Summer, the warm weather that everyone loves. On May 26th, school will be out for SJHS. Most people like summer for a time to take a break from school. Mr. Nelson, a history and body conditioning teacher at SJHS, said, “I’m very excited for summer because I love the warmth. This summer I’m moving up to Idaho to work on our cattle ranch with my wife.”  Some people just like to relax during summer. Caden Swendsen, a eighth grader at SJHS, said, “My favorite part of summer is sleeping all day, staying up all night, and parting like its 1999.”

NAEP stands for National Assessment Educational Progress. The NAEP test is taken to assess the nation’s educational progress. The test is a booklet like the end-of-year test, but much smaller.

The test takes about ninety minutes; some randomly selected eighth graders completed it on March ninth. There are four sections in the test. Three of the sections have to do with school subjects. The last section is about the student taking the test. Students were given about 25 minutes to complete each section.  The tests had different subjects. So if one person has a science test the person next to them may have a math or reading test.

On Monday, March 28th, Mrs. Bird’s service learning class and the student council took a bus up to Salt Lake and made kits at the Humanitarian Center for many different families, countries, or anyone that has gone through a natural disaster recently.

“It was fun!” said Andalyn Hall, an eighth grader at SJHS, “I liked being able to get out of school to do service.”

Service learning and the student council went up to the Humanitarian Center and were given a tour of it and then put to work in making different sorts of kits for people in need of them. There where three different kinds of kits: a newborn kit, school kit, and hygiene kit. Each of these kits where for different needs that people had.

Don’t you wish you could choose how your life went? What kind of person to be, what kind of setting, if you had powers? Well, the students in Mrs. Rice’s eighth-grade class got to do just that. Create Your Own Adventure (CYOA) is a project where the students in Mrs. Rice’s class got to make Power Point stories about books that they read where you get to choose your own adventure. This was done by making many slides and hyperlinking the choices to other articles that have more choices. The students worked on this during the month of March. This is an example of what it looks like:

You are a 12 year old potato farmer that found a strange turquoise potato while farming.

Choices:

Take it home and eat it

On April 7th, the girls choir, or Knightingales, is singing their way to choir festival! The festival is a program where different schools choir groups get to sing for judges who tell the choir what they need to work on and what was done well. It gives choirs a chance to show their talent and be able to know what they can do to make the group sound better. This event is being held here at Springville Junior High.

SJHS is leaping, sprinting and throwing with track. Track season has begun, and the students at SJHS are very excited and looking forward to it.  Peggy Sorenson, eighth-grade distance runner, said, “I’m most looking forward to track because this year we are going to beat Mapleton!”

Track is a school sport for anyone and everyone who wants to join. The track team practices every day after school until 4:30. On Wednesdays, students get to practice at Springville High School;  Anna Bunnell, eighth grader, said, “ I like practicing at the real track because it gives us a feel of what we’ll be racing on when we actually compete at meets.”

In math students talk a lot about pi, but on March 14th they talk about pie (as well as eat it)!  “Pi day is a holiday that the math world made up to celebrate Pi,” said Mrs. Gleave, math teacher here at SJHS.  On this day, students in Mrs. Gleave’s class discuss pi topics like how many digits of pi they have found, who has memorized the most digits of pi, and how long it took them to recite it.

Deep down everyone loves to sing. If it’s in the shower, or in the car, or just for fun, for everyone to hear, or for nobody to hear, everyone loves to sing. In Master Singers, these talented students love to sing anywhere and everywhere.  Master Singers are a group of ninth-grade boys and girls who auditioned in eighth grade to become the best singers at SJHS. This choir is taught by SJHS’s choir teacher Mrs. Walker.        

Swish! The fabric and colors fly as the Springville High School Winter Color Guard tosses, spins, and dances around the Springville Junior High’s gym floor.

For the students who do not know, color guard originally started as a military tradition. The military would carry their country’s flag and two rifles. They carried the flag in an appropriate position and showed great respect for it.

Some think St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday where you wear green, and pinch people who aren’t wearing green. Others believe it’s celebrated because a leprechaun man saved Scotland. But what is it really? St. Patrick’s Day is a day celebrated worldwide by Irish people and many non-Irish people. Celebrations are generally themed around things green and Irish. Celebrations include wearing green, eating Irish food, and attending parades. According to stpatricksday.com, the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin, Ireland is part of a five day festival, with over 500,000 people attending the 2006 parade!