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Weekly News

November 5, 2021

Calendar Items

Announcements

Wednesday, November 10 - Girls Basketball games @ home

Thursday, November 11 - PSAT test for 8th grade students

Your Feedback is Important and Valued!

The WE Support Survey is designed to inform schools and districts about expectations and

perceptions the community has about student learning. This perceptual, anonymous survey

contains about 50 questions, all rated on a Likert scale, and will take approximately 10-15

minutes to complete. The results will help us to better understand our community’s

perceptions of the school experience and their expectations of our school.

The We Support Survey is structured around three main constructs:

Rigor

Relevance

Relationships

A couple of things to keep in mind:

The WE Support Survey takes 10-15 minutes to complete.

Your responses are anonymous, so please answer all questions honestly.

Participation in the survey is voluntary; you can opt-out at any time.

Please try to provide your perceptions and expectations of the school or district overall.

Your input is important to us and highly valued.

Thank you for your time and participation.

To access the WE Support Survey, follow these steps:

1. Go to

www.wesurvey.org

2. Enter the case sensitive password (copy > paste works best): CBV1ABM

3. When all questions have been answered, click

Submit

for your responses to be recorded.

Thank you in advance for completing this survey by November 15, 2021. The insight you

provide will be valuable in our ongoing efforts to improve our learning environment for all.

Math Counts

Math Counts will meet on Monday, November 8th from 3:00-4:00 pm in Mrs. Redlin’s room

(313). Please contact Mrs. Redlin (mredlin@bluevalleyk12.org) with questions.

Please see the attached yer for information about a fun and challenging math competition

hosted by Blue Valley West. This competition is open to all middle school students.

Board Game Club

Want to unplug from screens and play some good ole fashion board games? Interested in

trying out famous games like Risk, Catan, Ticket to Ride, or Blockus? Starting Thursday Nov

11th, Board Game Club will be gathering weekly to learn and play a variety of board games with

fellow students. We meet every Thursday after school from 3:00-5:00 PM in room 305. No sign

up required, come whenever!

Tabletop Roleplaying Game Club

Imagine creating a world completely your own, lled with wondrous environments, unique

societies, interesting characters, and fantastical creatures. Now let your friends step into this

world as mighty heroes, embarking on a journey that is entirely based on their choices. These

are the worlds common in Tabletop Roleplay Games that you can explore with our club that

gathers weekly to discuss, explore, and learn various tabletop RPGs. We meet Fridays after

school from 3:00-4:00 PM in room 305, starting Nov 12th. No sign up required, come

whenever!

Debate Club

Debate club will meet this Wednesday, November 10th, from 3-4 in the library. If you are still

interested in joining, please ll out the Google Form here: tinyurl.com/joinABMSdebate ALL

GRADES WELCOME!!!!!

Musical

Thank you for supporting ROCK OF AGES (Middle School Edition)! We had an excellent run of

shows and we are so proud of the students' work on this production.

PTO News

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN….

ABMS Holiday Bags

Thank you for supporting our ABMS staff! The tradition of Filling

and Decorating a bag is a wonderful way of showing our

appreciation for the Amazing staff at ABMS! Thanks for choosing

to be a part of this event!

What to Do:

more than one bag) Bags will be anonymously assigned to an

ABMS staff member.

Pick up Bag! Your student can pick up your bag(s) in the oce starting Tuesday, November

16th.

Fill your bag! Inside each bag there will be a list of your staff member's favorite things. You

can use this list as a guideline to purchase their favorite things. If your staff member wants to

be surprised, you can ll with whatever you choose, a few examples are, but not limited to: gift

cards, candy, treats, candles, etc. We do ask that you keep the cost between $35-$45.

Decorate! Get creative and decorate your bag! You can get as creative and festive as you'd

like, or you can simply add the gifts and tissue paper. Please make sure the number on the bag

is visible so we can match it to the correct staff member!

Return! Please return your gift-lled, decorated bag to the ABMS oce no later than Thursday,

December 9th!

Thank you so much for choosing to participate in this wonderful tradition to spoil our staff!

