Dr. Kelly Cooke
Principal
Mr. Robert Hayzler
Asst. Principal
Mrs. Kathy Tobia
Asst. Principal
Ms. Joanne Martino
SAC/Anti-Bullying Specialist
Mrs. Liz Conley
Nurse, X5720
School Hours: 7:35 am - 2:15 pm
1000 Weldon Rd.
Oak Ridge, NJ 07438
(973) 697-1980
Fax (973) 697-1348
MS Home Webpage : September 2019
It is my pleasure to welcome new and returning students to the 2019-2020 school year at Jefferson Middle School. I hope all families enjoyed some exciting adventures this summer. As the school year approaches, please note there are numerous educational and co-curricular opportunities available to our middle school students. Please visit our School’s website for special events and activities offered to students through the school or Middle School PTA. Please also be aware of the following upcoming events during the month of September:
Thank you for visiting and please be sure to check out our webpage, on the left, for upcoming events, announcements, and activities for JTMS students. I, along with staff, look forward to a rewarding and successful school year for all students!
Sincerely,
K. Cooke
Principal
The district would once again like to thank the Jefferson Township Community for their support of our Bond Referendum vote back in October 2018. The district was able to receive 40% reimbursement from the State in grant money. Fortunately, when our credit history was reviewed by the financial institutions providing the bonds, we were able to secure loans at the rate of 3.62% which is lower than expected.
Although it is a smaller-scale project, we are excited that the work has started! The door locks are being replaced at Cozy Lake by Oak Security. The new locks will have a thumb lock for enhanced security and will be ADA compliant.
The other projects slated to occur this summer are:
Update: 7.23.19
High School:
Makerspace Flooring Progress
Update: 7.22.19
JTHS:
Science Flooring
Outside
Science Classroom Drop Ceiling
Wood Shop Flooring
Roofing Machinery & Crew
Music Rooms
Future Makerspace Classroom
Band & High Tech Music Room Flooring
Update: 7.19.19
Cozy Lake:
Outside Facade
All-Purpose Room
White Rock:
All-Purpose Room Abatement
Makerspace Flooring
Makerspace Flooring
Update: 7.18.19
Cozy Lake:
Outside Facade Progress
Ellen T. Briggs:
Exterior Modular Wing Facade Progress
Makerspace Room 111
Makerspace Room 111
JTMS:
Gymnasium Lobby
Locker Room
Floor Abatement
Panoramic View of Media Center
Stanlick:
All-Purpose Room Flooring
Makerspace Flooring
UPDATE: (6/26-7/10):
JTMS:
Media Center Moving Out, Ceilings Removed & Painting Begun
Cozy Lake:
Removal of Outside Facade:
Makerspace Classroom Before
JTMS Science Rooms:
Classrooms B3 & 4 Emptied
B4 Flooring Removed
B21 Final Demolition
White Rock:
Makerspace Classroom Before
All-Purpose Room Before
Middle School:
Locker Room Before
Locker Room Before
Media Center Before
Media Center Before
Robotics Classroom Before
Robotics Classroom Before
Science Classroom Before
Science Classroom Before
Ellen T. Briggs:
Facade Before
Makerspace Classroom Before
Door Hardware Before
Stanlick:
All-Purpose Flooring Before
Classroom Before
Kitchen Flooring Before
Closet Before
Makerspace Classroom Before
High School:
Roof Areas A,B,C, & D
Roof Areas C & D Before
Auxiliary Gym Roof Before
Fascia Before
Fascia Before
Science Lab Before
Makerspace Classroom Before
Wood Shop Classroom Before
Wood Shop Classroom Before
C7 Cleared Out
Prep Room Floor Hatch
C9 Early Demo
Room C8 Before
C8 Cleared Out
C7 Outside Fascia
May 16, 2019
Cozy Lake:
Before: Old Hardware
After: Updated Hardware
The School Counseling Department has been meeting with students for various reasons, including to discuss failing grades, conflict mediations, risk assessments, and scheduling for next year. Counselors also completed the scheduling process for the ‘19-’20 school year, helped with The Ripple Effect initiative at the high school, held Naviance and Resume lessons with 8th graders, conducted Conflict Mediation lessons with 6th graders, attended the 6th Grade Parent Orientation, and helped facilitate the 6th Grade Student Orientation. In addition, counselors continue to run and wrap up support groups as well as facilitate annual 504 meetings. Finally, the counselors attended a training for the new Signs Of Suicide initiative/grant the MS will be participating in during the 2019-20 school year.
The sixth grade students have been working hard on the statistics cluster of their math curriculum. Their focus has been on measures of center and measures of variation. Also, the blue and gold math classes were combined in an effort to collaborate on an escape room! The students had a great time solving math problems and entering clues to move through the nine rooms. There were some exciting finishes as student groups raced to be the first to escape!
