The Fun of Glee Club

by Colin Brinkley

For the 5^th graders who attend Glee club in 2009-10 in Great Brook Middle School previously haven't sang for a while for just over a month, due to Glee club being canceled due to snow days and Mrs. Moran being absent. But, at least now that we are having school more often, Glee club will be back in business!

I interviewed Mrs. Moran, who is the Glee club, Choral and music teacher, to see what she liked about Glee club. She said that she loves to have her kids and that 'It is a great way to end the long day', and that one of her favorite songs (witch we happen to be doing this year) is “Get on Board This Train” which is a Gospel (fast) song to do, and fun to sing!

Here are some cool facts about Glee club:

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  It has been going for 17 fun-filled years
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  This year, about 25 students sing in Glee club
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  You have to be a 5^th grader to join (if you are a 6^th, 7^th or 8^th grader, you can join Choral.)

Just keep in mind 5^th graders, if you want to join Choral next year, anyone can join!

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All About Chorale

By Andrew Hunt

Chorale is a singing group and the teacher for it, who is Mrs. Moran, is excited to teach many kids different songs.


In chorale, Mrs. Moran has approximately 50 kids and wants to try to sing 6 songs for the spring concert. Chorale meets 4 times a week. One day for altos (lower voices), another for sopranos (higher voices), another for 6th grade, and another for everybody. They meet in Mrs. Moran's room at block 8 of the school day (not sure when all the days are). Every kid works hard when doing chorale. She hopes kids like chorale and for the spring concert, there is no theme. Mrs Moran has been doing chorale for 35 years and has done it in different schools.

For the spring concert, the chorale group is singing “We Are The World” and Mrs Moran is doing that song for Haiti. “It is a great way to end the day,” Mrs. Moran said her favorite song she has ever done is “California Dreamer”. The only time Mrs. Moran has ever needed to cancel a performance is when the ice storm of 2008 hit us.


Well thats the heads up on chorale. Keep on reading our articles on our site for more information on different things.

Skiing at Crotched Mountain

Here are some picures of the after school skiing club I hope you enjoy

By Heather brown

The Awesome Assembly

by:Morgan Whitney

by:Emma Kendall

There was an assembly at GBS, in mid February and it was GREAT!!! The assembly had the Great Brook Bobcat the bobcat was there the whole assembly!

Here is a run down of what happened...

We had a skit about Change For Haiti. The skit featured Mr. Elder, Mrs. Cullinan and the KHOKO Club. Change for Haiti is a fund raiser to help raise money for Haitians in need.

Then Austin Hoffman came in and had a presentation about his hot air balloon. The hot air had to have about 5-10 minutes to heat up. The students felt tense during the wait. Once it did heat up and lifted we all cheered.

Then the skit came again and Mr. Elder dressed up in a suit. When Mrs. Cullinan tried to explain what Change for Haiti was and he still didn't get it!

When that was over we had the awards and a lot of people got them. There were some people from each grade...

We had student of excellence awards. These are the kids from fifth grade. Joseph Ricco,Matthew Larouche,Sylvie Holding,Hannah Fitzgerald,Meaghan Farrell, and MacKenzie Burnside.

Those are the fifth graders now for sixth. Veronica Raczek,Tristan Payne,Emma Kendall,Kyler Gullage,and Noah Cass.

Now for seventh grade. Mersadies Robinson, Courtney Ouellette, Liam Healey, Heather Brown, and McKayla Baron.

Now last but not least...Eighth grade these are the people. Alicia Whitney, Nicole Tetro, Triston Spaulding, Aaron Lakus, Campell French, Joe Edwards, and Khara Aird.

Once that was over we had another skit and Mr. Elder was dressed up as a marine!

After that we had a game of “Smarty Paws” there were 4 teams 1 was Cool,another Dynamite,Awesome and Brilliant. The subjects were about Science,Math,Language Arts,and Social Studies. Team dynamite was made up of Enstein McSmartington (Mr. Bolduc) asks the question and the team who rings in first gets the chance to answer If they get the answer right, their team gets a point. If they get it wrong the next team to ring in gets a chance to answer.The team with the most points wins the game. The Team Dynamite won!

Once that was over we had another skit and this time Mr.Elder dressed up as a girl. Then Ms. Cullinan announced that if we brought some more money in Mr. Elder would serve lunch to us in the girl costume! So that was the Ice-cream scoop on the assembly!

