North Shore Middle School

North Shore Middle School
Location
800 North Shore Dr. Hartland, Wisconsin United States
Information
Type	Public
Established	1997
School district	Hartland-Lakeside School District
Principal	Michele Schmidt
Grades	6–8
Color(s)	Black, Dark Green
Mascot	Knight
Website	NSMS

North Shore Middle School is located in Hartland, Wisconsin and was built in 1997 by C.G. Schmidt. The school has 462 staff and students. The building has the "appearance" of a left hand, with the palm of the hand being the commons/lunch. The thumb is the office. The index finger is the 6th grade wing, and the middle finger is the specials wing. The ring finger is the 7th grade wing and the pinky finger is the 8th grade wing.

North Shore has all the core subjects which includes social studies, language, literature, science, C.R.E.W (Cultivating Recreation, Education, and Wellness), and Math. It also has electives such as French and Spanish, Band, Choir, S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Drama, and Art. The school also offers extracurricular activities such as student council, chess club, basketball, volleyball, musicals, video game club, Battle of the Books, Math 24, Dodgeball club, and more. Most of these activities occur before or after school.

C.R.E.W.

The physical education program at North Shore Middle School is C.R.E.W (Cultivating, Recreation, Education, Wellness), taught by Sarah Huffer and Dave Christman. It is broken up into 3 categories. From these 3 categories, students learn the importance of staying physically fit and healthy and ways to improve their overall health and fitness. Each day, students will either have Health, Activity, or Fitness depending on the schedule of their grade. Health is taught in a classroom, where students will learn about their health and ways to stay healthy. They also learn about the dangers of alcohol and drugs. Activity combines fun games like handball, capture the flag, and tukeball, and teaches students the importance of cooperation, respect, delegating responsibilities, and ways to stay active throughout their lives. In Fitness students do activities like yoga, running, and dance and practice these skills to improve flexibility, endurance, strength, and stamina. C.R.E.W. also has many guest appearances. These include visits from personal trainers, professional dancers, dance teachers, and other sports players.

Art

Many students at North Shore take the opportunity of joining Art. Art is taught by a very dedicated teacher named Josh Breslow. Students get to experience various art styles such as: painting, drawing, making sculptures, and many others. One thing that they have been working a lot with this year is ArtRage. ArtRage is a virtual program that allows the students to do everything that they can do on paper, on the computer. ArtRage is designed to have spectacular graphics because it looks and feels exactly like how it should look and feel if you were really putting paint, glitter, etc. on paper.

Foreign Language Classes

In North Shore Middle School, there are two foreign language classes, French and Spanish. The French teacher has been teaching for many years. She teaches in many different styles. By playing bingo, make flashcards, and play online games, students learn basic French skills. She uses these methods to prepare you for high school French. When you are in 6th grade you have an opportunity to try all of the classes you could choose next year. When you try out French you learn some basics like colors, numbers, and days of the week. In 7th grade French you are being prepared for 8th grade French. You are being taught how to speak and pronounce, write full sentences, and many more helpful things for future French classes. In 8th grade French you are being taught to the full extent of the teacher's knowledge. She makes sure you are very well prepared for high school French because she knows that you would like to succeed. She makes sure you have been well prepared and are completely ready.

The other foreign language class is Spanish, taught by Kim Morris. Like French, all 6th graders of North Shore get a taste of Spanish, and at the end of the year they can choose it as an elective class for 7th grade, and possibly 8th grade. Excelling 8th grade students are chosen by the teacher to test out of Spanish 1, allowing them to start Spanish 2 as a Freshman in high school. The Spanish has many great ways of teaching, including interactive learning. She has a permanent SMART Board in her room, allowing the students to learn "visually" by looking at the projected computer screen.

Band

North Shore Middle School offers band for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. The band instructor teaches the jazz band, the middle school band, and orchestra. She also plays the clarinet in the Waukesha Symphonic Band.

Band is one of the many electives you can choose in North Shore Middle School. If you choose to take band in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade, it will become one of your daily classes. Every week, to earn points you are required to practice 80 minutes on your instrument. It is also your responsibility to make sure your instrument is clean and in good playing condition. If you are still very interested in band during 8th grade, you can try out to be in the Arrowhead High School band.

Fifth grade students come into the North Shore band with different types of experience levels. Some students took a summer class in the districts “Summer Splash” program. Other students participated in the 5th grade band and other students come in with no experience at all. By the 2nd or 3rd trimester every 6th grader is around the same playing level. If you choose to take band there are many different instruments to choose from. The main instruments come from the instrument families of brass, woodwinds, low winds, and percussion. The only requirement for 6th grade band is that if you would like to play percussion you must have two years of piano experience. In band, Mrs. Sundstrom makes sure that you get some one-on-one time with her. Every other week you go to a group lesson with one other student playing the same instrument as you. Mrs. Sundstrom looks at your strengths and weaknesses so she can help improve your playing.

