Hoofprint

Have you ever wished MMS had more electives? Well I’ve been interviewing students and almost every student I have asked has wanted at least one more elective MMS doesn’t have. I’ve broken all my suggestions into four different groups. The first category I have is sports. I got three requests for this category wrestling, boxing, and soccer. Even though we do have a soccer team, there is no other soccer elective that provides 6th graders and people that are not on the soccer team with a chance to play soccer. The second category is education. This category also has three electives. First off we have library time which is an elective were you go to the library and read. The second elective we have is wood and metal shop. The last elective under education is hall monitor were nominated responsible students walk in the halls and write up students that are off task.` The third elective category I have is fun and games. The first elective under this category is video game design. This elective is an elective all about designing and creating video games. Last off we have International creative cuisine. Even though we already have a creative cuisine this class is all about International style food and learning more cooking techniques. Our last category is a “Out of the box and wacky” category. Under this category students were just having fun thinking of things that they would want and not what would be allowed at school. Students have suggested a nap class were it is a first period elective were you get an extra 45 minutes to sleep. Now I would like to wish a special thanks to TJ, Nada, Cameron, Alex, Isabel, Steven, Robert, Alex, Derek, and last but not least Ian for giving me requests for electives they would like to have.

Mrs. Aqqad is the MMS Dolphins’ Science teacher. She has 4 kids, 1 on the Mantas. As you may know, she is a 6th grade teacher but she has also taught second grade, third grade, ninth grade and biology, chemistry, ecology. Surprisingly enough, she has been teaching for ten years, eight at Martin.

I asked her what she likes least and most about science and she said that she liked teaching Ecology and the Solar System most and Waves least. She likes Ecology because the students can relate to it. She likes the Solar System because “it’s always changing and always interesting to the students and to myself.” She likes Waves least because there is a lot of vocabulary and if you don’t understand the vocabulary, you won’t understand the concept.

You may know that she loves to play basketball and softball. For softball she has played first base, third base, and shortstop. She also loves to play volleyball and table tennis which is also known as ping pong. Some hobbies she likes to do are play basketball and to just be with her family.

I found out that she loved science as a kid which would make sense because she is a science teacher! She said that she likes the fact that science has a lot of hands on activities. I asked her how she gets kids excited about science and she said that she tries to show kids how it is related to their lives and that they use science everyday but they just don’t know it. You are probably wondering if it is even hard at all being a science teacher, but she actually did say that it is sometimes hard. I asked her what made her decide to teach science, and she replied: “I’ve always had a passion for science and I always wanted to test things.”

I would probably describe Mrs. Aqqad as loving, caring, kind, smart, and helpful. If you are in her classes and need help, she will surely help you. Right now I have her for homeroom and am glad that I have her. She certainly cares for all of her students! If you have her right now or did have her when you were in 6th grade, I’m sure you can agree that you learned a lot from her. In my mind, she is the best science teacher ever! I don’t know if you like her too, but you should! So what do you think about her?

The great decade that was the 1980’s was a time of heavy rock, partying, and having fun. With great parties, come great toys, do you know those toys? Some of them are still going strong today. Some aren’t known by many, and some are just gone. Gabe, Lakaren, and Malcolm of MMS knew some of them. Those included the famous doll, Barbie! The girlie doll that stars in such movies as Toy Story 1,2, and 3 with her boyfriend Ken. They have many different outfits for the girls and boys of the world to mix and match. Also, Rubix cubes were the challenging toy of the 80’s where kids and adults had to try and get the sides of a cube to all be the same color. Many people have tried and failed to defeat the cube’s magical powers. But it still entertains people for hours. And they are still popular today! Another toy is the well-liked slinky! The toy for all ages that is just a swirly piece of metal or plastic that can do loads of things! That includes falling down stairs, coming back at you if you throw it and hold the end you didn’t throw. It can do so much. Who knew such a simple toy could entertain people for hours and that the world would love this kid-friendly toy for so many years. Some of the toys don’t make the big time like the other toys did. Like Action Jacks. They are like G.I. Joe action figures. You can play with them like any other action figures. You can fight with them, or just play with your little sister and her doll house. But not anymore, because they aren’t popular anymore so they are next-to-impossible to find. One of the unknown toys included Atari. On this video game system, you could play classic games, such as, Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Pacman. Those games are still very popular today, but their original game system didn’t have that luck. Like the Action Jacks, they are pretty hard to find, and not the best of quality. But, now, with all our technology, we have better things, including X-Box, and PS3. So there is not much call for Atari. So that’s all I have to say about toys from the 1980’s I hope I entertained you with this random topic. Thank you for reading. Have a great day, or not, the choice is yours.

