8th Grade News

📌 October 9- Field Trip Permission Slips Due

🍎 October 12 & 13- Parent-Teacher Conferences (Details Below)

🦌 October 12- KAS Board of Education Meeting 6PM

💯 October 14- 8th Grade Fall PSAT

🚌 October 16- Field Trip to NMC & Silver Lake Park (Details Below)

📸 October 23- Picture RETAKE Day

🦌 November 9- KAS Board of Education Meeting 6PM

🦃 November 25-27- No School/Thanksgiving Break

🍎 The first Parent-Teacher Conferences are coming up quickly. They will take place in the evenings of Monday, October 12th and Tuesday, October 13th. See the description of each day below.

➡️ Monday, October 12th - Scheduled Conferences

Please use the link below to sign up for a scheduled conference with the entire 8th grade team. These conferences are aimed at a more in depth conversation and solution finding for families. If these fill up quickly, please consider coming in on Tuesday for the Drop In Conference.

➡️ Tuesday, October 13th - Drop In Conferences

We also have drop in conferences on Tuesday from 4:00- 5:15 and 5:45- 7:00 which are meant to be more of a quicker check in. Conferences will be first come first served. All 8th grade teachers will be available for conferences during these times.

📨 If you have any significant concerns or are unable to attend conferences, please feel free to email Mr. Buniewicz at pbuniewicz@kingsleyschools.org to see if we can schedule an alternate time to meet.

🚌 On Friday, October 16th, eighth-grade students will visit Northwestern Community College and Silver Lake Recreational Park for a field trip.

📝 Permission slips have been sent home and are due October 9th. A copy is also attached below for your convenience.

🧡 On November 4th, students will take a social emotional survey called the SSIS SEL Brief + Mental Health Scales. This measure of students' social and emotional functioning is aligned with state Social Emotional Learning standards and provides results used to guide instruction for all students and support for students experiencing emotional behavior concerns. Please see the attached document for more information and for an opt-out option if you prefer for your child to not take the survey. If you would like your child to participate, no action is needed. A copy of this form was also sent home with your child last week.

👋🏽 Greetings All,

💯 Last week the students took the fall round of the NWEA assessment. We are moving back into our Language Arts unit centered on milestones and rites of passage. Next week we will conclude our work examining "from La Princesa Mildeidy Dominguez".

📖 The next text in our unit will be "First Day Fly" by Jason Reynolds. Additionally, we will review both verb and prepositional phrases as well as begin the prewriting process for this unit's narrative writing.

❓ Please let me know if you have any questions. - Mr. Gaddy

🧮 Pre-Algebra students are beginning Chapter 2: Simplifying Algebraic Expressions. While this is a review of skills students have seen before, these skills are foundational to much of the math we will be doing throughout the year. Please encourage students to stay on top of their homework and practice!

📝 Algebra students are wrapping up Chapter 1: Functions this week and will soon move into Linear Relationships.

💯 Both classes will continue using our Daily Math Circuit to review previously learned concepts and keep those skills fresh. Students can expect a Math Circuit Quiz just about every Friday, based on the skills practiced throughout the week.

🌱 Students did a great job last week learning about multicellular organisms. This week we are tackling plants, plant cells, and photosynthesis. Our next quiz is tentative, but below you can find study materials.

As always, if you have ANY questions please let me know!

Ms. Smith (tsmith@kingsleyschools.org

👋🏼 Greetings all! I just wanted to say a quick hello just to start off our section of this week’s newsletter and to let you all know that I am having a wonderful time working with each of your students and that I am looking forward to continuing to develop our skills together as we work through this first half of the school year tackling such incredible moments, and documents from US history! I also just want to put a reminder that if you have any questions or concerns I can be reached by my email: CByrnes@Kingsleyschools.org

📜 Last Week and This Week:

Last week we began our unit on the Declaration of Independence, starting with a closed reading

of the introduction, preamble, and main complaints the colonists had at the time, focusing on

simplifying and understanding each section and how it relates to the larger issues going on

within the colonies at the time.

Which will be useful! As this week, students will begin to form their ideas on what they think

are the three major complaints found within the Declaration of Independence arguing together

with a group during the class debate which will end this mini unit!

Additionally, included this week in the Google Classroom is a short mini documentary by PBS

which discusses the creation of the Declaration of Independence, which would make for a very

good review resource!

✅ Vocab Checks:

Just a reminder that students will continue to have vocab checks every week, with study

materials found in the Google Classroom each week. Students should be studying for these

ongoing assignments to make sure they are up to date on class information.

🎨 From the Art Studio

This week, we focused on the Element of Art: Line! Students learned that lines can communicate feelings and ideas...a jagged line might show anger or energy, while soft, wavy lines can create a feeling of peace and calm. We put our knowledge into practice by creating art journal entries inspired by music, using line, shape, and color to express what we heard and felt.

We also talked about how art can be a meaningful tool for processing emotions and experiences. Art can give us a way to reflect, communicate, and find a sense of calm, especially during challenging times.

💡 Yearbook Cover Challenge!

Students are also designing a new KMS yearbook cover! The winning design will be selected later this October and printed as the cover of the 2026–2027 yearbook. I can't wait to see the creative ideas our students come up with! Keep an eye on Artsonia to see what your young artists are creating!

Ms Eichler KMS Art Studio

💻 Digital Literacy

This week, students will continue practicing smarter online searches, compare search results, and choose useful sources. They’ll also explore how clickbait grabs their attention and why misleading information spreads. Through hands-on practice, students will learn to pause, ask questions, and consider evidence before trusting or sharing what they find online.

🤖 Innovation Lab

Students will continue exploring computational thinking, the problem-solving strategies used by computer scientists and innovators. Students will practice breaking complex problems into smaller parts, recognizing patterns, focusing on important information, and creating precise step-by-step instructions. We’ll also investigate how computers use input, processing, storage, and output to handle information and solve problems. These skills will prepare students to begin coding later in the unit!

Our Paper Ball Run Challenge was an absolute hit! Students spent several class periods applying the engineering design process to build a ping pong ball run using limited amounts of paper and tape only. The catch? They weren’t trying to build the fastest run, they were trying to build the slowest!

Students engineered all kinds of creative obstacles to slow the ball down, including funnels, speed bumps, and even car wash-inspired flaps. It was so fun to watch them think creatively and critically through so many rounds of testing, failure, problem-solving, and revision. I’m especially proud of their persistence throughout the process.

While the real goal was to practice the engineering design process and embrace the challenge of creating and improving something new, we have to acknowledge our winning ball run: a whopping 9.42 seconds from start to finish! It was almost three full seconds slower than the runner-up! Well done, innovators!