News and information for staff members and the Madison community
Vol. II No. 6 - April 10, 2007
Sandburg ES: The students in Jamie Kobishop's bilingual kindergarten created an early spring when they tye-dyed shirts as a classroom project. They are shown in the attached picture modeling their creations outside Sandburg Elementary School. Pictured with the students are, from left, Peggy O'Neil, Mary Lohr, and Jamie Kobishop.
Sandburg ES: Over 150 people participated in International Reading Night at Sandburg School. The event celebrates the storytelling traditions of many different cultures and included readers from numerous ethnicities. It was truly a celebration of Sandburg's diverse culture.
Frank Allis/Nuestro Mundo: An art exhibit was held at the Pinney Branch Library featuring artwork from students in kindergarten through 5th grade at Frank Allis/Nuestro Mundo. The exhibit also included artwork by Allis/Nuestro Mundo art teacher Steve Hurst (pictured below). The display ran through March 29th.
Franklin ES: (Pictured from left to right and top to bottom) Robin Pettersen, Sandy Pfahler, Bob Fenchel, William R. Hibbler, Alicia Michaels, First Lady Jessica Doyle, Barb Rubin, Alonte Tornai gathered at the Executive to celebrate Mentor Appreciation Month. he Franklin-Randall Mentor Program has been matching children with mentors for fifteen years. Some mentors have maintained contact with their mentees as they enter and complete college!
Think. Laugh. Live: On March 21st, Sennett (Middle) Voices of Youth social action drama group performed for our 7th grade Health students and again to members of the community with Tom Farley (pictured with drama group) from The Chris Farley Foundation. Students used humor to deliver messages on substance abuse and prevention while teaching skills that will empower kids to resist peer pressure.
Many thanks to Meriter Hospital's Friends of Meriter program for funding this great event. Sennett's Jazz Band, under the direction of Kathy Punwar, served as a terrific 'talk show' band. A special thanks to the Voices of Youth students under the direction of Debra Farrar-Simpson and Jennifer Tomlinson. They spent many hours preparing for these great shows.
Sennett says, "Let them eat Pi!" On March 14th (3.14) Sennett Middle staff and students celebrated Pi Day. In mathematics classes across the school, students studied the number with songs and activities. Everyone had delicious pies. What a wonderful smell filled out hallways! Many students took the challenge of memorizing as many digits in the number pi as possible. Our top students were Sydnie Murray (58), Abby Stroup (61) and Andre Johnson with 101 decimal places.
Sennett 'Steps Up' to the challenge: In March Sennett Middle staff was challenged. Lincoln Elementary and Cherokee Middle School challenged staff to wear pedometers for a week to measure our steps. Sennett had 45 staff participate in the activity. We loved the challenge as the halls were filled with chatter about steps, taking walks, using less email and getting healthy. Our top staff steppers were Jamie Nondorf, Phil Lu and David Wasserman.
Mad About Books: Middle School Battle of the Books
We're all familiar with basketball's March Madness, but another heated competition, the Battle of the Books, also takes place every March. Battle of the Books is a reading enrichment activity organized by the librarians at the middle schools. Its purpose is to expose students to new authors and outstanding literature, to encourage them to read carefully and with understanding, and to connect students to a larger community of readers.
This year, 502 students participated in the Battle of the Books. For the past four months, students have been reading books from a designated list of notable titles. During the school contest, teams of up to four students tested their knowledge of the books as they answered questions about them and identified titles and authors. Each middle school sent one team at each grade to the district competitions, held on March 6, 7, and 8.
The district competitions are friendly but intense events. Teams have only thirty seconds to answer a question, so there is usually a quick, animated huddle across the table before the team gives an answer. Winners at the three levels included: 6th grade — Cherokee; 7th grade — O'Keeffe; 8th grade — Hamilton. Congratulations to the winning teams and congratulations to all the students who took on this challenge!
6th Grade Winners
7th Grade Winners
8th Grade Winners
40th Strings Festival: The Madison Metropolitan School District 40th Annual Strings Festival occurred on Saturday, March 24th. Strings and orchestra students in grades 5- 12th performed in the festival. Students from the La Follette and East area schools performed at La Follette High School (pictured above), and students from the Memorial and West area schools performed at Memorial High (pictured below). Congratulations to the strings and orchestra students for sharing their musical talents at the festival. Also a special thank you to the strings and orchestra staff for their efforts in preparing the students for the festival and for their efforts throughout the year.
Congratulations to Julie Fitzpatrick's third-grade science students from Allis Elementary who were winners of the America's Anniversary Garden Competition, a garden design contest sponsored by The National Junior Master Gardener Program. Their garden design was one of twenty-five selected from applications from all over the nation. They received a check for $250 and over $250 worth of gardening curricula, supplies, and seeds. The grand prize winner will be selected from the top 25 in April. The students' design featured benches with flower boxes on the ends to line the sidewalk leading to the front door of Allis School. Implementation of the design will be postponed, however, due to construction slated for this summer inside the school. Students in the picture are working on the Allis circle garden, which will also be waiting for the construction to be finished.
MSCR Annual Chess Tournament
Madison School & Community Recreation (MSCR) held the Annual Chess Tournament on Saturday, March 3 at University of Wisconsin Union South. MSCR holds this as a culminating event for the after school chess clubs. More than 110 youth participated in the event.
Shorewood Elementary School won the team championship in the elementary section.
The overall winner was David Jin (grade 3, Shorewood), who had a perfect 5.0 score; second place finisher Tim Zhang (grade 1, Van Hise); third place winner was Annie Jin (grade 5, Shorewood).
Trophies were also given to the top finisher in each grade level:
Grade 5: Nick Nager (Marquette)
Grade 4: Mihir Kansara (Stephens)
Grade 3: Nate Krause (Home school)
Grade 2: Reagan Gray (Home school)
Grade 1: Kofi Schiller (Shorewood)
Kindergarten Champion: Patrick Fasick (Leopold)
Winners in the secondary section:
1st - Kelsen Alexander (grade 11, East High School
2nd - Tim Broman (grade 9, West High School)
3rd - Bob Gallenberg (grade 12, West High)
Trophies were also given to the top finisher in each middle school grade
level.
Grade 8: Hongkai Pan (Hamilton)
Grade 7: Orin Kurth (Sherman)
Grade 6: Xiaoming Tim Wang (Jefferson)
Ian Hannah, MSCR Recreation Specialist-Middle School Programs, Neil Gleason and George Alexander coordinated the event.
Family Math Nights at Falk Elementary: The Foundation for Madison Public Schools provided a wonderful opportunity for building a partnership with our Falk families around math. The first series of math nights brought 78 families together for a meal and the opportunity to learn math standards, strategies and play math games with their children. By creating a comfortable environment, our teachers were able to support families' efforts to "do math" together. Surveys completed by the families reveal that they appreciated spending quality family time together around an educational activity!
In these years of diminishing resources, we welcome the community support for our Madison public schools to explore new and creative initiatives that bring families, teachers and students together.
Last Updated: Tue May 1 16:08:33 2007
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