Welcome to Washington

Auditions for the Spring play "Into the Woods Jr" will be held on January 16th and 17th.

Bring your Public Library card to lunch on Thursday, January 17th, so you can check out at the Bookmobile!

Honor Roll Recognition will be 8am on January 18th.

8th Grade Students!!! All Library books need to be returned or renewed by Friday, January 18th.

Parents: please take the 5Essentials survey and remind other parents to take a look too.

Young Authors is due before February 1st.

Have a great 3 day weekend with no school on January 21st for Martin Luther King Jr Day.

The 7th grade goes to the Challenger Learning Center January 23 & 24.

Prepare to have fun - the Student Council 7th/8th Winter Dance is January 25th, 6:30-8:30pm.

Students will be released to buses at 10:30am on Wednesday, January 30th for SIP Day.

We hope you've been practicing for the All-School Spelling Bee on January 31st at 9:30am. Family members are encouraged to attend!

Bring your Library Card on January 31st to check out at the Bookmobile during lunch recess!

Represent your college pick on February 1st, College Colors Day, with a college or university shirt.

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Headlines & Features

DAPCEP Saturdays at Bradley

Join your friends and make new ones while exploring the exciting worlds of science, technology, engineering & math! Register Online Today www.dapcep.org/illinois Details: For: 5th -8th grade students Time: 9:00-12:00 p.m. Location: Bradley University. Courses Include: electrical engineering, explore coding, environmental engineering, mathematics & music

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Student Pick-up and Drop-off Guidelines

7:05-7:30am and 2:00-2:40pm, CARS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THE FRONT PARKING LOT and students may only be picked up and dropped off in the North Parking Lot located near the ball fields. For student safety, only buses may drive in the Main Parking Lot during these times. Thank you for your cooperation in helping keep our students safe. After these times, students must enter or exit the building from the foyer near the Office. Students may not wait for rides at the Crossroads or outside, but instead need to stay in the foyer until they see their pick-up person or the Activity bus.

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5Essentials Survey Now Available To Students, Staff and Parents

Please take a moment to help us out! We really want to see parents take the survey, because our school needs over 50.0% of our parents to respond in order to learn how parents feel about Washington. Parents, students and teachers: Peoria Public Schools will join the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) in the sixth statewide survey of school climate and learning conditions. The survey provides a unique opportunity for teachers, students, and parents to have a voice in improving their schools. Teachers, students, and parents will be asked to take a 20-minute research-based survey to help identify strengths and weaknesses in their school’s learning environment. This survey will serve as an opportunity for schools to reflect on progress since the last statewide implementation. School-level reports will be generated if at least 50 percent of parents respond to the survey. These reports will display summary information, such as the percent of parents agreeing that they feel comfortable raising concerns to their child’s teacher. It is important that our parents, students and staff from each of our 27 schools participate in this annual survey to make their voices heard and impact change.

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Dress Code Update

All special "College Colors, spiritwear, or uniform-free" day information will come from the principal. We have reviewed our code, investigated other equivalent schools, received feedback, and assembled a panel of students, parents, staff, and teachers to update the Dress Code. Parents and students, please review the updated Dress Code from the handbook. The updated Dress Code will be effective beginning November 2017. Any violation of the code results in a referral to the principal. Repeated violations will warrant parent contact and loss of privilege/referrals. We have had a lot of confusion and questions about the jean policy at Washington and want to make the policy straightforward. Policy on jeans is as follow: - Jeans are not allowed to be worn at school with the following exceptions: individual picture days in fall and spring, spirit week and designated-free dress days. If in doubt, always clear with home room teacher or principal before jeans are worn. - On the days jeans are acceptable, absolutely no ripped jeans are to be worn. - If jeans are worn on a day that is not listed in exceptions above, students’ parents will be called to bring uniform pants, shorts, or skirt to school for student to change into. - If ripped jeans are worn any school day, parents will be called to bring uniform pants, shorts, or skirts to school for student to change into.

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Jump Trading Simulation and Education STEAM Program Application

The Jump Trading Simulation and Education STEAM program is for students from grades six through twelve. PNC Bank is sponsoring scholarships for a variety of courses that are led by Jump Mission Partners which take place on Saturdays at Jump. The PNC Bank scholarships are specifically for the Jump STEAM Saturday courses during the fall, winter, and spring sessions. For the 2018-2019 school year, we are accepting applications from students within Peoria Schools. Transportation will not be provided. The course location: Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center 1306 N. Berkeley Ave. Peoria, IL 61603 The courses are one day for four or eight hours. The courses are healthcare focused and entail a variety of topics including: Medicine, Technology, Engineering, Art and medical visualization.

