History Day This year s topic, Innovations in history!

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1 MMS M A N S F I E L D, C T Times I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E : V O L U M E 1, I S S U E 3 J U N E, History Day 1 One School, One Read Horoscopes 4 Our Staff 4 2 Fly Up 3 Applebee s Pancake Breakfast So, you think you know Mr. Cryan? MMS Boys & Girls Basketball Student Council Update 3 things eight graders will miss most & Once again, Mansfield Middle School participated in the National History Day program. We had 25 Mansfield middle School students participating this year: eight students from eighth grade, eight from seventh, and nine from sixth. History Day is an elective opportunity for students who are interested in the history of the world to develop their knowledge about a topic and to share their knowledge and creativity. Each year, almost 500,000 students from across the country participate. Participants can create posters and exhibits, write papers, make web sites, create and perform historical plays, or make documentaries. Students can work alone or in groups of up to five people. According to the National History Day website, Students choose historical topics related to a theme and conduct extensive primary and secondary research through libraries, archives, museums, oral history interviews and historic sites. They are not allowed to accept outside help unless it is for something like typing or cutting. Each year, the National History Day organization provides a theme for the competition, and this year it is Innovations in History. Students must select a topic that illustrates this theme, and they must explain how their project supports it. For instance, some of this year s MMS student projects included one about the piano, The New Soft/Loud, Antibiotics: Miracle Drug of the 20 th century, and Bloomers: How One Garment Changed History. There are several different parts of National History Day. First, students present their work at their schools and receive tips and pointers from teachers. Then participants compete at the district History Day This year s topic, Innovations in history! level against students from other local schools. At this phase of the program, students are evaluated and may earn the opportunity to proceed to the state level of competition. This year, nine MMS students scored well enough to compete at the state level. Claire Coffey and Meghan Powers won first place in group exhibits for Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Montgomery Ward Catalog. For Individual Documentaries, Jonas Burkhard won with his project, Savior to Millions: Dr. Edward Jenner s Smallpox Vaccine, and Hyun-Soo Kim won first for Radio Broadcasting: Changing American Life. And for Group Documentaries, Joseph Phillips, Chris Briere, and Darius Javidi won second place for their project, Radar: The Invention that Won the Second War, and last but not least, Emily Tomanelli and Lucia Pratto for Antibiotics : Miracle Drug of the 20 th Century. If students earn enough points at the state level of competition, they may be eligible to compete at the national competition in June at the University of Maryland. There are a lot of things to do for History Day, but if you think you are ready, be sure to talk to Ms. McCormick or your social studies teacher. At this point, you ll have to wait until next year, but you can still think about it, and check out their official website, ~Ellen Westa Andeisha Farid and Ian Pounds speak to MMS 7th grade students on Thursday September 24, 2009.

2 P A G E 2 One School, One Read Every other year, Mansfield Middle School has a special program called One School One Read. Mrs. Robinson, our librarian, and a committee get together and choose a book for everyone in our school to enjoy. It s a huge opportunity for our students and teachers to come together and experience a great, exciting new book every other year. This year, our school read the book Blizzard by Jim Murphy. Every day during the three week period, students and staff members read about a huge winter storm that paralyzed the Northeastern U.S for four days! This intriguing and very interesting book started by showing people who thought they were having their regular walk home from work and who later discovered it was the last time they could go outside for several days. Here are some questions that Mrs. Robinson answered for us about OSOR: Q: What made you and the staff decide on this book? Mr.Burrington s OSOR group, very into their reading, as you can see. A: Each time we have had OSOR we have picked a book that tied to a theme. We once used historic fiction that connected to our Town s tercentennial celebration (My Brother Sam is Dead), a multicultural book that explored a country we didn t know much about (The Breadwinner), and a realistic fiction book that examined the current political topic of immigration (Under the Same Sky). This year, I suggested that we consider reading a nonfiction book, something we had never done before, and I suggested this title to a group of teachers at MMS for them to read and see what they thought about it. After they read it, we decided it was a good choice for us to try. Q: What did you think about this particular book? A: I liked the way the book contained information about local events, and even though it is a nonfiction book, it sometimes reads like a story, something I call narrative nonfiction. Q: When did we start OSOR at MMS? A: We did our first OSOR during the school year. Q: Who came up with the idea of everyone getting together and reading the same book? A: During the past few years, several schools and cities have undertaken various reading initiatives. One idea that has been particularly popular is the "One Book, One Read" or "One Book, One City program. The concept in these programs is to have an entire city, region, or community read the same book, which is made available through school and public libraries for all to read and to discuss. Northeastern Connecticut has undertaken such programs; unfortunately, these books are more of a high school reading level and are not appropriate for us to undertake as a middle school. Therefore, I suggested to the MMS staff that we undertake a "One Book, One School" initiative of our own and select a title specifically for middle school readers. Q: How do you think that doing this every year will help us in school? A: We actually do OSOR every other year. So if you go to MMS all four years you will participate in two OSOR experiences. I believe that this event encourages sharing a common experience involving the entire school, and mixing up students from every grade supports the development of a positive school culture. This event also provides opportunity for parental interaction, promotes reading, and encourages group discussion of some timely themes. It allows us to become a community M M S T I M E S of readers. -Alexa C.

