately everyday.
Study Hall in Middle School
If your
child has a study hall…
Ø At times, students are more concerned with getting
their work done rather than the quality of the work they are producing. Tell your child to bring home their work from
study hall so you can check it over. The
quality of work students produce in study hall is not always as good as the
quality they produce when knowing they must show it to a parent or guardian
before handing it in. This early in the
year you know the quality of work your child can produce better than his or her
teachers. If you believe your child rushed
through their work and the work is not up to the standard you have seen in the
past, have them redo their work. They
will learn quickly that quality is important.
Continued – Platinum Team
The Platinum Team Teachers look forward to working with your child throughout the year and hopefully meeting you at Open House!
Mrs. Bove-Virr – Science
Mrs. Falcigno – Social Studies
Mr. Goldstone – Math
Mrs. Jasulavic – Special Education
Mrs. Rosa – Reading/Writing
Mrs. Tedesco – Reading/Writing (Team Leader)
Diamond Team Update
The Diamond Team would like to officially welcome all of the
incoming 6th graders and their parents to
Our first 6th grade field trip of the year to YMCA Camp Mataucha was a wonderful success (except for the bus delay). Students participated in a series of team building activities and were able to learn more about their fellow classmates and appreciate others’ differences.
Joe Mucciacciaro is cheered on by his team as Alicia McWeeney & Britt Kennedy show off
he swings across an imaginary peanut butter pit. their team work as they complete a money scavenger hunt on the beach.
A number of incentive programs are offered throughout the school year. One of the most important is our “Team Read” program. Students were given reading logs that are to be signed by parents as they finish a book. Students will have an opportunity to reach four different levels, depending upon the number of pages they complete each marking period.
Continued Diamond Team
|
Level of Achievement |
# of Pages Read per Term |
Reward |
|
JV Reader |
100-399 pages |
Pencil and Bookmark |
|
Varsity Reader |
400-799 pages |
Jewel Card |
|
All Star Reader |
800-1,199 pages |
Ice Cream Ticket |
|
Reading Hall of Fame |
1,200+ pages |
Special Activity |
Respect and responsibility are stressed in 6th grade. Students will earn a sticker for the week if they maintain appropriate behavior and attend class with all of the necessary materials including their homework. At the end of each week, students earning a sticker will be given a Diamond Dollar to use to purchase school supplies and other items monthly. Students who are missing assignments will bring home a homework slip to be signed and returned with their completed work. Please help us make homework a priority. Again, the Diamond team would like to welcome all incoming 6th graders to Tyrrell. We look forward to a wonderful school year.
Language Arts & Co-Team Leaders: Mrs. Mascetti-Johnson and Mrs. Nicol
Math: Mrs. Cox Social Studies: Mrs. Garbus
Science: Mr. Jones Special Education: Mrs. Tassinari
Granite
Team
Echoing the school wide theme “Tyrrell Middle School
ROCKS”, the seventh grade Granite Team is laying the foundation for a rock
solid year. As the school year begins we
will be focusing on the basics of good study habits and organizational
skills. Our students will learn to
utilize their planners, binders, and their time to effectively manage their
homework responsibilities. We ask that
parents and guardians support their child’s efforts as they move toward
academic independence.
We are looking forward to a very exciting year and some of the highlights include: writing, illustrating, and publishing children’s books, raising brown trout from eggs, and some major field trips and activities in the spring. More information about special events and activities will be forth coming.
Subject News
In Social Studies the students are studying the history and geography
of ancient peoples. The Math classes just finished reviewing
the summer packet and moved on to place value and rounding. Writing
classes have been working on their Eye Witness Accounts and improving their
vocabulary.
MARBLE TEAM
In science, students will be working on using the appropriate tools and techniques used by scientists for scientific investigations. This is commonly called process skills. Students will learn about things such as lab safety, the scientific method, the metric system, the different types of measurement, observations vs. inferences, and graphing. They will also discover how the scientific method can be used to solve everyday problems. These skills are essential and will be reinforced throughout the year.
