Middle School Highlights
Eighth Grade Leadership Boot Camp
On December 15 and 16 the eighth graders explored what it takes to be a leader. After spending several weeks studying leadership styles of famous military leaders and George Washington, we put our "Future Leaders" through a series of challenges in a Leadership Boot Camp. Students were divided into groups and engaged in complex logic, math, and engineering challenges. In order to build leadership skills, each student took a turn leading their group. Finally, as a culminating event, each group was tasked to teach leadership skills to a mixed group of sixth and seventh graders. The learning and results were wonderful to see. Our students are on track to be true "Leaders of Tomorrow!"
Seventh Grade Activities
Sixth Grade Bowling Trip
As part of the last week before the winter holiday, the ACS 6th graders participated in an interdisciplinary project that included a walking field trip to the Royal Automobile Club. The day was a fun day for all 6th graders, spending time together, as well as practicing their recently learned bowling skills. This educational experience incorporated concepts and skills learned in P.E. (bowling), Math (adding and subtracting integers), Science (different forms of energy, energy transformation, and energy transportation), and Language Arts (sensory writing and process writing).
These concepts and skills were wrapped up in culminating activities the following day that included checking their work on an excel spreadsheet and creating bar graphs of their scores, participating in sensory writings and readings, and watching a movie on energy transformation. Finally, the teams created a game using their knowledge of bowling and came up with rules and guidelines to play this game. Eventually, the teams presented their unique games to the whole 6th grade and the students voted on their favorite one.