After our Hour of Code in the library, I had several girls come up to me fascinated by coding and 3D printing.  This group of girls routinely comes in during lunch time and during their Friday recess to learn about how to create with the 3D printer, learn coding, and other various personal interests. It's been a joy helping them in their pursuit of knowledge!  

Our ELA department met with parents for a literacy night to talk about how parents can help their children read at home (at the middle school level), what the deal with all this Lexile talk is, and how to connect through AR Home Connect.  Because this is Super Bowl season, we went for a football approach for our literacy night theme.  Our Beta students provided snacks and served parents football themed goodies.  All student and parent volunteers were amazingly helpful.  Thank you to all of our teachers who volunteered their time to help our parents as well.  

For parents who missed it, thehandouts are below! 
There is:
1) Literacy Handout for Parents-explains Lexile information more in-depth
2) Middle School Reading Handout for Parents-explains 5 ways to support your middle grade reader and includes are most popular books with their Lexile information
3) Literacy Night PowerPoint-the PPT our staff used as a guideline for our discussions

All students who met their AR goals for 1st and 2nd nine weeks were invited to attend a movie with delicious treats during the connections time the week before we left for holiday break.  I made homemade chocolate chip cookies, homemade icing, and brought in some rich hot chocolate to make the movie even more fun with a cookie decorating contest (which turned into how much icing can I pile on a cookie-engineering project anyone? :) ).  We had a great time celebrating our reading achievements and sharing what some of our favorite books are before we started the movie.  I'm so proud of all of our students for their hard work and reaching their AR goals throughout the first semester.  I hope we keep it all up so they can join me at our end of the year water extravaganza party!