If you have any questions, please contact Mary Beth Ravanesi 918-849-0398 or

mbravs@gmail.com - subject line "ABMS Holiday Bags. See the sign up below.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0C49ABAA2DA2F49-abms

If you are interested in a cast and crew professional photo, please ask your student if they got

an order form. They should be returned with money to the ABMS oce the week of Nov. 8-12.

If you have questions, call the photographer at 913-384-9126 about ordering ABMS Rock of

Ages photo.

ABM Spirit Wear

Get you ABMS Spiritwear (Including PE shirts) in time for the holidays! SHOP NOW orders

need to be in by 11/14/2021 (next Saturday) to ensure delivery by winter break!

https://www.bvswden.com/abms

PTO was honored to be able to fulll teacher grants for classroom learning games & supplies,

funds for the Science Olympiad team, science website memberships, headphones, student

whiteboards, and coding robots. It is thanks to the PTO memberships and Invest donations

that these grants are made PAWS-IBLE!!

Blue Valley Educational Foundation (BVEF) is holding their 10th Anniversary Battle of the

Bands at RC's Restaurant & Lounge on February 26, 2022. This is an adult night out and 5

parent former champion bands will be performing for Best Blue Valley Band! This event raises

money to support district-wide music programs.

Sponsorships are available now, see yer for information and pledge form. Get your business

or a group of friends to sponsor or reserve a table for the night.

Donations are being collected for silent auction baskets. ABMS will be donating a basket

(min. $200 value), we are requesting gift cards to local restaurants or entertainment. If you

have connections to local establishments and could get a gift card donated, please email

Season Lentz at seasontitus@hotmail.com for Non-Prot Tax ID and collection arrangements.

Season is also your go-to person if you have any questions.

SAVE THE DATE!!

WOLVERINE NIGHT (AKA WAN) IS 1/28/2022. MORE DETAILS TO COME!

6th Grade News

pdf

Grant Purchases.pdf

Download

381.6 KB

pdf

Sponsorship package for Battle of the Bands form.pdf

Download

722.2 KB

pdf

ABMS PTO Membership Form 2021-2022.pdf

Download

124.7 KB

ELA:

Students nished the Newspaper Writing project this week. The nal group newspapers turned

out great - students really put on their journalism hats and creative air for this project!

6thgrade will be reading a new novel this quarter that is different from the one announced a

couple weeks ago We are excited that one of the newly approved district novels arrived from

7th Grade News

back order, and we are planning to read this new book as our second quarter class novel. The

title is

Amal Unbound

by Aisha Saeed. We will begin reading this book in class next week.

Math:

Redlin and Ptacek classes nished Unit 2 this week and will start Unit 3 on Monday. Unit 3

learning targets will include topics around ratios and unit rates. Stewart’s math classes will

test over Unit 2 on Monday, November 8th. Students will be completing a unit review in class

that can be used to study over the weekend.

Science:

We will be reviewing for our quiz in Astronomy. Students need to know rotation, revolution,

seasons, lunar phases and eclipses. A study guide will be created. Students can review their

Astronomy Digital notebook to prepare. Quiz will be Thursday. The Astronomy notebook is

due Friday.

Social Studies:

We spent the week nishing up ancient Egypt by playing Imhotep, an Egyptian themed game

that covers many of the topics we studied over the last few weeks. Next week we will be

started out our long journey along the Silk Road. Ask your child where they will be starting

their journey. Will it be ancient China, ancient India, or the Mediterranean region?

ELA:

Students are nishing up the reading of

A Christmas Carol

. They will now use their writing

expertise to analyze how the author used or altered history when writing this ctional text. In

addition, they are also watching the character of Scrooge transform as a dynamic character

and explaining that growth in writing.

Math:

We ended this week with an assessment over the distributive property and combining like

terms! Next week, we will review solving one-step equations (from 6th grade), and see how we

can apply what we know to 2-step equations!

Science:

Come one, come all, to the Aubry Bend Anatomy Arcade! Boy did Cain get us inspired to start

our arcade research!

Students have begun working in groups to research human body systems and how they

interact with each other. Over the next several weeks, they’ll be designing and engineering

arcade games out of recyclables to demonstrate and teach their peers about these systems.

Please save cardboard for your student to bring in and build their arcade game. With 250 kids

in 7th grade, our supply dwindles extremely fast, so we need whatever we can get from home!

