Second Semester - Changes and Updates

We have arrived! Our students persevered through their first semester of the 2017-2018 school year, and today starts their second semester. This is an opportunity to reflect on how things went first semester, make necessary changes to better our school environment, and keep on doing great things here at Freeland Middle School.

Some changes you will see second semester, and some additional updates are below...

Technology Changes

We have noticed some concerns with academic dishonesty on technology devices that we need to address. We are showing this video to all students in 7th and 8th grade this week just to continue to reinforce academic integrity and what that means here at FMS.

Additionally, we have many Chromebooks that have been damaged due to misuse this year. We are showing this video to all 7th grade students to reinforce Chromebook care. Starting next week, if our students have broken hinges on their Chromebooks, they will spend time during lunch helping our tech support team fix their hinges. This is a great life skill for these students, and also shows our students how much work it can be to fix these devices! We hope that this will reinforce care for our 1:1 Chromebooks.

Finally, our building is struggling with device misuse, and we need to make sure we clean things up when it comes to how our 7th and 8th grade students use their devices. Please make sure you watch this video or view this PowerPoint presentation to understand our expectations moving forward. If our students get sent to the office for technology misuse they will be looking at after-school detentions. This will take some coordinating for our parents, and we appreciate your support with this. We want to make sure we are teaching students skills for success when it comes to technology, and right now, we are seeing many of our students not understanding how to use their devices appropriately at school.

Cafeteria Changes

I am sure you have heard frustrations about our cafeteria when it comes to days when we have to "lock down" the cafeteria and not let students move due to cafeteria messes and overall behavior in the cafeteria. For second semester, we want to try to change things up a bit. We are going to be running a "Clash of the Cafeteria Clans" competition in our cafeteria. This will be a fun and positive way to reinforce appropriate cafeteria behavior. Please take a look at this presentation to better understand the game we will be playing with our students this marking period! 

Honor/Merit Roll

This is the week our students will find out if they made the Honor/Merit Roll. Honor/Merit Roll lists will be printed Thursday morning and posted in the halls for students. On Friday, anyone who made the Honor/Merit Roll or is being recognized for being a Student of the Marking period will attend a dessert banquet in the cafeteria during our assembly schedule time at the end of the day. For students who did not make the Honor/Merit Roll this semester, we have set up some goal setting time for them so that they can set themselves up for success second semester! Review this presentation for all information on our Honor/Merit Roll recognition at FMS.

Have a great start to second semester!