Please join the Guidance Department at John Glenn Middle School for a viewing of the award-winning documentary film, “Screenagers” on Tuesday, March 21st at 6:30 pm. The film will be shown in the JGMS auditorium. Students and parents are invited to the event and students will be offered some extra credit opportunities for attending! There will be a short question and answer period following the film and additional resources will be provided to parents.

For more information on the film you can check out the website here: http://www.screenagersmovie.com  The website offers the following description, "Award-winning SCREENAGERS probes into the vulnerable corners of family life, including the director's own, and depicts messy struggles, over social media, video games, academics and internet addiction. Through surprising insights from authors and brain scientists solutions emerge on how we can empower kids to best navigate the digital world."
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Please feel free to contact a JGMS guidance counselor for more information.

It is very common that our middle school students seek to establish a stronger sense of self and, in this process, our students typically find multiple ways to express their identities. Whether this is reflected in shifting social dynamics or a changing pattern of dress and physical appearance, early adolescents can become hyper-focused upon who they are and how others view them. This process of maturation has been summarized by psychologists, "Some of the most important changes that occur during adolescence involve the further development of the self-concept and the development of new attachments. Whereas young children are most strongly attached to their parents, the important attachments of adolescents move increasingly away from parents and increasingly toward peers" (University of Minnesota, Psychology Department).  With this need in mind, students in Ms. Bank's 7th grade Art class have recently created 3-dimensional self portrait projects.  

​The medium of the 3D art project is "found materials", and students were instructed to only use holdhold items that otherwise would be likely found in a recycling bin.  A second requirement of the project was that these 3-D self portraits needed to have a semblance of a face.  Students then created two different sides to the portraits, each showing an aspect of their identity. 

The slideshow of images below illustrate two contrasting sides of various identities, thoughts, or beliefs shared by our students:

On Tuesday, February 07th, 2017 the entire 7th grade attended Billy Elliot The Musical at The Wheelock Family Theatre in Boston, MA.  Billy Elliot is currently a novel that is taught in Mr. Donaher's 7th grade English course which was originally inspired by Bedford's equity and diversity mission and vision statements, and elements of the musical aligns with Ms. d'Entremont's teaching of drama.

Billy Elliot is a story of a inspirational young boy who faces many challenges to reach his goals.  The story takes place in England during the 1980s and the miner's are facing a strike.  There is a message in the musical which promotes students to always be hopeful, stay determined, and to be yourself even when times are tough.

​Even though endless effort and time goes into planning a field trip, the 7th grade faculty was very impressed with how the students were able to effectively and  appropriately have fun and engage in the enrichment experience despite missing seeing Tom Brady in the parade, the traffic, and the poor weather conditions.

​In 7th grade Technology Education classes, John Glenn Middle School students are currently working with the EV3 Lego robotics kits and using a coding language to navigate robots through different obstacles and objectives.

In this problem solving challenge, students developed, wrote, and tested code for their own robots, with the ultimate goal of reaching the finish line untouched.  More information regarding the EV3 coding language can be found online here. Programing robots requires precision, creativity, resolve, as well as several other skills across the curriculum.

Take a look at the video of the students using the robot cars in the obstacle course. 

As students in Mr. King and Mr. Ruscito’s Technology Education classes physically build these lego robots, they then program them using laptops to navigate an obstacle course. Students are using the following thematic color coding blocks. Please note that the information and graphics below are provided by the Lego EV3 Programming tool.

​Action Blocks (Green) - The action blocks control the actions of the program. They control motor rotations and also image, sound and the light on the EV3 P-brick.

Flow Blocks (Orange) - The Flow blocks control the flow of the program. All programs you create will start with the start block.

Data Operation Blocks (Red) - The data operation blocks let you write and read variables, compare values and much more.

Advanced Blocks (Blue) - The advanced blocks let you manage files, Bluetooth connections and much more.

This winter at John Glenn Middle School students in 8th grade science classes are learning about matter and its interactions.  Mr. Puopolo and Ms. Scaltreto cooperatively created hands-on lessons which focus upon the history and design of the Periodic Table, atomic structure, and recognizing that substances interact due to their atomic structures.

In this unit, students demonstrated their understanding by contributing in the construction of a large scale periodic table of the elements. Students were assigned specific elements and were tasked with researching and presenting their findings. In turn, students have added their assigned elements to a large 8 foot periodic table in the B100 hallway. Please understand that students are still working on this project and that the images of the periodic tables below are not yet complete.  

Included in this unit of instruction, 8th grade students constructed Bohr models of their elements.  Take a look at the three dimensional models. Currently, students are learning about ionic and covalent bonding in both classes.