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

Metric Olympics and Car Baked S'Mores

We have now completed our first full week!  It was good to get back into the routine of school and then have a three day weekend to regroup and get ready to go again.  I am always glad when we pass Labor Day and settle into the schedule for the year.  It usually takes a little bit before everyone gets moving in the right direction.  Because of this, I was not able to get out into the classrooms as much as I would have liked. By the end of the week, however, I was able to catch some cool things going on!

Mrs. Buck's Fifth Grade Science students took over the hallway for their annual Metric Olympics.  A couple of the events that I saw them competing in were the Straw Javelin and the Cotton Ball Toss.  This lesson is designed to get the students excited about measurement.  Judging by the engagement of the kids and the competitive conversations, I think it was a hit!  It looks like next week they will be finishing up and having their medals ceremony.  Way to go Mrs. Buck and the Fifth Grade Science classes!

I also heard that the second grade students were baking S'mores in a car as a science experiment. Unfortunately, I cannot confirm this because I did not make it in to sample one, but I am sure they were excellent!  For more information on this, check with Mr. Fields or Mrs. Forsyth to see how baking in a car works.

Next week is a four day week as we have Monday off.  I hope everyone has a restful Labor Day weekend and is ready to go on Tuesday!

See you soon!

Mr. Cunningham

The first week is in the books!

To start off the school year, I thought it would be good to give you a picture of what the first week looked like at school from my perspective.

The beginning of school is always exciting for me.  I love watching the kids come in the first morning.  It is amazing how much the kids grow up over the summer.  This year was no different! 
The day got off to a good start with the teachers welcoming the students in and getting them into the routine that they will follow for the next 158 school days.  Normally, we start the day with an all-school assembly where we welcome everyone and go over a few school rules.  We decided to do things a little different this year and save the assembly for the end of the day.  The morning moved along quickly and we were ready for lunch.  Lunch in a grade school is always a challenge as we have 250 kids to serve in about 75 minutes.  We had a couple of changes to contend with this year with a new computerized lunch system that did not work quite right and a slightly different schedule for the cooks and lunchroom staff to get accustomed to.  It was a struggle at times, but we made it through!  After lunch, Ms. Hill and I visited the rest of the classrooms and presented our character ed cards that some of the teachers are referring to as "zing" cards, since our kids "put the zing in amazing!"  To end the day, we had a camping themed assembly with a visit from Ranger Rick, my "brother," the camp ranger, from Alaska.  Rick talked to the students about five rules:

1. Be kind to others.
2. Follow directions the first time.
3. Always do your best.
4. Learn something new every day.
5. Have fun!

To finish up the assembly, Ms. Hill and her crew served s'mores to the kids for an after school snack.  It was a fun first day!

We finished up the week with a great day on Friday.  Everyone settled into the routine, and we worked out some of the kinks that came up the day before.  Lunch went very well, as this year's group seems to be figuring it out quickly!  Plus the computer entry worked very well and sped up the process.

Overall, it looks like it is going to be a very good year at MLGS.  I hope the kids feel the same way!

Mr. Cunningham

2014-15 Getting Started

Welcome to the start of another year!  Over the summer, I had a great deal of time to think about the upcoming school year.  Although I felt that my first two years went pretty smooth, I knew there was plenty of room for improvement.  One of the biggest things that kept coming back to me was parent involvement and communication.  I felt that there needed to be a more constant stream of information going to parents about what we are doing with their children for eight hours a day.  I decided that this would be my focus for the year, to improve communication between the school and the home.

This is my plan. Over the course of the year, there are many times that I see projects that our students are doing and I leave the classroom amazed at what a great group of teachers and students we have.  I would like for all of my staff, students, and parents to be able to experience that same feeling.  So...I decided to start a weekly blog that will focus on our staff, students, and parents.  I will be discussing projects that I think are cool that our students are doing and include pictures or video.  I will include websites I find that I think would be helpful to parents.  As many of you know, I am now the father of seven, yes seven, wonderful children.  For this reason, I often come across helpful tips that some of you might also benefit from.  Hopefully, doing this will help you get to know me an little bit better, and also get a glimpse into the daily life of our school.

Finally, I hope that this conversation will open the door and make more of you have a desire to get involved.  Maybe that means volunteering to read with a student once a week, or maybe it means serving on the Parent Teacher Organization or the Parent Advisory Committee.  For some, it may mean coming to parent/teacher conferences with a better understanding of what your child does each day.  Whatever the case, I know that I will benefit from it, and I hope that you will as well!

I am looking forward to a great year!  Thanks for all you do!