Marble team students have been very busy in their reading classes. We started the year by completing open-ended questions based on the summer reading books. Students then moved on to learn about the structure of a short story and its elements – setting, characters, conflict, events, climax, and resolution. For our first short story, we read “Rikki-tikki-tavi” by Rudyard Kipling. While reading this story, students used a reading strategy called “Dialoguing with the text”. This strategy requires students to question, analyze, and react to what they’re reading thus making reading an “active” experience. This is a strategy that we will continue to use throughout the year. We will soon be working on creating a non-fiction brochure based on “Rikki-tikki-tavi” before moving onto our next short story titled “Song of the Trees” by Mildred Taylor.
In the beginning of the school year CMT Summer packets were collected from all Marble team students. Classes are currently working on descriptive writing. The goal is to learn everything we can about writing; about purposes, techniques, ideas, feelings, themselves, their worlds, and real-world application. In class, students work on daily journal prompts allowing students to write about things that interest them, challenge them, and allow them to think about how they connect to the world. Students read “A Hopi Snake Ceremony” and a “Winter Memory” and used them as models for descriptive writing. Students will be working on writing their own personal account of an event using descriptive language focusing on figurative language and elaboration.
Marble Team math students have been working on concepts including place value, powers of ten, the metric system, the order of operations and integers. Students have been pre-assessed to see how much information they already know about this material and are then assessed after they have been taught to see how much they have learned. Students will continue to be pre-assessed and reassessed throughout the year on various topics.
This has been a very exciting month of social studies. We kicked off the year with a review unit covering the five themes of social studies and geography. The second half of the month is focused on the study of the earliest human beings during the Stone Age. In order to make this history “come alive,” the students will be participating in a “Stone Age Diet.” Over a two week period, the students will attempt to eat foods similar to what people ate during the Stone Age. At the end of their diet, they will write a page response evaluating the difficulties of following a diet that forbids them to eat their favorite snacks and fast foods. In addition to this project, the students will be studying characteristics of early farmers and hunters/gatherers. The final assignment of the month is a five paragraph persuasive essay where the students will argue whether it was better to be a farmer or hunter/gatherer during the Stone Age.
Pearl Team
In social studies, the Pearl Team has started off the year by tracking the migrations of early man and examining the cultures of the Native American people. Students have revisited some prior knowledge from seventh grade about the Renaissance and the inventions of the time to help better understand the push for exploration and the competition between European nations that resulted from the new technology. The clash of cultures as Old and New Worlds collide will be studied and we will use excerpts of Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, & Steel, to look at the encounter of Pizarro and the Inca to realize more deeply the impact that the contact between the two worlds had on each of its inhabitants. Coming soon—the original 13 colonies and Colonial Day!
The Pearl Team reading and writing classes have had a great start to the school year. During this first quarter, reading classes are concentrating on reading and interpreting short stories. Students have been introduced to the elements of fiction and have applied them to the first two stories, “Raymond’s Run” and “Broken Chain.” Writing classes have also been off to a busy start. So far students have been introduced to two new units of vocabulary, received lessons reinforcing the parts of speech, and have written their first persuasive prompt. The Pearl Team language arts teachers are looking forward to a productive year in both reading and writing.
In science, students are working on their process unit and the chemistry portion of the course. This includes lab experiments and class/group activities where students collect and graph data, measure and convert measures using the metric system, and use proper science tools and equipment.
The Pearl Team math students are off to a great start. Students have demonstrated sound understandings of basic skills including their multiplication tables which will help reduce challenges to acquiring new content. In Pre-Algebra, students have been working hard on the fundamentals of computations with positive and negative numbers along with following the rules of order of operations (PEMDAS). Pre-Algebra students will soon be learning the basics of solving equations.
Honors Algebra I students began the year with a review of the fundamentals of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions along with evaluating expressions according to order of operations. It is essential for students to be proficient in these foundations in order to succeed in algebra. In addition, students have been learning to translate word problems into equations containing a variable. I have been working to establish sound habits in showing one’s work and solving problems in a step-by-step manner. The complexity of the course will increase in the coming weeks as we learn the distributive property.
