May 2013

Earth Systems teacher Mrs. Caras was recently chosen by her fellow teachers to receive the Crystal Apple teaching award at Springville Junior High for the 2012-2013 school year.  She was presented the award during a faculty meeting after school on April 23rd.  According to Mrs. Caras, she was not aware of her nomination beforehand, so she was very surprised.  The award, a stand holding a crystal apple, was sponsored by the Horace Mann Insurance Company.  “It was fun to get something, because I really love teaching,” said Mrs. Caras.

On Tuesday, April 30, 2013, at the SCERA Center for the Arts, the Great Kids awards were presented to two seventh-grade students, a boy and a girl, from each school in Utah County.  The Utah County Chamber of Commerce honored individuals who make a difference in the world by simply being kind, respectful, responsible, and outstanding in quiet ways, usually overlooked by others.  Many of the award-winning kids have been selected because they are friendly, helpful, and always looking out for their classmates.  This is the first year that the Chamber is giving Great Teachers awards.

On Tuesday, April 23rd, three students from the HOPE Squad at Springville Junior High were interviewed by KSL’s Nadine Wimmer about suicide and suicide prevention. The students were interviewed to be in a special segment called “Breaking the Silence on Suicide.”  Mrs. Droz, the seventh grade counselor and head of the HOPE Squad, asked  Spencer Johnson, an eighth grader, and Halle Acor and Jacqueline Bradford, both ninth graders at the junior high, to represent the members of the HOPE squad since they are all so well spoken.  The special segment was then aired Thursday, April 25th at 10pm.

In the Foods class at Springville Junior High, the students are going to be doing food demonstrations. Food demonstrations are a time where students present a choice of  food or appetizer they want to share with the class. As the students make their appetizer in front of the class they have to say what they are doing step-by-step while making the food and try to make it their best! They also need to talk about what food groups are in the food and what is healthy and what is not good in the food.

At Springville Junior High School, as kids look forward to summer break, they are planning out their own summer camps.  This assignment will continue until the last day of school. The summer assignment is just a fun assignment to do after the students have finished testing.  Mrs. Bass, an English teacher at SJHS, said, “The Summer Camp is a fun, hands-on unit that allows students to use their creativity as they show what they know about thematic-based learning.”  Kids can review what they have learned this year while still having fun and expressing themselves.

Parent-teacher conferences at a junior high school are often predictable.  Parents and students will most likely meet with each teacher for ten to twenty minutes to discuss how their student is doing in class, and what kind of stuggles and successes they may be having.  However, once a year, Springville Junior High hosts a totally different type of conference.  Along with traditional conferences at the end of the first and third terms, SJHS holds a conference midway through fourth term called student-led conferences.  According to Ms. Dunn, an English teacher at SJHS, the purpose of student-led conferences is to help students and parents communicate about school and all of the things they learn.

Some ninth-grade boys from SJHS were able to try out for the Springville High School soccer team on February 25. The tryouts lasted three days, and the boys that made the final cut on the third day became part of the soccer team. The freshmen from SJHS that made the team are Josh Clegg, Peter Kucharek, Ryan Treasure, Spencer Smith, and Christopher Fitzgerald. The team has games every Tuesday and Thursday, and practices on Mondays and Wednesdays. 

Ever heard of Rube Goldberg? Or a Rube Goldberg Machine?  Rube Goldberg was a famous, inventive, and creative man who designed wonderful machines that did simple tasks.  They were very complex and some even involved animals!  For example, he created machines that could curl a man's mustache, open a door, or even a self-operating napkin machine.  All of the tasks would be operated by chain reactions that moved parts of the machine.  Mouse Trap (a board game) is another example of a Rube Goldberg machine.   Of course these were never built until a few years ago.  For the past few years, Mr.

Springville Junior High ninth-grade Honors English classes have a new teacher next year: Ms. Neeley.  Ms. Neeley is going to teach seventh-grade English, Creative Writing, and Honors! According to Emily Baugh, a student who will be in Honors English next year, she wanted to be in Honors English so she could learn things that she didn’t get to in regular English. Paul Young can’t wait for all the fun.  Ana Jimenez said, “I thought it was way too easy in regular English, and I wanted to be challenged.”

At SJHS the eighth graders made straw towers in their science class towards the end of March. The purpose of this experiment was to learn about Newton’s Law of Gravity. Some of the requirements of this project were that students could only use 20 straws, 33 centimeters of tape, and the towers had to be able to hold 20 grams of mass for at least 10 seconds. The towers also had to be free-standing, which means students couldn’t hold on to it at all.  According to Chris Webber, an eighth grader at SJHS, almost everyone’s was a 3D triangle. Chris Webber also said  “One of the challenges I faced was running out of tape definitely; it was hard not to run out of tape.”