In 6th grade Science, students explored astronomy by modeling the reason for the seasons, tides, eclipses, and the phases of the moon. 6 Gold: A thank you letter was received from Mayor Wilsusen in response to the student letters previously sent in regards to their concerns about the recent silica dust pollution in Lake Hopatcong. 6 Blue: The team held an environmental museum funded by a Middle School PTA grant. The event was well attended by students, siblings, parents, and grandparents. Students presented on various topics including: how to pack a waste free lunch, how to purify water for people who are lacking clean water, and poaching as well as plastic bags and pollution in the watershed. In addition, attendees voted on the upcycled items created by 6 Blue students and visited the art gallery to see environmental student artwork. Parents and students also joined Mrs. Helfand at the Paulinskill River in Lafayette, NJ on June 7th from 5-6 pm to release the rainbow trout they had raised all year. Students successfully released 84 trout. The evening included discussing the health of the river, environmental conditions needed for the trouts’ survival, potential predators, and the release itself. The evening concluded with a hike behind the park to see the recent beaver activity along the trail.
In 6th Grade Social Studies, students have been learning about the Civil War and the repercussions that the war created. Students thoroughly researched the multiple events surrounding the conflict and created a digital synopsis of what they learned. Students wrapped up the unit by covering Reconstruction and the long term impact that it came to have on American society, emphasizing this year’s theme, “we learn history to change the present.”
Since the beginning of May and through the end of the year, students in 6th grade ELA have and will be reading dystopian novels in their Socratic Circles. Their summative assessment of the book is to create a project where they will come up with a plan to turn the book into a movie. Using their knowledge of characters, setting, plot, and theme students will plan a soundtrack, create a promotional poster, and produce a movie trailer video. Also, through the generous support of the PTA, top readers from both teams will be recognized for their efforts with awards, gift cards, prizes, and a fun celebration!
Seventh grade Language Arts students finished their book club novels where they discussed themes, character development, relationships while annotating using signposts. Students will soon participate in a Socratic Seminar to show contrasts and comparisons between the different novels.
In seventh-grade mathematics, students are working on their last project for the year. Students will be designing a board game to review all of the main topics learned this year. Once completed, students will be getting together as a grade level to view everyone else's games and have a chance to play them.
After finishing a self-paced webquest about the lines of evidence scientists have developed to support the theory of evolution, students in 7th grade Science are working hard to survive the zombie apocalypse. They are applying their knowledge and skills from across the science curriculum in order to make evidence-based decisions in hopes that their team will not perish during the outbreak. Also, if time and technology are available, students will participate in a virtual field trip to a tropical coral reef to explore the threats to the habitat as well as learn about how a variety of organizations are working to preserve our natural coral reefs.
Seventh grade Civics students have been studying some basic economics’ concepts for the month. Classes have participated in activities which both entertained and strengthened their knowledge of vocabulary and basic personal finance goals of which they can set for themselves in the future.
In 8th grade Language Arts, students are finishing their study of Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey. Students are also working on No Red Ink, paying special attention to phrases and clauses along the way. Students will be making Character Presentations of their most memorable character of the year to close out their Middle School experience.
Students in Math 8, finished their geometry unit on surface area and volume of cylinders, cones, and spheres. In Algebra, students finished their unit on statistics. In Geometry, students finished their unit on circles. All math programs are now preparing for their LinkIt final benchmark assessment.
To wrap up the year, the 8th grade Social Studies classes hosted a presentation for parents on the students’ year long assessments. Students chose topics from Hunter-Gatherers to Roman Gladiators and everything in-between and developed websites, interactive displays, and even videos to present the triumph and tragedy of their topics. Students are spending the last few weeks of the year re-creating works of science, art, philosophy, and literature from the Renaissance to demonstrate their understanding of humanism in the Renaissance.
The 8th grade Blue and White teams have been working on their capstone engineering project. In doing so, students are building bridges out of toothpicks and Elmer's glue that they planned out within their blueprints. On Monday June 17, they will be testing to see how much mass their bridges can hold. The goal is 1,000g! The Gold team has worked with forces, waves, electricity and magnetism. Students are culminating the year with an engineering project where they design and build water rockets using their accumulated learning about forces and the laws of physics. Students will launch their rockets outside and evaluate how their designs affected the function of the rockets during launch and flight.
The 7th grade GATEways and HS Digital Arts class recently collaborated to provide the GATEways students with a hands-on experience using Virtual Reality. Using the new Virtual Reality equipment at the high school, the teachers as well as select high school students led the GATEways students through a virtual reality activity. The goal of this activity was not only to provide the GATEways students with an enhanced educational experience, but also to expose students to the unique courses and opportunities that our high school has to offer. In addition, the GATEways program most recently completed its culminating educational experiences. A day trip to the Pocono Environmental Education Center for the 6th grade that focused on communication and team building, the 7th grade’s two-day trip to New York City that focused on technology and society, and the three-day 8th grade trip to Washington DC that focused on one’s role and place in society both individually and as a US citizen.