Onyx Team
Welcome to the 8th grade Onyx Team! The teachers comprising the Onyx Team are: Lisa Roman (team leader and science), Scott Blacker (social studies), Marian Boisvert (math), Nicole Rutledge and Mike Terry (language arts), and Kelly Carroll (special education). This month we have been getting settled into the new school year. In science, students are working on their process unit and the chemistry portion of the course. This includes lab experiments and class/group activities where students collect and graph data, measure and convert measures using
Continued Onyx Team
the metric system, and use proper science tools and
equipment. The social studies curriculum
featured a grade-wide history lesson on the events of September 11, 2001. In addition, the students have begun studying
the European explorations of the
Silver Team
Physical Education:
All students in 6th, 7th, and 8th
grade classes are doing fitness units to prepare them for the upcoming
Connecticut State Physical Fitness tests that will be administered in October.
The four parts of the test include: sit
and reach, push-ups, curl-ups, and the mile run. Students are allowed to bring
water bottles outside on the day of the mile run test. 6th and 8th
grade students will do the mile run test at the
Art:
6th grade - The focus for this semester is contour drawing, which is just another term for line drawing. The emphasis is placed on drawing what you see, rather than what you think you see. This precise and patient process leads to more accurate drawing.
7th grade - Students have been studying color theory, which includes thoughts on existing colors, mixing new colors, and effective color usage. The overall goal is to heighten students' visual awareness, and to be able to not only recognize colors, but also to recognize relationships between colors.
8th grade - Art critiquing has been the primary area of focus thus far. A critique is an opportunity to look at art and then respond to that art. Once students start to look closely, they begin to reveal hidden meanings, inner thoughts, and interpretive ideas. A simple drawing now becomes so much more.
Chorus:
All of our wonderful Tyrrell singers are already beginning to gear up for our winter performance! This year’s concert will be on Thursday, December 18 (snow date Monday, December 22) Mark your calendars! The students already sound terrific and are a very enthusiastic group!
General Music:
6th grade students have been Learning about
Continued Silver Team
which will be coming home soon! Both 7th and 8th graders have been studying African culture and music, performing complex rhythm ensembles on drums and other percussion instruments in class.
World Language News
The World Language Department is pleased to welcome three
new faculty members to the 2008-2009 school year. Ms. Christine Manka joins us
in teaching Grade 8 Spanish. Ms. Manka comes to us from the
Students of seventh grade Spanish already know basic greetings, classroom directions and questions and the alphabet. Our students are extremely enthusiastic and they enjoy performing skits in class. We recently played Simón dice (Simon says) using classroom directions. Ask your child to converse with you in Spanish and you will be surprised at what he or she has already learned! Mrs. Parkosewich requires that parents sign off on oral homework assignments.
In eighth grade, students have been reviewing greetings and how to talk about what they have in their rooms. They have already written descriptive paragraphs, taken surveys on their likes and dislikes and reviewed verb conjugation. Students have been reviewing classroom phrases and greetings. They chose a Spanish name, reviewed questions and responses about themselves, and wrote a letter to a pen pal. They practiced asking and responding to questions with partners. They reviewed where they are from, their birthdays and age, colors, numbers, people in their family, likes and dislikes, and have been describing characteristics about themselves. The students have been practicing vocabulary through movement. They then created an “escudo” or family crest. They put a lot of work into their escudos. The eighth graders are doing a fantastic job in Spanish!
The grade six and seven students of Chinese have been learning basic greetings, the phonetics of Chinese pronunciation and they have been learning to write the Chinese characters. Students are being introduced to Chinese culture also. They have learned about Fuwa, the Five Mascots of the Olympics as well as about the Moon Festival which takes place in the middle of the eighth month.
Days which teachers are available to give students extra help are:
Mrs. Daniels – Wednesdays
Mrs. Parkosewich - Thursdays
Ms. Manka is available any day after school. The student needs to make an appointment with me the day before he/she would like to stay after for extra help.
Student Council
October
Newsletter
Advisor: Meghan Azzara
Tyrrell Middle School Student Council is extremely excited
about the upcoming school year. In
October, the student council will sell Halloween pencil grams during all lunch
waves. Students can purchase the pencil
grams for friends, teachers, or themselves for fifty cents on the week of
October 20-24. All proceeds will go to
UNICEF’s annual Trick-or-Treat Drive.