3 V O L U M E 1, I S S U E 3 Fly Up On Tuesday, March 16, 2010, all of the 7&8 grade Chorus and Chamber Choir members went to E. O. Smith to perform in front of Chorus s from Ashford, Willington, and the E. O. Smith Chorus members. We all worked very hard for this performance and it really paid off. We had a chance to meet with other Chorus students and had a lot of fun singing together. We started off with Mrs. Rowe (the E.O. chorus director) and we did our warm-up and sang one song with her as a group. After that our chorus director, Mr. Johnson, went through another song with us. We basically did that with the teachers from other towns, until we sang Don t Stop Believing from the hit television show Glee. Every town had a pair of soloists picked and we sang the whole song completely through. After that the presidents of the E.O. Smith chorus came onto the stage and told us a bit about what chorus at the high school was like. Then, small groups from E. O. Smith went up. They showed us a lot about high school choir and how you could do many other things as well. It helped our eighth graders be able to see what it is like to be in a high school choir and they were able to ask questions to Mrs. Rowe about the high school choir. After that, each of the three school went up P A G E 3 and sang a couple songs. It was a lot of fun and everybody would love to do it again. -Beth C. Applebee s Pancake Breakfast On Saturday, March 20 th, the related arts teachers held a pancake breakfast at the local Applebee s. Tickets were $5 and were sold at school in advance. The breakfast was one pancake, two pieces of toast and a side of bacon. Our devoted Related Arts teachers raised over 1500 dollars for the Related Arts program. This will help purchase new equipment and more wonderful things for the students here at MMS. -Beth C.

4 P A G E 4 So, you think you know Mr. Cryan? Mr. Jeffrey Cryan is our school principal, but, there are many things you may not know about him. I had a chance to interview him and learn more about him. Mr. Cryan graduated from University of Connecticut (or UConn). He then taught as an English teacher for seventeen years in Reading (pronounced red-ing), Massachusetts. Before he became our principal he was an assistant principal. He likes being a principal because it gives him A chance to affect more students and to work in a variety of subjects. Also, I have a chance to work with the teachers, Mr. Cryan says. Mr. Cryan also teaches at UConn during the spring semester. He teaches juniors who are preparing to be teachers later in life. Our principal Mr. Cryam, engrossed in his work. Mr. Cryan has been married for thirty-one years and has three children, two of whom are currently in college. In addition, Mr. Cryan enjoys several hobbies. For one thing, he loves to bike. Once, he biked from his house to Rhode Island! That s about fifty-three point four miles! This year, he will be riding in the Five Borough Tour in New York. It is named the Five Borough Tour because it passes through all five boroughs of New York City. Mr. Cryan also enjoys photography and reading in his spare time. Mr. Cryan is a great principal, teacher, Principal, father and husband. We know him so far only as our principal, but you now know more about him. -Beth C. MMS Boys & Girls Basketball (cont. on pg 8) Basketball, an MMS favorite. Each year, many students try their best to make the team. This season, 22 students made it on the boy s team. I had an interview with Mr. Buck, the boys coach, about his experience this season. Here s a little peek into our conversation. The first question I asked was about his team s record. This year, the Mansfield Middle School boys basketball team won 11 games and lost 5 games. Mr. Buck thought that the season went well. I was very pleased with how the season went. The team got better and better throughout the season and I saw a lot of personal growth in a number of players on and off the court. I think you can say it was a successful season if the team plays hard and learns from one another while having fun. I think we accomplished all three this season. Next, I thought it would be interesting to know which team he thought was the hardest to play against. The hardest team that we played this season was Coventry. We played them three times, including the championship game. We lost two out of three games to them but every game was well played and the team fought very hard. I wondered, what influenced him to want to start coaching 7 th and 8 th grade Boys basketball, and he told me, Ever since high school, I wanted to coach basketball at some level. Working at MMS has given me the opportunity to not only coach boys but also the girls for one season. I just really enjoy teaching and sharing a sport that I have a passion for with kids. I felt that the championship game was a big highlight of the season, but Mr. Buck thought differently. Making the championship game any season is very exciting but I think the highlight of the season came in the semi-final game against Willington. The game was very close throughout and we found ourselves losing by five with a little over two minutes to go in the game. The team rallied in the final minutes to win and earn a spot in the finals. The passion on the bench and on the floor really showed that all our hard work had paid M M S T I M E S