GBS' Special Specials

By: Matt Davis

Here at GBS specials are the highlight of my day. Every year you get to take each special once. Except for PE, you take PE twice. Here are all the specials and some major projects you do in them.

Art- In art your teacher will be Mrs. Bando. Art is really fun if you don't goof off the whole class. In 5^th grade you paint rubber fish then press them against a t-shirt. You even get to keep the t-shirt! In 6^th grade you make little bowls as you learn the art of pottery. You also make some awesome weavings! In 7^th grade, you make masks out of pappier mache. They look really cool when finished. In 8^th you make a Mola which is a drawing that looks like a stained glass window.

IT- IT stands for Industrial Technology. Your teacher will be Mr. Sweeney. IT is also known as wood shop. In 5^th grade you make a awesome catapult then try to launch things into a bucket. 6^th grade IT is really fun. You make your own product and advertise it in front of the class. 7^th graders make solar cars and race them in the gym! In the 8^th grade you make your own C02 rockets. You get to launch them at Shea Field!

PE- PE is a highlight of my day. First you have a warm-up for the first 20 minutes then you play a game of whatever sport your learning about. You learn about and play, football, volleyball, teamball and many more. In case you didn't know team ball is Ultimate Frisbee except with a ball.

Technology- In technology (tech) you learn all about computers and how to use them. With Mrs. Hale you do power point presentations, spreadsheets and learn how to be safe online. Every week she posts the weeks assignments in the tech center web site. Typing is huge in tech class. Every class you start with ten minutes of typing.

Music- In music your teacher will be Mrs. Moran. She is very hands-on you will learn the music just as fast as regular reading. You play guitar, keyboards, and many others! In 6^th grade you ever get to do an independent research project on any instrument of your choice!

Health- Your health teacher is Ms. Kebler. She with teach you about alcohol, staying healthy, drugs and a couple other things. What she teaches you is important in life. Some of it my seem gross or uncomfortable but it's good to learn.

CFS- Last but not least, CFS. CFS stands for Consumer Family Studies. In CFS your teacher will be Mrs. Blair. You will learn a lot in CFS like sewing, babysitting and cooking. The cooking projects are very fun! You make pizza, pretzels, cookies and many more. With sewing you make puppets and stuffed animals. Before CFS I didn't know anything about sewing. In life you will need babysitting a lot. From teen to adult!

Those are all the GBS specials and what you learn!

Mr. Elder Changes For Haiti

by Angie LaFave

Conditions in earthquake-stricken Haiti have taken their toll on the heart of our vice principal, Mr. Elder... or should I say Mrs. Elder? Our new program to help the victims in Haiti is called Change For Haiti – kids collect spare change and donate it to Haiti. If everyone together as a school saves up $750 for Haiti, Mr. Elder will “change for Haiti”... in other words, he'll don a wig, a dress and lime-green fuzzy slippers and serve lunch to us! Mr. Bolduc, upon hearing the news, said in a completely serious tone, “It wouldn't surprise me if he did.”

To save $750, each student only needs to bring in two dollars in change, but we need everyone's cooperation!

Many of the fifth, sixth, and even seventh graders were totally psyched about seeing Mr. Elder in a pretty dress! However, eighth graders are going to be a lot harder to convince. “No one wants to see that!” said Ty Doncaster.

Briah Davis commented, “[Mr. Elder is so silly that] he would do that anyway. He doesn't need money.”

“Make the skirt pink, and make him wear high heels!” Storm England said.

But again, like I said, fifth graders are all for the idea. Colin Brinkley, a fifth grade magazine student, said, “That would be really weird, yet really funny.”

Teachers are in shock, but when they got over the mental image, they, too, supported the idea. “I think that will definitely motivate kids because it provides incentive,” Ms. Darling, the eighth grade LA teacher said.

We only need about a hundred more dollars! That may sound like a ton, but look at it this way. If one hundred people save up only one dollar each, we'll have enough. Or, twenty people can each save up five dollars! We have almost 400 hundred kids in this school, so it should be pretty simple.

So, if you want to see Mr. Elder serving lunch in a pretty dress, save up as much change as you can find! Even if we can't reach our goal, we'll still be helping the victims of Haiti!

Team A's Big loss:(

By Liz and JT


The Great Brook A team Basketball had a tremendous lose against their brother district South Meadow School on January 28th . All the Boys tried their best in the first half of the game, about half way through the first half Kyle M. scored 8 points, Then Cory, a home schooled boy, scored 1 points.

