Virtual Tour of Discovery
Full Transcript
Speaker: Brandon King (Tour Guide)
Hello and welcome to the virtual tour of Discovery Middle School. My name is Brandon and I’ll be your tour guide. Whether you’re coming from North Point, Mary Frank, Horizon, or somewhere else, I hope this tour will be informative and interesting.
You will most likely arrive at school on the buses in the back parking lot, walk through the main bus door and into the commons, where you’ll begin navigating your first experience at Discovery.
This is the commons. Here, nearly every place in the school connects together. To the left of the large display on the wall is the cafeteria, but most people just call it the cafetorium.
This large room doubles as a cafeteria and an auditorium, hence the name. This is where you will eat lunch. For 6th graders, lunch will occur after third period. For 7th graders, after fourth period. And for 8th graders, after second period.
Each period, you will attend a different class for 55 minutes, then have 5 minutes to travel to your next class. There are 6 periods in a day. This is the lunch line. Here you can buy lunch if you decide not to bring it from home.
If you went to a PHM elementary school, any funds you currently have in your lunch account will be transferred to Discovery. Contact the main office to add money to your lunch account. Now let’s get back to the tour. The commons also connects to the gymnasiums, the music rooms, and the various offices, but we’ll get back to that later.
For now, let’s head up the stairs to the left of the bus door to reach the hallway that serves as the hub for upstairs activity. Remember, whether you’re going up or down the stairs, always take the right side to help with the flow of traffic.
In this upstairs area we’ve just reached, you can access the health labs and the sixth and seventh grade hallways. You can turn left to access the seventh grade hallway and turn right to access the sixth grade hallway. Don’t worry, we’ll show you how to get to the eighth grade hallway later. We’ll use images of the sixth grade hallway as an example since the three grade hallways are set up mostly the same.
All the hallways are shaped like a half circle. This is a locker. There are three metal hooks on the walls for hanging backpacks and coats, as well as a metal shelf towards the top. You will leave your backpack and most of your textbooks in your locker during the day, and you can pick up needed textbooks from your locker during the five-minute passing periods that you use to get from class to class.
Cell phones and other electronic devices should be placed in your locker during the day and turned off. Some teachers will ask you to BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, on certain days. This is the only time where such electronic devices will be allowed outside of lockers during the day. Don’t worry if you don’t have a device. Teachers who ask you to BYOD will have a plan for those students who don’t have devices.
Many new students worry about getting their locker open. This is relatively a non-issue at Discovery. Many people are able to easily open their locker within the first week. If you do happen to be unable to open your locker during the day, just find the nearest teacher. Many teachers have keys that can unlock your locker. Those teachers who don’t have keys can direct you to a teacher that does.
Now let’s head to the top of the main stairs where we found the central upstairs area. From here we can access the IMC, meaning Instructional Materials Center, or library. This is where you can check out books to read. You may take them home and read on your own time, or you can read IMC books during our daily read time. This is a time before first period where you can read a book from home or from the IMC for 30 minutes. You will have read time with your first period teacher, so report to his or her classroom first thing in the morning.
Also connecting to the library is Computer Lab A. You can head out the back door of the library and turn left to get there. This is where your Media Explorations class will be. We’ll talk more about that in just a minute when we get to rotations.
The final place of interest upstairs is the health labs. Depending on your grade, you’ll have health class with different frequencies. For sixth grade, health is a rotation. For seventh and eighth grade, health alternates every two weeks with gym.
No matter what grade you’re in, you’ll have two periods of the day that are not taken up by core subjects (math, language arts, science, and social studies). Sixth graders will have one music class that alternates every day between gym and rotations. The only class choice in sixth grade is which music class: Band, Orchestra, Choir, or Piano Lab.
Seventh and eighth graders have one elective (either rotations or music) and one period that alternates between gym and health. Rotations classes change every nine weeks and may include Media Explorations, FACS (Family and Consumer Sciences), World Languages, Health, and Art.
The tour continues through the music and gym areas, locker rooms, two gyms, guidance office, main office, health office, eighth grade hallway, and rotations hallway (including Computer Lab D, FACS, and the World Languages/Art room). The video concludes with a summary and credits.
Full detailed narration is available in the video.