And the winners are...

Mrs. Farrar's Kindergarten Class

This year as part of our Indian Pride Character Education program funded by a grant from the South Central Community Foundation, we are awarding a "Spirit Stick" to one class for outstanding effort.  Throughout the year, we will continue to award the Spirit Stick to a different class every couple of days or so.  While the class has the spirit stick, they will be able to earn double Zing cards for the drawing in the next month's Indian Pride Assembly.  Our first winner this year is Mrs. Farrar's Kindergarten class!  They earned the spirit stick this week for listening, being kind and encouraging to others, and trying their best!  Way to go everyone!!!


I am really excited with the way this program is going.  Our staff, led by our counselor Ms. Hill, has really bought in and is teaching and encouraging the students.   It is nice to see everyone working together and being genuinely excited for each other.  Our shirts came in last week and we are distributing those out to everyone today.  It will be awesome to see all of the kids wearing their shirts and showing off their Indian Pride!

Indian Pride

This week we had our first Indian Pride assembly at school.  We will be having an Indian Pride assembly every month to talk about the new character trait for the month and to showcase the many talents of our students and staff.  We started this in an effort to boost our school pride as well as to recognize our outstanding students.  Our character trait this month is respect.  Ms.  Hill will be discussing respect in the classrooms and helping our students understand what that looks like in their lives.  For each trait, we have a poster that is in the hallway and in the teachers' classrooms to help the students remember.  This month's character is Respect Reggie, pictured to the side with a list of ways he shows his Indian Pride.  We have drawings at the assemblies to reward students for earning Character cards or as we call them "Zing Cards".  All of the staff have these cards to give to students when they do something that demonstrates great character.  We were blessed to have many of the local businesses donate money and gift cards to help us with the prizes. Overall, it went very well, and the kids had a great time!  Thanks to all of you involved  for helping us make it happen!

John and Lainey

Speaking of Indian Pride, students in Mrs. Wiley's and Mrs. Rutan's fourth grade classes have been reading and discussing the history of Medicine Lodge.  They were excited to get to see a newly acquired piece of our local history.  Mr. John Nixon with the help of his granddaughter, Lainey Coley, presented an original copy of the "Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty".  Mr. Nixon described how he had come in possession of the document, answered student questions, and helped compare the reading information to the actual treaty.  The Fourth graders wish to thank Mr. Nixon for sharing this document and his time.

Wagons Away!

Mrs. Rutan's class started a unit on "The Little House on the Prairie" last week.  As part of their project, they constructed covered wagons.  I felt like that was a good representation of the school year as we are beginning another school year.  This week, it started to feel normal at school again. Everyone is settled into the schedule, beginning of the year testing and grouping is almost complete, and we have a stretch of "normal" weeks coming up. Wagons away!

One of the big focuses we have academically is for our students to become more proficient at writing.  We are trying to help students put their thoughts down on paper in a way that makes sense to the reader.  I saw an example of this when I visited Mrs. Rambat's Science class this week.  When I came in, Mrs. Rambat was showing many leaves collected by Jacob Eck and they were discussing why the leaves had different shapes.  The students then had to write a prediction abut how the shape of a leaf affects the way a tree gets sunlight.

On Friday, the 5th Grade Science classes concluded their Metric Olympics unit with a visit from a special guest.  Carmen Forest came to talk about her experience as an Olympic handball player for the United States in the 1984 Summer Olympic Games held in Los Angeles.  The 5th and 6th Grade students learned about handball, the sport she played, and what it takes to be an Olympian.  Carmen also brings a great message about perseverance and illustrates it by showcasing some amazing Paralympians that beat incredible odds to reach their goal of being Olympic athletes.

Next week, we have pictures on Monday and our first Indian Pride assembly!  Looks like it should be a great week!

Mr. Cunningham