The View 38002 November 2017 | Page 12

theview Page 12 lakeland elementary .com November 2017 arlington middle All-State Honors Porter Spiceland represented Lakeland Elementary School at the 2017 Tennessee Elementary School Cross Country State Championships in Knoxville. Porter placed 24th in a field of 300+ runners and earned a spot on the All State Team. AMS STEM Club Participates in E-Day at the University of Memphis 2nd Grade Pumpkins LES 2nd Grade students presented Pumpkin Book Reports . Penny Olympics The students in Ms. Vaught's APEX class are working on a STEM project called Drops on a Penny and working on Penny Olympics. The Arlington Middle STEM Club travelled to the University of Memphis for the annual E-day (Engineering Day) competition. Students competed in the Egg Drop, Flash Build, K’Nex Bridge Building and Transportation categories. The results will not be revealed for another week, but students performed well. In addition to competing, students were able to watch and/or participate in Boat Car Racing, Industrial Robotics, Straw Rockets, K’Nex Tower Challenges, Spaghetti Challenge, and many others. STEM Club is sponsored by Mrs. Cantkier and Mrs. Mattix. Computer Literacy Classes Now Offered at AMS It is our district’s hope that by providing this course we are giving student’s foundational knowledge that can possibly lead to bright future careers. AMS Students Pledge to Be Drug Free Special Guest Reader Mrs. Booth’s students experienced multi-lingual reading with a recent guest reader. The story is both in English and in Spanish. Mom is reading in Spanish while the daughter also reads it in English. Phases of the Moon 4th Graders represented the phases of the moon with Oreos for a sweet (and educational) treat. Best Buddies LES’s Best Buddies had their first meeting of the year. Students god the to know each other better while painting pumpkins. They talked about superpowers and which power they would love to have. Photos courtesy of LES Computer Literacy is an exciting new course being offered by Arlington Middle School to teach students how to use the Apple Swift coding language. The material being studied by students is totally new and ground- breaking and makes our school district one of the first in the country to teach this programming language at a middle school level. The Apple Swift language is becoming more mainstream in the business world as larger companies like IBM are converting their software to run on it. Teaching coding is requiring students to use critical thinking, problem solving and logic everyday while learning a real-world skill. Professionals speculate lots of growth in the computer programing profession in Tennessee and speculate that coding skills could become a prerequisite for many future jobs. To illustrate this point, Tennessee currently has 6,599 open computing jobs. Computing occupations also pay much higher than the average salary in the state. Unfortunately, not a lot of education programs provide computer programing training to students, especially at the middle school level. Only 625 students graduated with degree in computer science in 2015 and only 18% of these were female. AMS students participated in Red Ribbon Week during the week of October 23-27. Students took part in dress up days as a way to show how they pledge to be drug free. Students also signed pledge cards to promise to be drug free. The pledge cards are displayed throughout the school. Photos courtesy of AMS