Social Studies:

Students are nally nishing up their physical geography units and are dipping toes into culture

and human geography. We’ll be starting our main unit on human geography next week, driven

by our guiding question: Am I in the Majority or the Minority of the world’s population? With a

8th Grade News

From the Desk of Mrs. Tate

world population of 7.8ish billion people, we’re just a single grain of rice in 125 4-person hot

tubs lled with rice… crazy to think about!

Math 8:

Identifying Functions and Finding Unit Rate Test. Begin unit on Slope-Intercept Form

Science:

Properties of Matter

Dear Parent or Guardian of Aubry Bend Eighth

Graders:

On November 15 and 16, we will partner with a local suicide prevention organization, Give Me

20 (www.giveme20.net) to help students focus on the positives and areas of strength they can

pull on during times of struggle. To do this, we will have students create a LifeBox.

"We call it a LifeBox because it is a box lled with your story; memories of great moments in

your life, dreams for the future, and reminders of why your life matters...because no matter

how dark life seems at this moment, the sun will rise tomorrow and you should be here to see

if happen."

Please complete the linked Google Form by November 10, 2021. This form will opt your

student in or out of the activities, as well as provide you the opportunity to send your student

a note of care and encouragement.

https://forms.gle/J3V3ux78b3nSNVXz8

If you have any questions, please contact student services.

WOW!!! What an amazing week! Our all school musical, “Rock of Ages,” was a huge success!

Congratulations to our cast, crew and directors for a wonderful experience! From the gnarly

80’s music to the rockin’ dance moves, they wowed their audiences…SIX shows of audiences.

Over 200 students participated in the production. Thank you to our directors for their

commitment to kids and to our families for their support of our program.

I want to thank our families for reviewing last week’s column with your kids. The cell phone

misuse has diminished at school. We’re not “there” yet, but we’re certainly on the way, and we

are most successful when we’re working together as a team.

On Monday, November 1, our teachers were engaged in some great professional learning. In

the morning, they met with their district colleagues in similar content, and in the afternoon, we

were able to meet as an ABMS staff. During our time together, we discussed the

developmental needs of our students, the way the teenage brain develops, and the ways we

can help students improve academically and behaviorally.

Adolescent brains go through a signicant growth spurt during their middle school years. Brain

development starts in the “back” of the brain, the area responsible for behavioral functions like

vision, and moves to the “front” of the brain, the area responsible for complex decision

making.

In middle school, we can see the growth from back to front as students get older and learn

from their experiences. They are constantly taking in information and making decisions based

upon their brain development. Middle school years are about learning to problem solve and be

a better thinker; it’s natural for students to start out uncertain and become more adept as they

mature.

It’s a myth that students’ brains will just naturally mature. Teens need to be explicitly taught

the behaviors and expectations. We need to do this is small, incremental steps to help them

see their progress along the way. “How you’ll be expected to act as an adult” is often a “turn-

off” to the teen brain because they can’t comprehend adulthood; they’re just now entering

puberty! Giving kids bite-sized moments of learning in clear and consistent ways allows them

to process the information immediately and apply it sooner than later.

Our kids have some gaps in their behavior development from the past 18 months. When they

were learning at home, they had a lot of autonomy in how and when they completed their

work. They became more independent in their choices as virtual or hybrid learners. Now that

they’re back in a structured environment from 7:41-2:50, they are experiencing some struggles

getting back to those expectations. They need permission to leave the classroom. They

should stay seated and attentive during the teacher’s lesson. They should wait their turn. They

should be aware of others’ needs. They should be respectful of property, of other people, and

of other people’s needs.

As we work through these expectations with students on a day-to-day basis, we are condent

that we can help our students reacclimate to the structure of the school day and the

expectations for academic and safe behaviors. We understand that some of the struggles we

see are simply teenage brains growing, and other struggles may be related to relearning

“school” behaviors and expectations.

Thank you for partnering with us to keep our kids on the right track academically, physically,

and emotionally. We love our kids and want each one of them to be successful.

Sincerely,

Diana Tate, Principal

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Aubry Bend Middle School

12501 West 175th Street, Ove…

AubryBendMiddle@bluevalley…

913-624-2300

bluevalleyk12.org/ABM