Principally Speaking It is not often that we get to take time out of our important academic day, to provide an opportunity for a presenter from outside our district to speak with our students. However, on Monday, October 16th, students in grade 5- 8 had an opportunity to take part in a very special program. The program was presented by 2014, Aurora Alumni, Luke Grossnicklaus. Most people that live in Aurora know or least have heard the story of Luke’s battle with a horrific disease called

scleroderma. Luke’s program presentation was excellent and kept the attention of the students from the moment he was introduced. His message was one of overcoming adversity and how a positive attitude, involvement in activities, support of friends and the love of family, will help everyone get through difficult times. Luke Grossnicklaus is currently in his senior year of college and will be student teaching in the Spring of 2018. Congratulations to Luke on overcoming obstacles, challenges, and adversity. You have a very promising rewarding career awaiting you in education.

In Other News: The first quarter of the current year has been very rewarding and successful for students within the Middle School. We recently held our 1st Quarter Honors Convocation where a large number of students were acknowledged on the Academic Achievement List, the Honor Roll, and Distinction Honor Roll. We take time to announce the names of each student on the achievement lists and honor rolls. We also take time to remind students that being involved in school activities, generally, makes the year so much more rewarding and enjoyable as you have the opportunity to experience the highs and lows of activities with friends. The 2nd quarter is now underway and the 2nd quarter activities are just beginning. If your child is not involved in an activity, it certainly is not too late to join. Congratulations also goes out to the success of all of our Aurora High School activities and especially to the girls Cross Country team on winning the Class B State Championship, as well as the Aurora High School Band program, for receiving a SUPERIOR rating at the recent State Marching Contest. We look forward to our Middle School students having the opportunity to carry on the outstanding tradition, as they move onward into the High School programs.

Educationally,

Reminder:

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, November 22nd, 23rd, 24th

No School Thanksgiving break

AURORA MIDDLE SCHOOL

NOVEMBER 2017

The 3rd Annual Girls Night Out program will be held on Friday,

November 10th at 6:00 p.m. in the middle school West

Commons. The program will feature a keynote address by Maile' Boeder

of the Aurora Leadership Center and breakout sessions by Sara

Sutherland, of Aurora Fitness, and Tactile 88, a self defense

program. Eighth grade girls received an informational letter at their

home mailing addresses in October and a registration email was sent to

each girls' school email address.

The Character Crew kicked off the school year with this plate

project. The project highlighted individual uniqueness while bringing

attention to how together we are a "Masterpiece".

I AM THANKFUL FOR THE OPPORTUNITIES IN THE AURORA MIDDLE SCHOOL

~ YAMI DONINGUEZ

MY FAMILY, MY FRIENDS, AND FOR MY SCHOOL. ~KYLEE YOUNG

MY FAMILY, MATH, MRS. HOEGH AND MY STUFFED ANIMALS. ~ ALEX BJORKMAN AMAZING TEACHERS ~COLE EPP

THE LUNCH LADIES AND HOW THEY DO THEY DO THE JOB AND THEY DO IT

CORRECTLY. ~SHYANN SHAW

FRIENDS, SCHOOL AND A GOD WHO LOVES ME. ~COOPER DIESSNER

MY BROTHERS IN COLLEGE. ~DEVIN OTTO

MY FAMILY, FRIENDS, FOOD AND WATER AND MY HOUSE. ~ ADDI DUMMER

I am thankful for books, a home, food, clothes, and cats, lots of other animals too.

~madelynn johnson

Living every day to the fullest. ~nichole abbott

My family, my friends, god , jesus, and the nice teachers. ~Jacob snyder

My family and all the love and support they give me throughout my life.

I am also thankful for a loving God. ~Kylie Svoboda

My mom and everything she does for me.

~jasmine lewis

My family and friends. a great school, a great home, for jesus and my life. Madisyn willis

A loving family and a god who cares

about me ~trinidi rice

My curly hair.

~emma bullerman

FISHING, SKIING and GRANDPA AND GRANDMA ~JOSEPH JONES

I am thankful for music, dance and having the

chance to dance in a free country ~mackensie fisher

I am thankful for the chance to learn and grow, to make an impact on the world. I can’t help very many people, so I do

my best with what I’ve got. ~Daniel helzer

I am thankful for church, Minecraft, family,

wifi and scouts. ~ mitch breuer

I am thankful for freedom ~austen adams

I am thnkful for my four brothers, family, friends and the

endless selection of books in the library. ~Rachel hunter

I am thankful for the bible. ~ tate nachtigal

I am thankful for the ability to work out.

