Week of February 12
IB Community Project
Eighth graders at Julian Middle School are required to complete an IB Community Project during the school year. This works occurs during one trimester of their integrated studies class with the guidance and support of their teacher. A central part of being an IB student is learning to look at the world through multiple perspectives and appreciate all human experiences similar and different from your own. The Community Project allows students to apply this type of learning while making positive change within a local or global community. For this culminating experience, students will work in small groups to identify a project objective. By using their creative and critical thinking skills, students will identify what they can do to address their identified topic, take action, and then reflect upon the impact of their action. A portion of our 8th grade students are already in the process of completing their Community Project. Some examples are as follows:
- Reducing Litter on School Grounds-A group of students has a plan to keep the back field and school grounds tidy by inviting every advisory to sign up for a clean-up day.
- Improve School Climate/Culture-A group of students wants to create a space for positive messages to be shared between peers. This group is creating and monitoring an Instagram page where peers can post positive messages about each other.
- Living a Healthy Lifestyle-A group of students is writing a book about building a healthy lifestyle at a young age, including recipes and exercises, that will be distributed to some Oak Park elementary students.
- Book Drive to Fight Illiteracy-A group of students is in the process of collecting books at Julian that will be donated to “Books to Devour” and then distributed to families in the Oak Park area.
I will be sharing more examples of these projects as the year continues. Until then, know that our students are working hard to have a positive impact on our community and beyond through their IB Community Projects!
Julian Codes!
The past couple of weeks, students at Percy Julian Middle School spent a class period coding with their peers. All grade level teams participated in this challenge with the IB Learner Profiles of being a "Thinker" and "Knowledgeable" as a focal point. Since the coding began, more students have been found in the library media center during lunch hours and after school looking to code just a few more minutes. Teachers observed students praising themselves and each other, while others collaborated in small groups to help one another achieve successful coding. Abilities ranged from beginners to VEX Robotic superstars. We are pleased every student at PJMS dug in and concentrated on coding for an entire period. Check out our posts on Twitter at #julianworks and #op97codes and @OakPark97.
Battle of the Bots!
Wow! What an exciting battle we had last Saturday! Thank you to all of the volunteers that helped the Battle of the Bots run smoothly and to all of the spectators who were there to support our teams!
A huge congratulations to all of the teams that competed! A special acknowledgement goes to the following: the "A-Team" for making it to the finals matches, the "G-Men" for being tournament champions, and the "Mighty Little Pinkies" for winning the design award. Both the "G-Men" and the "Pinkies" have earned a slot in the State Competition which will be held March 5th. Twenty-four teams will be selected to compete in the State Competition in Batavia next month. Currently, we are sending two teams and hope to qualify more.
This week and next, we will continue to make modifications to our robots as we prepare for the Skills Tournament being held at Brooks Middle School on Saturday, February 20th. This battle will begin at 7:00 am. We hope that this skills tournament will qualify more Julian teams for the state competition.
"On Time and Ready"
Here at Julian we continue to focus on being "On Time and Ready." The data we have been collecting over the past 6 weeks indicates that we are improving in this area. Tardy infractions have been reduced in each of our grade levels. Great job to our students!
"On Time" - students are in their seats when class begins.
"Ready" - students have the necessary supplies, work required, and their charged iPad.
We continue to have regular announcements with words of wisdom related to this topic for our students to ponder. Today's announcements included the following: "Punctuality is the politeness of kings" and "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."
Monday, February 15-Presidents Day/No School
Sincerely,
Dr. Todd T. Fitzgerald
Principal, Percy Julian Middle School