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4th Annual Holiday Event Contest

Our 4th annual Holiday event contest was this Friday December 21st. Students dressed up in these categories: creative holiday outfit, Ugliest sweater/holiday outfit, World Holiday Tradition. Click for a list of classroom winners!

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Hult Health Education Schedule

Parents, please click here to see the Health Education schedule. Note as well when students will be visiting Hult versus students viewing a presentation at Washington. If parents choose to opt their student(s) out of a particular lesson, or out of all lessons, please let the Nurse know as soon as possible, so that we can make arrangements for that student.

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Veterans and Active Duty Military

I would like to thank everyone who helped plan, donate, pick up, serve, smile, clean up, and otherwise make Grandparents day 2018 at WGMS such a huge success! Days like yesterday remind me how thankful and fortunate we are to have such a wonderful group of parents who step up and do whatever is needed to help the school. The grandparents truly enjoyed yesterday! I thank Rob Reneau, Eric Reneau, and Jenny McDonald for their Chair duties and all of you in so many numbers who helped make the day a success. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! --Mr. Poehls

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ISBE School Report Card Results

Students at Washington Gifted Middle School once again performed better than the district and state average on the Illinois PARCC tests. While our results are lower than the previous year, Washington is still proud of our scores, and very excited that many of the other district schools had great gains on their PARCC scores! At Washington, 77% of students are considered Ready for the Next Level according to PARCC scores. Almost 90% of 8th grade students leaving WGMS are considered proficient in Algebra I skills. Let's make sure we are all learning and trying our best all year long!

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Application Process for Incoming Students Has Begun

Applications are now being accepted from current Peoria Public School students as well as from those who currently do not attend Peoria Public Schools. The program at Washington Middle School is a full-time academic program designed to support academically gifted students. It offers students an opportunity to engage in learning activities at an accelerated pace, depth, and complexity of on grade-level and above-grade-level curriculum. ALL PARENT REFERRALS FOR CURRENT PEORIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS STUDENTS MUST BE RECEIVED BY THE DISTRICT GIFTED SELECTION COMMITTEE BY FRIDAY, January 11, 2019.Please do not contact Washington Gifted School regarding the application process or the status of your child's application. If you have any questions, please call 672-6536.

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Student Technology Information

Click this article to learn more about laptops, iPads, Streams, and student email accounts.

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Study Skills

Knowing how to study is an important skill to have. Students who use strategies to understand and remember what they read, such as underlining important parts of the texts or discussing what they read with other people, perform better in class and on tests. One of the biggest differences between top students and everyone else was that when they study, they take practice tests. Only 11 percent of students do this, but they perform better because they are studying in a way that goes beyond memorizing material. Also helpful is to create a study timetable & stick to it-- first include things you like/need to do on your schedule and then work study time in after. This method naturally ensures that you are doing things you like to do every day in addition to studying, so you don’t burn out and give up. These kind of balanced schedules are easier follow. Here are some ideas and strategies to help students learn more:

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Renaissance Home Connect for Parents

Parents- We are hoping that you will soon begin using Renaissance Home Connect as a way of monitoring and encouraging your child’s reading practice. It can be a valuable tool for monitoring your child’s progress. Research confirms that parental involvement in a child’s education is a strong predictor of student achievement. Thank you for your involvement in your child’s education. What is Renaissance Home Connect? Renaissance Home Connect is a tool that connects the school and home to keep parents informed of their child’s progress in Accelerated Reader, and encourages the child to practice reading at home. How does Renaissance Home Connect help me improve my child’s reading progress? • You can view your child’s progress toward reading goals and view all books that your child has read and quizzes your child has taken. • You can access an online search tool, AR BookFinder, to search for books using various criteria, including author, subject, or reading level. • You can receive emails that reveal results for Reading Practice Quizzes and provide links to the website where you can check progress. The same login and password that your child uses at school will work at home with Renaissance Home Connect.

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Jumpstart Washington: What it means to be a Wildcat

Advocate for yourself! Organization will save your life! Social Skills for Success are Important! Remember you are awesome! Have fun, dream big and make good choices!

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The role of productive struggle-from the Remarkable Times

Preparing students for their future isn’t about helping them to earn A’s or getting high GPAs. It is really about making sure that students are prepared for the workforce. The phrase “productive struggle” is used to describe the process of learning and the work that goes into it. To give an example that most people relate to is when one is learning to ride a bike. This is hard work and takes practice. There is often a little bit of help initially and support along the way but at some point, the bike rider needs to do all of the pumping of the pedals and maintaining of balance.

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