~ brian dieckmann

I am thankful for the roof over my head and a happy

family to go home to. ~ben allen

I’m thankful for my faith. ~Isabella ediger

I am thankful for my neighbors.

~landon geiler I’m thankful for our freedom of speech

and religion. ~Isaac bisbee

I am thankful for the greatest qb of all time, tom brady. ~ Andrew timmons

I am thankful for the great community we live in. ~Jessica mikkelsen

Life. ~seth stevens

I am thankful for freedom, poptarts, netflix,

volleyball, mrs. Ratzlaff & snapchat. ~casey kroeker

I am thankful for the protection the

soldiers give us. ~zander stromer

I am thankful for lebron, kobe, mj

broncos, 2k and basketball.

~ Donovan shepherd

A couple of reminders are noted below:

• The iPads…… have become a tremendous instructional tool for us at school. A reminder that your student is to provide you with their passcodes. Monitor their usage and time spent in usage of the iPad other than for educational purposes.

• Digital Citizenship…..continues to be taught to our students and all indicators suggest that our students understand its importance. We adults sometimes need to be reminded, just like our students, if you would not say it in a face to face conversation with your grandmother what is about to be communicated by hitting the “send button”, DON’T send it. You will regret it at a later time!

• Accelerated Reader…..is a part of our middle school, 6th, 7th and 8th grade Language Arts curriculum. The program provides over 104,000 books for students to select from on line, about 4,000 of which are in our school media center. There is a book of interest out there for your child! A reminder however, iPads are not allowed to be used on school buses. Therefore if your child has their AR book on their iPad, they will not be able to access it on the school bus.

1st Quarter Recognition Breakfast

The first quarter, Recognition Breakfast was recently held with approximately 165 students in attendance. Keynote speaker, Vanessa Wergin, of Aurora High School, provided outstanding comments to the Aurora Middle School Honor Roll Students. The 2nd quarter Recognition Breakfast will focus on grade improvement. The specific qualifying criteria for attending the 2nd quarter breakfast is listed in the student handbook found on the iPad. We hope to encourage each and every student to do their best with their academic classes and we look forward to hosting everyone at the next breakfast on Tuesday, January 8th.

Health Screening for 7th

graders will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 15th

during Early out Wednesday for those involved in sports, and Thursday, Nov. 16th during TNT for those not involved in a winter sport. Regulations governing school health screenings went in to effect in 2012. All 7th graders are required to be tested for hearing, vision, dental, height and weight including BMI. Equivalent screening results from the 7th grade physicals have been documented and do not need to be repeated. Only the tests not reported to the school need to be conducted. For many, this will be only the hearing and dental as most physicals included height, weight and vision. The Nebraska statute requiring health screening does not allow for a waiver. Parents not wishing their child to be screened in school must provide documentation from their pro-vider that includes the health screening information, completed within 6 months of the screening date (May 15, 2017). If a student’s health screening shows a need for further evaluation, written notice will be sent to parents. All health screening information is protected by state confidentiality

Drug Free School

A reminder to parents that in effort to keep our school safe from the harmful effects of illegal drugs from entering our school system, on occasion the services of a drug dog are hired to assist in such efforts. Parents are reminded that students are provided with an academic and physical educa-tion locker that are loaned to the student for usage throughout the school year. Therefore in effort to maintain a safe drug free environment, periodic and random searches of lockers may be conducted. It is also important for students to be aware that although students drive their personal vehicles to our campus, on occasion the services of the drug dog will be employed to ensure that no vehicles contain illegal drugs or paraphernalia on our school grounds as well. Thank you parents for your support in our efforts to maintain a drug free environment.

Student Led Conferences: Thank you parents for your support of our school and for taking time to attend

our Student Led Conferences. It takes time for students and staff to prepare for the conferences. The 6th grade iPad Haiku deck presentations and the 7th / 8th grade port-folio presentations are the evidence of the time it takes. We trust you will enjoy the format which allows all three parties, parents, teachers, and students, to be involved in the conferences. As we do take a full day of school to provide these communica-tion opportunities with students, parents, and teachers, your attendance at these con-ferences is an important indicator that the day is well spent by all involved.

Principal’s Recognition-Pizza and Ice Cream Social

Throughout the course of the year, academic and extra-curricular efforts of our middle school students are acknowledged in a variety of means. However, in addition to recognition for these efforts, it is important to point out that we also have a very large group of students that demonstrate the types of individual social and behavior characteristics that parents would be proud of. We are proud of our students and want to acknowledge their leadership in modeling the types of characteristics we expect of them.