But Suddenly SMS caught up with the Bobcats, by half time the Bobcats were losing 10 to 20. By the third quarter SMS got ahead by another 20 points. Forth Quarter the Bobcats only had 8:00 minutes to try to catch up with SMS, but the bobcats had a surprise waiting for them and Gray K. scored 4 points and Malik E. scored 2 points, but it wasn't enough to catch up.

The Bobcats were down to 3:00 minutes and SMS scored another 20 points and by the end of the Game the score was GBS 19 points and SMS 61 points. A lot of the boys thought they were going to win. 8th grader Evan Corliss said ''This was our chance to beat them here at home, because we had lost when we were at SMS''.

Suddenly Mr. West asked Mr. Baldwin '' were is Campbell French?'' Mr. Baldwin said '' I don't know he was at the game yesterday in Marlboro, but he's not here''.''Some of the guys said he was sick''said 8th grader JT clough .So the boys lost there game against SMS and they move on the the next team on Friday against Marlobro.

Winter Olympics 2010

By Julia Cooper

The winter Olympics have finally ended! The Olympics this year were being held in Canada in Vancouver British Columbia. They started on February 12 and ended on February 28. There were 2500 plus athletes. The events included Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Cross-Country, Curling, Figure Skating, Freestyle Skiing, Ice Hockey, Luge, Nordic Combined, Short Track, Skeleton, Ski Jumping, Snow Boarding, and Speed Skating.

The Opening Ceremonies was filled with athletes, dancing, tap dancing, singing, and the Lighting Ceremony. The Lighting Ceremony did not go as planed when the 4 people who were going to light the torch arm coming out of the ground did not work. Only 3 of the arms came out instead of the 4. After this they had to go light anther one outside due to the Olympics being inside. (You have to be able to see the flames from outside. It is a rule for the Olympics)

Another part of the Opening Ceremonies was a moment of silence for Nodar Kumaritashvili who died at a hospital after running of the tracks during his luge practice.

On a happier note the rest of the Opening Ceremonies was filled with dancing and singing. The also showed the athletes from each Country with their flags.

The Closing Ceremonies started with a big joke about how the fourth arm did not come up. There was a clown 'fixing' the problem for the fourth person she finally lit the fourth arm.

They then had kids come out with a red / white snowboard (red on one side white on the other) and make the Canada flag and other shapes.

Then the awarded the Cross - Country people because they had just performed. They also had allot of people sing, danceing and talking about Canada. They also had things about the next place they are going for the next Winter Olympics in 2014 in Sochi, Russia.

I interviewed some people about what do they think about the Olympics, here is what they had to say...

"I think they were awesome! The Americans rocked!" Ms. Rice exclaimed.

"Pretty good," Kylie Mitchel said.

"There OK," Jordan Roberson replied.

"I am bewildered by the game of curling," Deb Creekmore from A.E.S stated.

"There awesome!" Katie Taylor exclaimed.

"I don't watch it," Maddie Harvey replied.

"They were intense. But I only watched it because of Shaun White," Monica Cooper stated.

Some people liked the winter Olympics, others did not. Some watched it others did not. Diffrent people diffrent opions... What did you think about the Olympics?

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Junk to Funk

By Emmasae Hallen

In Feburary at GBS, the students are meeting Jeff Erwin and "The Beast" in a workshop called Junk to Funk. In this workshop you play music with recycled material. Each and every student will have one workshop at a certain block of the day. 70 minute blocks give the student more time to have fun. At the end of the week GBS will have an assembly with kids who want to preform in front of the entire school. Some call it stomp but others call it pure music.

"This is a way to express your creativity and music talents," said an anonymous 8th grader. "I have musical talent but others that I didn't think had it, had it!"Usually schools have people come and give demonstrations and have the kids sit and watch it. This program though, is a fun way to learn about Junk 2 Funk by playing the instruments just to see how much fun it really is!

"The 'Beast' is so much fun! I want one!" said 5th grader Cameron Ibach. The "Beast" is a big triangular piece of metal with signs, pots and shovels. Kids use sticks and hit it to make noise. Most of the pieces of the "Beast" make a high noise except for frame of it. There are so many other instruments made out of metal, plastic and wood.

"Working with kid is so much fun and each school is more creative than the last," Jeff Erwin said.

If you want a fun thing for kids to do at your school, try Trash Can Lids Production. Go online to http://www.trashcanlidproductions.com/SchoolPrograms or go to the homepage at http://www.trashcanlidproductions.com.