5 P A G E 5 Student Council Update This is the latest Student Council Update, informing you of the past two months work by the Student Council. Hopefully this article will not only inform you of the work the Student Council has been doing and plan to do, but encourage you to join in with our efforts. We certainly hope so. For the past two months one of the main activities the Student Council has undertook has been raising money for the country of Haiti, the poorest country in the world, and still recovering from the massive earthquake that hit in January, taking thousands of lives as well as businesses and homes. Now the world is scrambling to help the broken country and the Student Council decided to take part in Haiti s recovery. Several successful fundraisers from Hats for Haiti to the successful raffle at the Pep Rally in February, the Student Council has succeeded in raising $1,350, which in Haiti is the equivalent of over a million dollars, enough to rent a plane to get supplies down to Haiti. This success has been a positive sign to the Student Council and we are moving toward other projects we hope to be as successful as this one. One such project is the MMS Talent Show which the Student Council had on April 30 th, where students could show their talents to other students and parents, with the admission fee of $3 or $2 with a canned good. The funds that were made will be sent to help out with the devastation from the earthquake in Chile. Students had until March 17 th to sign up, and had until April 19 th to audition. It was quite a success! The talent in this school is phenomenal! And last but not least, the Student Council is preparing another Field Day, much like the one we had last year, which was a huge success. It will be held on June 11 th from 11:10 to 2:30 and the groups will be combined OSOR groups (you can read about that in our OSOR article). We are looking forward to the event and are still accepting volunteer offers. And that just about wraps up this latest Student Council Update. We hope that this has encouraged fellow students to join our efforts and be a part in submitting their ideas for the school. Join and you could help with the upcoming Field Day and other events like the Talent Show. We hope you decide to join us to make a memorable rest of the school year for MMS. Meetings are at 12:00 in Room 112 and afterschool in Room 112 on Wednesdays. Hope to see you there! -Owen E. 3 things that eighth graders will miss from MMS M M S T I M E S

6 Mrs. Hodgson had her baby boy on April 26 th!!! Mrs. Morell and Mrs. Humes are expecting babies sometime this summer! Mrs. Kyriacou is getting married in July! Mr. Vanderrest just got engaged!

7 Mrs. White is going to be a grandmother! Congrats Eighth Graders! We Will Miss You!

8 V O L U M E 1, I S S U E 3 P A G E 8 Cont. from page 4 Ms. Parker and Mr. Buck talk about success! off for the season. Mr. Buck wasn t the only coach that we interviewed. Mrs. Parker had something to say too. She thought that on the girls team, everyone played well. I asked them both all of the same questions, but their answers were different. The first question I asked Mrs. Parker was what her teams record was this year, and she had an answer that made me proud. The MMS Girls Basketball Team was undefeated this year, with 16 wins and 0 losses. We were the NEMSAC League Champions. I also wanted to know how she felt about the season. The season went well. This particular group of kids worked very hard day in and day out and their passion is basketball. They are good students and worked hard in the study hall with Mrs. Stratton to keep their grades up during a demanding basketball season. As the season went along, we found that our best competition was each other each day in practice. These kids have played together for a long time and it showed in their performance every day. This was a really good basketball team that enjoys being in gym and being with each other! What team did you think was the hardest to play against? I wondered. Our toughest competition has been Tolland Middle School (a non-league opponent), Coventry, and Columbia. Those schools always play hard against us and would love to beat us! She had a reason to start coaching 7 th and 8 th grade girls basketball. I was fortunate to have excellent coaches when I was growing up at both the middle school and high school levels. My coaches demanded excellence in school and on the court and I really respected that. My love of teaching and of the sport of basketball lends itself well to coaching. I thought that earning a place in the championship games would ve been a highlight of the season, but Mrs. Parker thought differently. There were many highlights in a Championship season but the highlight of the season for me was to see our team work really hard in practice and in games, compete well against each other, and play a pretty exciting style of basketball. The compliments we received from referees, coaches, and spectators about how well we play make all the hard work worth while. Another highlight was to see the eighth graders work really hard to help the seventh graders improve and be able to contribute to our teams success. We will really miss this bunch of eighth graders next year. So, the season was a success, and both coaches are satisfied and proud. I wonder how next year will turn out? -Lisa W. (From left to right) Ellen W. and Lisa W. With Our Adult Helpers: Mrs. Hodgson Ms. McCormick Ms. Young Owen E. (From left to right) Alexa C. and Beth C.