6th Grade: Students are creating and finalizing a world habitat project in which they were asked to design and describe their habitat in the target language. Students are presenting and discussing their presentations with peers in which they discuss weather, exotic animals, possible activities, and object descriptions. 7th Grade: Students are completing a final vacation project in which they explore Spanish speaking countries. Students were asked to create a Google Slides presentation in which they demonstrate tourist attractions and activities. All descriptions are done in the target language. 8th Grade: Students are creating and finalizing career project presentation in which they describe and discuss future career options in the target language. Students explore possible universities they can attend for their chosen career, degrees, and career requirements. All information is presented to peers in the target language.
Our 21st Century classes are preparing presentations to share what they have learned from their research. Our Speak Up and Write All About it classes are finalizing their video reports. We will be working on putting those all together in a classroom news broadcast!
As the Unit of on JavaScript comes to an end for the Computer Science Discoveries classes, students applied all of the knowledge in Javascript to design their own game. These games made sure to have character and user interaction. They also included a variable to store information that can be used to trigger a background change.
To wrap up the year, students delved even deeper into text analysis in language arts. Sixth Grade has begun a “Lights, Camera, Action” project focusing on the analysis of student-selected books including The Girl Who Owned a City, The Giver, The Selection, The Hunger Games, and Cinder. For this project, the students had to select songs, craft a script, and create a movie trailer to represent their novel. In seventh grade, the students completed a newspaper project where they crafted a lead story and editorial interview through the eyes of one character from Freak the Mighty. The students have since moved back into book club books such as The Running Dream, The Fault in Our Stars, Sahara Special, Out of My Mind, and Eleven where they are completing signpost annotations and participating in Socratic seminars. In eighth grade, the students completed their capstone essays and vision boards as a reflection of themselves in 8th grade. The students presented their vision boards to their respective classes to show their hopes for the future and have since moved into reading the novel Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey.
In seventh-grade mathematics, students are working on their last project for the year. Students will be designing a board game to review all of the main topics learned this year. Once completed students will be getting together as a grade level to view everyone else's games and have a chance to play them. Eighth grade is doing a review before taking the last LinkIt assessment before their Promotion Dance and Promotion practice.
Family and Consumer Science students prepared a plethora of cookies for the 5th grade parent orientation. It was a great opportunity to showcase their work and demonstrate their skills for party planning and preparation for an event!
In Forensics 7 and 8, students are working on their final projects in which they must create a crime scene based on a common fairy tale. Students must make and describe evidence as well as explain how to analyze the evidence. Students will then tell their story and present their case to the class using pictures, diagrams, and their knowledge of forensic science.
Chorus: Chorus has had a crazy month! In mid-May, students traveled to Dorney Park. Both choral groups earned the highest rating of superior at the Park. In addition, all JTMS Chorus students had their Spring Concert of which they worked extremely hard. Students in the 7th grade are working on writing song parodies while 8th graders are practicing the National Anthem for our Promotion Ceremony. Band: The Tri-M Music Honor Society students finished the year by helping at the Senior Citizens Big Band Bash followed by helping with 3rd grade instrument demonstrations as well as giving JTMS tours to incoming 6th grade students and their parents. The JTMS Bands had a successful concert season with their Spring Concert and performance at High Notes Festival. Our Select band received a Superior rating and our Jazz band received an Excellent rating. The 6th and 7th grade band students are now preparing for their final performance at the 8th grade Promotion Ceremony.
In Robotics, students have been working on flying drones! The students recently learned how to correctly bind the drone to the controllers using the BetaFlight software. Students first learned to hover directly above the ground before learning to vertically lift the drone up and down. Once the students have the basic flight movements down, they will be using First Person View (FPV) goggles to get their own virtual reality feel. How exciting!
STEM 6th: The students completed a design a tower of a certain height made of drinking straws that was capable of holding a tennis ball at the very top. There were many impressive towers that were constructed, with one being able to hold a grand total of 19 tennis balls. The students rounded out this unit on structures by analyzing all of the data from the towers of their peers and creating a lab report on how to improve their tower if they were to construct another one. Students currently started conducting research on buoyancy and creating a blueprint for what they believe will be a successful boat design. STEM 7th-8th: Students have been refining their skills in the use of a 3D drawing program called, Sketchup. In this program, students were tasked with creating their own dream house as a 3d model. In doing so, students must have a certain number of rooms and furniture pieces, while everything else is their own design. At the end of the unit, students will have an option to 3D print a small model of their dream house.