UNICEF, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund, is a non-profit
organization that raises money for more than 150 countries and territories,
helping to save, protect, and improve the lives of children around the world
through immunizations, education, health care, nutrition, clean water, and
sanitation. We encourage all students to
participate is this fundraiser where they can help make a difference in the
lives of other children around the world.
Additionally, student council volunteers will sell raffle
tickets at both October Open House evenings.
Two twenty-five dollar gift certificates will be raffled off during
morning announcements to the winning student whose parent(s) generously
supported the Tyrrell Middle School Student Council.
The girls’ soccer team is working hard this season and shaping up to be a competitive group! They have won their first game and look forward to playing eleven more. If you would like to come to a game and need a schedule, just ask Coach Kotwicki. GO TEAM! Listed here are the names of our players:
|
NAME |
GRADE |
||
|
Jess Guertin |
8 |
Morgan Gigliotti |
7 |
|
Sarah Levins |
8 |
Kaelee Collins |
7 |
|
Rachel Levesque |
8 |
Nicole Mulhall |
7 |
|
Hayley Fehrs |
8 |
Chelsea Houlihan |
7 |
|
Kimberly Szabo |
8 |
Maggie Milton |
7 |
|
Leah McGovern |
8 |
Lacie Howard |
7 |
|
Jess Pulford |
8 |
|
6 |
|
Katie Harpin |
8 |
Helena Swanson |
6 |
|
Maggie Forte |
8 |
Isabella Inglese |
6 |
|
Kerry Hager |
8 |
Madison Forrest |
6 |
ROOM 100
Room 100 is learning American Sign
Language through a video series entitled Signing Times.
Here are students showing some favorite signs in their Period 1 Communication
class.
When: October 6th
– 17th
Where:
Times: 8:00am – 2:00pm
Can’t make it during the day,
stop by during open house
nights
Student and
Adult Titles
will be
available
NEW THIS
YEAR!
Parents, you
will have the opportunity to purchase a book for your child’s classroom
library.
HELP US ADD
TO OUR CLASSROOM COLLECTIONS
SEE YOU AT
THE FAIR!
WOLCOTT PUBLIC SCHOOLS WEBSITE
Most information that is pertinent to
TYRRELL MIDDLE SCHOOL GUIDANCE
September 2008
Greetings Parents,
The counselors at
This year we will be developing a student portfolio
in conjunction with
We will be running various groups throughout the
school year. Some of these groups will
concentrate on Social Skills, Bereavement, Divorce, Study Skills, etc. These groups meet once per week and usually
last 5- 6 weeks.
We meet with students on an individual basis as
needed. Referrals are taken from
teachers, self or parents. We work
closely with outside agencies and resources. There will also be times we will
be meeting with students in large group settings to cover various topics such
as; internet safety, student interests’ portfolio, decision making, etc.
Please know we are available
to answer any questions or concerns you may have or to meet with you. Feel free to call us any time at
879-8151.
The Guidance Department
Mrs.
(ext. 613)
(ext. 614)
SCHOOL BUS
Every child is assigned one seat on one bus. Students are not permitted to ride other
buses. If students need to arrive at
alternate locations in the afternoon or get on the bus at alternate locations
in the morning parents are responsible for providing those modifications. Please understand that the safety of our
students is our prime concern.
Parent/Teacher
Conferences
Tuesday, October 7th: A-L Thursday,
October 16th: M-Z
Grade Level
Times
Grade Level Times
Grade Six 6:00
P.M. – 8:00 P.M. Grade Six 7:00 P.M. – 9:00 P.M.
Grade Seven 7:00
P.M. – 9:00 P.M. Grade
Seven 6:30 P.M. – 8:30 P.M.
Grade Eight 6:30
P.M. – 8:30 P.M. Grade
Eight 6:00 P.M. – 8:00 P.M.
Unified Arts, and World Language will meet from 6:30 –
8:30 P.M. both nights.
Historical Society