Theatre

Theatre is another elective that is offered to all grades, taught by Julie Meeusen. In 6th grade, you are introduced to what theatre is. You will mainly get comfortable with talking and acting in front of the class. In 7th grade you will start to work on vocal and facial expression through activities and games. In 7th grade you will also use a lot of technology for things like script rewrites, movies, slideshows, silent movies and presentations. In eight-grade theatre you learn the history behind theatre, work on projects, movie trailers, scene writing, and have a shakespeare unit. The theatre teacher worked backstage at Milwaukee Repertory. She was the stage crew advisor of the Arrowhead play “Murder Takes the Veil”. She is also a Shakespeare fan.

Student Council

The North Shore Student Council is considered very fun among many students involved with it. The Student Council focuses on helping the school, community, and people, while having fun along the way. An experienced Student Council advisor leads this "always helping" organization of advanced Middle School students.

The student council has nine committees: Button, Birthday, Dance Decoration, Publicity, Service, Spirit, Thank You/Awards, Pep, and Staff Appreciation. All of these committees meet about 1–2 days a week in a before school meeting, lasting about 25 minutes. The Button Committee makes buttons for Silent Shamrock and Hush Heart Day. The Birthday committee posts students' birthdays on the monthly school calendar and adds creative symbols. The Dance Decoration committee decorates the school monthly and before dances. The Publicity committee makes posters of upcoming events and writes announcements for events in the school and reads them over the public announcement system. In the Service committee, students engage in projects to help the community, such as blood drives and fund raisers. The Spirit committee makes spirit day posters, and displays them throughout the school to encourage students to participate in spirit days. In the Thank you/Awards committee, students write thank you cards and provide gifts to teachers who chaperone school events. The Pep committee works with the Spirit committee to get the student body excited about school events. In Staff Appreciation, the students make a monthly gift expressing their appreciation to teachers.

Math 24

Math 24 is a challenging math game that you can play with a group of friends or by yourself. It is played with cards that have four numbers on them. You must add, subtract, multiply, and/or divide to get to the number 24. There are easy, medium, and hard cards. There are many variations of this game including single digits, with only numbers one through nine, double digits with numbers one through 24, exponents which uses regular numbers but you have to use an exponent at least once, and fractions and decimals where it uses all real numbers between one and nine.

Near the end of March and the beginning of April a tournament is held for the Arrowhead School District. Three people are selected from each school to participate in this. You play four rounds, in random groups of three players. If you win your round you get a blue chip, second place gets red chip, and third place gets a white chip. After the four rounds are completed, they give out one ribbon to a person from each school with the highest amount of points. Lastly, they give out places 1-6 for the overall highest points.

Jazz Band

North Shore Middle School offers before and after school extra curricular activities. One of these activities is Jazz Band. Every one in this group comes in at 7:45 a.m. and rehearses until 8:30 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. They play many styles of jazz music such as swing, blues and funk. Also the Jazz Band always gets the opportunity to start “Rockin’ Knight”. Rockin' Knight is an annual talent show for students to showcase their singing abilities and the Jazz Band is the opening act! These dedicated jazz students are even invited to perform in Arrowhead’s “Hot Chili, Cool Jazz” where they serve hot chili and then you can listen to some cool jazz.

Dodgeball Club

The North Shore Middle School dodgeball club meets every Wednesday morning from 8:00 a.m. until school starts which is around 8:40 a.m. This club is run by two 6th grade teachers. The club is welcome to all students of any grade.

Musical

Every year North Shore performs a musical. The auditions are held during December, but the rehearsing doesn't start until after winter break (which is in January). The play director is very experienced and is a language teacher here at North Shore Middle School. The musical director is also the choir teacher. And the art teacher is the Crew and Set Design Director. Also the Choreographer is from To the Point Dance Studio.

In past years North Shore has performed shows such as Scrooge, Tom Sawyer, Pirates of Penzance, Oz, Oliver, The King and I, and many others. The performance is usually held on Thursday and Friday at 7:00 and Saturday at 2:00. The musical for 2009 was You Ain't Nothin But a Werewolf. Guests that came to the show had some fun with us as we spoofed the 1950s. They were rockin' and rollin' in the aisles as we sang and danced our way through this hilarious comedy.

S.T.E.M.