Answer to Joke 1:

That cracks me up.

Look forward to more jokes in the future.

What did the egg say to the peanut when they were served together?

Leave your answers in the comments below. Answer will be posted TOMORROW!

The 7th grade at MMS has learned about conflict minerals and how we use them. Conflict minerals are huge problems in Africa today. Examples of conflict minerals are; tin, tantalum, and tungsten which are illegally mined and smuggled out of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here at MMS we will be hosting a Cell Phone Recycling Drive. To participate in the drive please bring in your cell phones even if they are broken to the three drop off locations [Media Center, Front Office, and Mr. McDonalds room (1107)] from February 27th through March 1st. MMS is also donating some of the cell phones received through Cell Phones for Soldiers. This will help soldiers call home to loved ones and friends. By recycling your cell phones you can also help reduce the impact of conflict minerals in Africa.

This interview is about Mrs. Lyon, the new French teacher. She has a lot of interesting things about her, that’s why I wanted to ask her these questions. First, I ask her what inspired her to speak French, she said because her grandfather speaks French and he was in station 2 World War II. She has been traveling a lot, of course in France. She lived there and went to school like... In the state she went to Longwood University and in France she went to American University in Avignon. I wanted to know if she knew any other languages and she does! She knows English, French, and Spanish. She also loves some French food. Her favorite French food is “les Esescargots” which means snails in French. I was curious finding out if her rest of her family speaks French. Her mother speaks Italian and German, her father speaks Spanish and Italian. Another question that I asked her was her hobbies. Her hobbies include needle point and love to read outside of school. I have her for 6th period and we’ve been using IPods. She lets us use it because, she thought it will give her students new experiences and learn the language and to have fun with it. The kind of apps that she downloaded is flashcard, games, tours to the Eiffel tower. I really enjoyed the interview and I hope you do too.

Most people love winter break but do different things during the time. And, believe it or not, this rule applies to teachers too. For example, Ms. Cleveland likes to hang out with her family. She thinks that we all need a break for refreshment. Some things my classmates do over break is go sledding, put up decorations, play video games, go on vacations, read books, open presents, and other things. I think that winter break is also beneficial because it gives us time to unwind and get us ready for school again. It also gives us a chance to let out all the energy that we had to keep bottled up during school to go free, which in turn helps us be better students. Wish for snow, because, as you may have noticed, it almost never snows here in North Carolina. Local Meteorologists say that there may be some rain, but there is not likely to be snow. There go the sledding ideas. I think that the holiday spirit and the long break in itself will make up for it! It will be somewhat sufficient to look at pictures of snowy wonderlands. Anyhow, in short, it will probably not snow this break. You never know, though!

Carolina crafts is an art class taught by Mrs. Bennet. Students do amazing projects based on their relation to Carolina. The first project the classes did was face jugs. These jugs were said to be invented by African slaves. They used the face jugs to hold liquids. The faces on the jugs were to keep children out of them.

The students worked about three weeks on creating these marvelous master pieces. They put a lot of effort into the jugs. Here is what one of the students said about the jugs. Toniyah said “I did enjoy making the jugs, but I went through a lot of trouble to get it to stay in the right angle. I tried to be as ordinal as possible and not do what most people would.”

The current projects that the students in Carolina crafts are making are baskets. It’s a lot harder than you may think. Let’s look at some of the students’ opinion. Loren: “It’s sort of difficult.” Reem said “It’s fun because it’s difficult and you have to be patient with it and I like challenges.” Hannah: “I love making baskets, but it takes work and it isn’t easy.”

First the students will make paper baskets and then they will make reed baskets. I wish all the students good luck that their baskets are successful. They really seem to enjoy the art class.

The school news is a new wave of news according to the students. Some like the changes and some like it old school. Students say they like the more recent songs and better graphics. I personally think the news has improved but also think they need to stop joking around and get serious. They need to practice speaking without messing up a lot. Lots of students like the old martin song. We try to take our comments and make the best show we can do. There are a lot of ideas we plan to do. When you get in the room you can just feel the creativity. We think you the students should receive what you want and also get the announcements.

Were also doing the skits to get some fun in the news. We have lots of skits we have and will do. Some future sketches involve the office, glee and many more recent and exciting skits. I hope are skits will live up to your expectations. Our new teacher Mr. Velarde puts a new twist in the game. He decided that we should have more recent topics in the news. He decided to use Macs instead of the equipment from the 90’s. He real has improved everything we know about the news. We try to act professional and appreciate while were developing the news. We also think you the students should just leave comments so we can improve our announcements. By the poll I developed the students enjoy this year’s school news than last years.