MIDDLE SCHOOL

March 4, 2021

Dear DAA Middle School Families,

It is hard to believe that March is here and that spring break is around the corner! We have lots of amazing activities (including multiple dress down days!) taking place throughout the month, so we’re sure the students will be enjoying their lessons in the upcoming weeks.

This week saw the start of our Math & Literacy March Madness month in middle school. We have a daily activity in T&D such as 5 minute mysteries and mad minute math facts. We will be culminating this month with a fun day of math and literacy activities to send our middle schoolers into spring break.

Staff and students caught reading during Literacy Month

Parent Teacher Conferences

Next week will be our spring Parent/Teacher Conferences. Please use the information below to schedule a time to speak with your child’s teacher. You may want to use this document to help keep track of all of the zoom links!

Sign-up Link – https://www.schoolbookings.net/code?code=4uwpw

Code (if needed) – 4uwpw

As we have conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday, our B students will not be on campus next week. We will see them on campus on Sunday, March 14.

Upcoming Dates:

Mar 9 -10 - Parent/Teacher Conferences, no classes
Mar 25th - Early dismissal (12:00) for Spring Break (March 28 - April 10)

I hope you all stay well,

Justin ReynoldsPrincipal, DAA Middle School

Counselors Corner

learning highlights

MS Coding and Robotics

Adding Salt and Pepper to Learning Middle School Science

This week our Grade 7 students in Middle School began to learn more about the Human Body by meeting and experimenting on our resident humanoid robots Salt and Pepper. The students initiated the lesson with an inquiry into the features and functions of the robots, identifying how they use sensors similar to humans to detect stimuli, process this information, use memory for knowledge recall, and then respond through sound, movement, and displays. Students were then asked to design experiments that could be conducted on a human and a bot in order to establish conclusions about similarities and differences. Some of our students were very creative in their approach to asking inquiry based questions such as how will Pepper respond if its commands came from someone with just one eye? Could Salt distinguish between a real person and a drawing? How far does Pepper maintain contact with a person through visual and audio clues? The students thoroughly enjoyed their experience with the bots, and learnt a lot about the human body too. What would you ask Salt and Pepper?

MASK - I - CAL

It’s a Wrap! The cast and crew have now completed all the production work for the MS/HS musical production and are now working hard in the post-production stage to create the final video.

MASK-I-CAL will premiere LIVE on the DAA Youtube channel Thursday 18th March at 7pm.

We encourage all the DAA community to save the date, and watch from the comfort of your own home. With a cast of 30, band of 5 and crew of 38, this incredible, talented and hard working group of students have put this together since November 2020. The show includes 15 songs from 14 musicals, as well as a glimpse from behind the scenes. The Youtube link will be posted in the next edition of SPOTS on the 18th March and on social media. We hope you all enjoy the performance!