Although we have countless number of students that meet the qualifying criteria, each quarter our middle school instructors are allowed to select only nine students, three from each grade level.

Congratulations to all students that were selected to the 1st quarter, Principal’s Recognition-Pizza and Ice Cream Social. The teacher nominated student selections were based on the following criteria: positive attitude about self and others, willingness to voluntarily help and assist others, proper manners or conduct demonstrated within the school, and POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS that exemplify the behavior we expect of our students.

Congratulations to the following students and a special Thank You to Manager, Shelba of the Aurora Pizza Hut for donating the pizza dinner and to Manager, Laurel of McDonalds for donating of the delicious ice cream McFlurries:

Recipients are: 6th Grade: 7th Grade: 8th Grade:

Hunter Trumble Drew Knust Jeremy Hunter Laighla Rice Connor Smith Elena Kuehner Natalie Bisbee Kasey Schuster Ellie Hutsell

Items of Importance

Important Information Shared By Means of the School Announcements

• All posters and flyers must be approved through the office before being hung within our building. Materials that are allowed to be hung must be associated with the school. The same applies to personal information that you may want to hand out at the school promoting personal or private get-togethers. Examples would be such things as swim parties, community dances, Christmas parties, birthday parties, Halloween parties, and other get-together opportunities. These types of informational announcements are not to be handed out at school.

• The start of a new academic quarter allows all students to start over with their academic efforts. If the beginning of the school year did not begin as well as one would have liked, here is the opportunity to start over at the beginning of the 2nd quarter. An additional reminder that 10th period procedures start over with the start of each new quarter. Here is the reminder that upon receiving a 5th day assigned to 10th Period, students are required to stay until at least 4:15 p.m. that same day!

• M.S. Girls basketball and M.S. wrestling have started. We have a great turnout for each of the programs. Cell phones are not needed or allowed at school, practices or games. Leave the cell phones at home. If you think it is that important for you to have your cell phone at a school activity, it is best that you not plan to be a part of the activity • 8th Grade students have been invited to attend the High School Veteran’s Day Program, in HS gym, 9:15 a.m. on Friday, November 11th.

State Assessment Update At Parent Teacher Conferences parents with students in grades 3-8 received their child’s individual score report with their scores on the state tests that were taken in the spring of 2017. Every spring students in grades 3-8 are required to take a summative assessment in the area of English Language Arts, Math and Science. The science test is only given to students in grades 5 and 8.

Last spring the English Language Arts test was updated in order to assess the new Career and College Ready Standards for Language Arts. Those standards were adopted by the State Board of Education, and our school in the 2014-2015 school year. Since the adoption of the standards, we have aligned our curriculum to match the new standards and to help prepare our students for the new rigor of the state standards and assessments.

As many of you have probably read or heard in the news, scores across the state are low in the area of reading. It is important to understand that while the scores are lower than in previous years the drop in scores is a misconception. First of all, when the test was changed it was written to reflect the new standards, which are written for both reading and writing. In previous years, reading and writing were assessed separately, and now they are tested in one test. Sec-ondly, the test was written to a higher level of difficulty, which required a new standard setting. This means that this test was not scored like the previous tests, and there was a change in the requirement for the various proficiency levels. As a result of these changes we are no longer comparing apples to apples we have apples and oranges. These new standards have set a new baseline this year, so going forward we will be able to compare again year to year.

As we get ready for the spring testing this year, it will be important to know that we will have a new math test as the College and Career Ready standards were adopted in the 2015-2016 school year. This year students in grades 3-8 will be taking the state assessments in late March and April. If you have any questions regarding state assessments please feel free to contact me at school (402-694-3167), or email me at dteahon@4rhuskies.org.

Desiree’ Teahon

Assistant Elementary Principal & Curriculum Coordinator

SCHOOL CLOSING INFORMATION

To address the quickly changing weather patterns of Nebraska, the Aurora Public Schools makes every effort to share correct school closing information. Please keep this information close at hand.

In addition to the Infinite Campus Messenger, the following media sources listed here will have “official” announcements from the Aurora Schools regarding school closing information:

AURORA PUBLIC SCHOOLS CLOSING INFORMATION SOURCES

TV STATIONS (Aurora cable channels) RADIO STATIONS

KHAS TV Channel 6 KROA 95.7 FM KLKN Channel 8 KHAS 1230 AM

KOLN/KGIN Channel 11 KZ100 100.3 FM

NTV Channel 13 KAWL 1370 AM

104.9 FM

KRGI 1430 AM

96.5 FM

(Please check your local cable provider or dish system information for corresponding channels.)