Mr. Bily @ CMS
Jefferson 5th Grade
In the fifth grade students have been learning
about many things like commas, Figurative
Language, how to spice up their writing with
exciting beginnings and endings, and writing
stories about a major event that have happened in their life using all of the elements
above. In the month of October, the fifth grade
made their trip to the Challenger Center in
Bloomington and they did their mission of a
comet rendezvous. The students had a blast.
When they got back from the Challenger Center, they started learning about shadows from
the moon, sun, and Earth. Also in another
science class they are learning about vertebrates. In
some Social Studies, they
are learning about Explorers
like Sir Francis Drake, while
in others they are studying
about the colonies. In Mrs.
RIcheson’s class they are
talking about connections
and how to write a good
question. They have read
Star of Fear, Star of Hope, Ruby Holler, and
started Freak the Mighty. Also with Freak the
Mighty, they are using vocab lists from the
book. While learning about the Challenger
Mission and other info about space, they shot
off rockets in her class. In other reading classes they are reading Out of my Mind and The
Great Unexpected. In Math most classes are
studying Multiplication and Division. In Mrs.
Goodchild’s class, they are learning about
thick and thin questions which are determining
whether your question is an easy, look it up in
the book question (thin), or a think about for a
while and having
to spend some
time
thinking
about it (thick).
By Chase Bosler
New CMS Teacher—Mrs. Hittinger
Charleston Middle School is excited to welcome its new teacher-Ms. Hittinger! She
teaches Algebra, Pre- Algebra and language
arts on the Gold Team. Ms. Hittinger graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 2014 with
a major in mathematics. She was inspired to
become a math teacher when she was a
sophomore in high school. She had struggled
a lot with math concepts in her grade school
years. One of her teachers helped her out,
and she was inspired to teach math. “I want to
have the same impact,” she said.Ms. Hittinger
grew up in a small town called Roachdale,
Indiana. She was very involved in watersports,
such as waterskiing, wakeboarding, and swimming.
Currently in her Pre-Algebra classes, she is
teaching about functions. The students are
about to work on their second project, The
CMS
Take Over. It involves different functions
demonstrating how long it would take for different species to fully populate a community.
Students must answer various questions that
involve critical thinking and problem solving. In
Ms. Hittinger’s Algebra class, the students are
learning about systems of equations. They
have learned the different ways to solve systems of equations, such as by graphing, substitution, and elimination.
Ms. Hittinger teaches the expository rotation of
language arts. Throughout the quarter, some
of the projects are a travel brochure and
newspaper article. They will also get to compare and contrast a book and movie. They will
compare the first chapter of Catching Fire to
the first ten minutes of the movie.
By Rachel Thomas
Some students think that it is impossible for
learning to be interesting. Those students
should visit Mr. Bily’s classroom for a day, as
he does things a different way. Students from
his first quarter language arts class were able
to watch a video of a different way to teach.
So, for one week Mr. Bily and his students sat
down and decided on a new lesson plan for
students. It still involved all the grammar it was
supposed to, but it was taught differently. For
all the different lessons, students came up
with new ways to teach them. Some of these
ways included a basketball lesson, or a treasure hunt around the
school. During his
argumentative
writing lesson, he
had decided to let
students
debate
over SpongeBob
Squarepants,
to
figure out if he was
innocent or guilty of
murder.
Many
things he does are
hands-on, which help students understand
better.
Mr. Bily also teaches social studies, and surprised his students when they walked in the
door multiple times. One time, when students
walked through the door, the room was messy
and only five desks were out. One had a Band
-Aid on it covered in fake blood. Normally,
whoever answers the questions on the board
first gets a piece of candy. However, he gave
them to random people, and acted mean for
the first part of class. Mr. Bily said that experiences like this help students learn better. He
thinks that his techniques would work in any
class, although social studies and language
arts are the easiest to work with. Students in
Mr. Bily’s class never know what might happen the next day because Mr. Bily is full of
surprises.
By: Ellie A. Stankiewicz
Classroom Courier, page 7