STEM stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, taught by dave Grevencamp. This is a class where students are taught the basics of engineering for the future. CAD is also taught in this class on a program named AutoDesk Inventor. It has a somewhat user-friendly GUI and is well built.

The teacher also holds an after-school club on Tuesdays and Thursdays (Thursday for females only, but females can also attend the Tuesday one), where the people who enjoyed the class are allowed to go above and beyond and create projects that are not in the regular class schedule.

Basketball

Many students at North Shore participate in the game of basketball and cannot wait until North Shore's basketball season starts. Students get an opportunity to sign up for basketball at the beginning of the year and later in September the girls get a chance to showcase there talents and are divided into teams of equal talent. Near the beginning of October, practice starts, and then basketball games begin shortly after. The girls basketball season lasts until the middle of December and boys begins just a little bit later.

With North Shore having three grades, the school has about 3-4 teams per grade. Each team plays 12 games in the season with other teams in our conference (AMSAC). The seeding in the tournament is determined by how your previous games went. All the teams in AMSAC (Arrowhead Middle School Athletic Conference) play in the final tournament at the end of the season. Most of the schools in AMSAC go to Arrowhead High School. The teams in AMSAC include North Shore, Merton, Erin, Friess Lake, Stone Bank, Swallow, Lake Country, and Richmond. The rules in this game consist of the same official rules with 6-minute quarters. Each team visits other schools to have a great game of basketball, and the tournament is usually played in 2-3 different schools. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and the consolation winner are awarded with a plaque to hang on the walls of your school.

North Shore's basketball jerseys are reversible jerseys, with the colors of green and white. The shorts have the school logo of a knight and school name. There are numbers on both sides of the jerseys. North Shore's basketball gymnasium has a Knight in the middle and two scoreboards on both sides of the gym.

Volleyball

North Shore Middle School offers athletic programs like Volleyball to all of its 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. This program is Co-Ed, meaning both girls and boys can participate in it. Volleyball takes place mainly after school, in the months of March and April, and is part of the Arrowhead Middle School Athletic Conference (AMSAC). All North Shore teams get to play against the other schools’ teams in the AMSAC conference, and also, there is an end of the year tournament against these teams. All students that sign up to participate in North Shore athletics have to attend an assessment period where they are evaluated and then placed on teams. These assessments are not tryouts; therefore, everyone who participates in one is guaranteed a spot on a team. Teams are coached by volunteers, which are expected to hold practices in the middle school gym and attend all games. Teams consist of about 12 players.

Choir

Choir is one of the electives offered at NSMS, taught by Jon Runaas. Each year there are two main performances held at the school and about eight other performances. They are Singing in Wisconsin, Hawks Inn, the General Mitchell International Airport, Shorehaven, The Pfister Hotel, All State Choir, and U.W. Whitewater Treble Festival. The last trip for Choir is going to Chicago and performing in the adjudicated musical festival, sleeping overnight at a hotel, going to a museum, and then finally go to Six Flags Great America. Last year the 7th grade choir’s music consisted of, in the winter concert, “Furaha”, “Nutcracker Jingles”, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, “Canon of the Bells”, “Winter Wonderland”, and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. In the spring concert they are singing “Joyful Song”, the Grammy winner by Coldplay “Viva La Vida”, the song “Seed to Sow”, the famous Louie Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”, and a Broadway medley called “The Best of Broadway”. The 8th grade choir’s music consisted of, in the winter concert, the song “Where are You Christmas” from the movie the Grinch, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, and “Joy: A Medley of Carols”. In the spring concert they are singing “Joyful Song”, the Grammy winner by Coldplay “Viva La Vida”, the song “Seed to Sow”, the famous Louie Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”, songs from the hit movie “Mama Mia”, “Battle of the Jericho”, “He’s Gone Away”, Runaround Sue, and My Girl.

Honors Choir

Honors Choir, which has now been changed to "Show Choir", meets every Monday and Friday morning at 7:45. 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students are all allowed to join Honors Choir. This year the Honors Choir music has been the song “Cantate Deo”, “An Irving Berlin Christmas”, “Bidi Bom”, “Christmas Jazz”, a medley of the Beatles music called “Beatlesongs”, “In This Ancient House”, “The Voice”, and the song “Seasons Of Love” from the famous Broadway show RENT.

Treble Choir

Treble Choir, which is now called "The Divas", is a choir just for girls at North Shore. The divas meet every other Wednesday at 7:45. Treble choir is only for 7th and 8th grade girls, but after the winter concert 6th grade girls can join. Treble choir’s music has consisted of “Walking in the Air”, “The Snow Has A Song”, “Sleigh Ride”, “I’ll Stand By You”, and “Caro Mio Ben”.

External links

• NSMS web page