The 8th graders just wrapped up their last Life Science unit about the changes of organisms over time. Students explored how species change through natural and artificial selection and analyzed evidence of evolution and common ancestry including homologous structures and embryonic development. The 8th graders are very excited to begin our next unit on Chemistry. We will review lab safety and explore chemical reactions through a variety of hands-on labs. Your child will be bringing home a safety contract to review with you before we start our labs.

Students on the left are comparing homologous bone structures in rats and elephants. The cartoon drawing on the right is one of the students illustrating Natural Selection and Adaptation.

Have fun in the Chemistry unit, Dr. Nystrom's favorite subject!

On Saturday, our Marauder Robotics teams traveled to Aptakisic Junior High for the First Lego League Regional Qualifier. Our 8th grade team was a Robot Design Finalist and finished in the top 10, qualifying for Sectionals in January! Students have been working hard all year for this competition, a chance to show others how they have been working together to solve problems! 8th grade team members include: Oscar Soto, Anton Sokol, Bennet Rasar, Finne Stocco, Kendall Greaney, Dean Scheureman, Aaron Barash, Aarav Patel, Logan Cichanski, and Jacob Kast.

7th grade team members include: Daniel Petrelis, Derek Lisius, Kacper Skorski, Connor McCarthy, David Che, Gavin Salefski, Milo Budzik, Tyler Carlson, Teddy Gotsev.

The 8th grade team looks ready for their first table run after the lunch break and unofficially had the best teammate cheering section!

Strategizing and planning or joking and sharing a laugh? Both were happening with the 7th grade team on their lunch break, Good Luck, Marauders!

This past Thursday, our Unified Advisory students met with other students from across the state to share resources and ideas with other Unified Programs across the state. This was another special Unified Summit because Maya Petryniec and Will Bott were the leaders of one of the presentations, sharing what we do with the entire state of Illinois, broadcast out on Zoom.

Teachers will be collecting all student iPads before students leave for Winter Break. We are pushing out special wallpaper to students the week of December 18th to prepare them for leaving their iPads. See below for the fun wallpaper our teachers and the Tech Department created together to make this fun for students! 

Collecting the iPads will allow the Tech Department to ensure all devices are working properly and are connected to the device management system. This also gives our teachers, before and after break, an opportunity to review with students safe and expected use of the district-owned iPads. For our students, this supports our goal of truly making this a break from school. They have worked hard through Trimester I and starting Trimester II, and as we all need breaks, we know it is healthy and needed for our students to get one too!  

With that, we need your help with two things to prepare for the iPad collection:

1. Students should have their iPads updated to 17.1.2. Please work with your student to update the iPad this weekend. The iPad should be connected to WiFi and power. This will greatly help to ensure iPads are ready for State testing after Winter Break!

2. If you will be leaving early for Winter Break, please have your student leave the iPad with the teacher.

Thanks for your help and support so we can make sure students have the tools they need to learn after Winter Break! 

Check out the video production of our Veterans Day Assembly that was made by the Village of Prospect Heights!

The Marauders competed in another Money Wars event to generate funds to support the D23 Helping Hands efforts to support our families in need. Advisories competed in a game of coin and bills collection, worth various points. Together, we will be adding over $1700 to the Helping Hands efforts!

December 7th was Electives Night and both gyms were packed with 8th graders and their families. In the next couple of weeks, our 8th grade team will be meeting with the high school teams to finalize course placement recommendations.

One course we are not going to recommend is Driver Education. Sorry, Jack and Jackson, you will have to wait until you complete your Freshman year for that class!

Updates to 2023-24 Calendar

At the November Board of Education Meeting, the following necessary changes to the current 2023-24 School Year calendar were made:

Tuesday, March 19 will now be a Day of Non-attendance for Teacher Institute Day.

Tuesday, April 2 will now be a day of attendance.

CLICK HERE to view the revised "At-A-Glance" Calendar

-Institute Days: 1/8, 3/19

-School Improvement Days: 5/10

-Holidays: No School

-Winter Break:12/25-1/5

-Martin Luther King Day: 1/15

-Presidents' Day: 2/19

-Spring Break: 3/25-3/29

-Memorial Day: 5/27

-Additional Non-Attendance Days: 2/16, 4/1

-8th Grade Promotion (tentative): 5/24

-Last Day of Student Attendance (if no emergency days used): 5