Notices for Parent/Teacher Conferences were mailed home yesterday. If you didn't get one, please contact the office. If your scheduled time doesn't work, please contact your child's teacher. Conferences are April 8th and April 11th from 3:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Third grade learning about fractions!
Congratulations to our basketball athletes for representing Floodwood in the Polar League All Star Game: Ryann, Jeffrey, Kennedi and Alexis
Floodwood Gear for the Senior Fundraiser is back!! Orders will be taken until April 8th. Click on the link:
https://floodwoodpolarbears.itemorder.com/sale
Mother/Son Date night is April 6th from 6-8:00 pm at the Event Center. Come for live music, photo booth, spaghetti buffet and sundae bar. Theme is "Secret Spy Agent". Register by March 29; see flyer for details
I am so excited to announce that the Floodwood Library has acquired a large a poster making machine and a book binding machine. These items were purchased with a grant (Clothing, Etc.), donation (Girls Scouts Trp #4260), fundraising with Scholastic Book Fair sales and box tops.
We are Works in Progress in Kindergarten!
We continually work on tasks just beyond our present level of independence and celebrate misconceptions as essential ingredients to learning. With support and some productive struggle, we engage in genuine problems, practice the perseverance required to work through a challenging task, and employ the creativity needed to construct solutions.
Productive struggle is a state of engagement that equips children with the skills and growth mindset to work through progressively rigorous problems that are just beyond their current level of understanding. The challenges your children face each day build upon their interests and background and prior knowledge, which enable them to push through feelings of frustration to identify solutions.
When your children engage in productive struggle, their capacity to learn at higher levels increases. Their brainpower actually expands when they experience and overcome struggle!
This week, we persevered through a series of mathematical challenges involving representations of numbers beyond ten. Students were required to represent two digit numbers with ten-sticks and cubes to build unique garages for their toy vehicles. Many students became visibly frustrated, but they willingly persevered with varying support from adults and peers. The results were astounding! Students asked to play our building game during free choice and wanted to be challenged with even bigger numbers. In their words, teacher's challenges were too easy!
We are a perpetual work in progress in kindergarten. We embrace challenges, celebrate misconceptions, support one another, persevere through difficulties, engage our creativity, grow our brains, and experience genuine learning.
It's a great day at school when there are audible moans from students when told it is time to wrap up our STEM lab session to get ready for dismissal.
Kindergarten and second grade students were deeply involved in planning, designing, testing, and improving arch bridges that would hold the most weight. This is a work in progress that will be revisited next week!
K2 STEM rocking in our tie dye shirts and working through a rainbow bridge challenge!
5th and 6th grade enjoying the nice weather.
Q&A at informational mtg: Q: What would happen to our taxes if there was no longer a school in Floodwood? A: Floodwood School Dist would dissolve into the surrounding school districts. Depending where you live, you will be paying school taxes for that district you become part of.
Dollars for Scholars accepting applications until April 12 @ midnight. Remember to update your profile, update your references, and submit. Your references need to be 2 different people. If you have the same 2 people as last year, they need to submit new letters for this year.
JAMD is next week! Have you made your reservations? Hope to see you there!!
TRIO Talent Search on their first day in Washington DC
The American Red Cross course is scheduled for Thursday April 25th from 6:00-9:00 pm in the Home Ec Room. Cost is $42. Please contact Tara or Maria to register.
Reminder to resident homeowners: Your house and garage value that the operating referendum would be taxed on is the tax assessment value, not retail value. Also, only one acre of your land will be included in that value.
Reminder for the ag property tax payers:the operating referendum is only taxed on the house, garage, and 1 acre which is called Referendum Market Value.To get your RMV, contact Teresa Hart at 476-2285 ext. 70108 or thart@isd698.org. The est. ref tax rate is .29130% of your RMV.
Community Informational Meeting - Operating Referendum Special Election Reminder! Tomorrow (March 19th) at 6PM in the media center. Come with your questions! Ballots will be mailed out on Wednesday to registered voters at the address on file with the county.
K2 STEM Challenge: Truffula Trees
Kindergarten and 2nd grade students employed their creativity as they worked through the scientific process to design and build Truffula Trees. These projects were inspired by Dr. Seuss' The Lorax and were required to stand tall and unassisted in a mount of play clay. What a creative and colorful bunch of STEMers we have!
Building a Sturdy Foundation with STEM Infusion:
Deliberately connecting topics across the curriculum in tangible, meaningful ways results in genuine learning and highly engaged students. Kindergarten students are experiencing STEM-infusion with multiple connections across ELA, mathematics, science, and social studies. Here's an overview of what we did this week. In parenthesis are the subject areas these bullet points addressed.
*We explored a variety of fictional stories and determined characters, setting, and plot. Stories dealing with problems, solutions, creativity, and perseverance were our primary themes across each day. (ELA--Reading Literature; Social Studies)
*We read notes from our leprechaun, Cone (phonetic spelling for Connie), who is a character in fictional stories she bought and mailed to us this week! (How to Trap a Leprechaun and How to Catch a Leprechaun were two of our favorites) (ELA--Reading Literature; ELA--Phonics and Phonemic Awareness; ELA--Foundational Skills)
*We wrote notes to Cone, asking her questions and asking her to please stop messing up our classroom. (Social Studies; ELA--Phonics; ELA--Phonemic Awareness; ELA--Writing; ELA--Reading Literature)
*We used clues Cone provided to make predictions and inferences. This directly transferred to our shared and independent reading work all week. (ELA--Reading Literature; Speaking and Listening)
*We practiced all 100 of our Fry’s 1st Sight Words for Kindergarten in Cone’s daily notes. All 100 were used, read, and reused all week! (ELA—Phonics; Foundational)
*Cone's notes made hints to different types of homes her people live in. We explored 3D shapes of homes, different building materials and strength tests, diverse homes across cultures, and compared/contrasted two types of igloos--one in the Arctic region and another (glass igloo) found in Finland! (Social Studies; Technology; Mathematics--Geometry; Measurement; ELA--Research; Listening; Foundational Skills; Reading Literature)
*We researched the Northern Lights phenomenon (named rainbow, dancing lights by several students). The glass igloos of far northern Finland were created in order that people could view the Northern Lights 200 nights a year! (ELA--Research; Listening; Social Studies; Science; Mathematics--Geometry; Measurement)
*We moved back and forth within the scientific process to construct a sturdy 3D home for Cone that was symmetrical and dome-shaped (which we discovered is half a sphere or a semi-sphere), like those we researched. However, we had to use creativity, collaboration, perseverance, and communication to experience success. It was definitely a team effort and took nearly all week to complete. (Social Studies; Engineering; ELA—Research; Mathematics—Geometry; Measurement; Technology; Writing)
*Cone wrote about her favorite healthy foods, shaped in her favorite sphere shape. We used context clues and prior knowledge to discover her need, looked up our recipe for PB Bites, read and followed the recipe, divided the completed treat evenly between classmates and Cone, and wrote a note for her to eat them that night. (Reading—Foundational; Phonics; Phonemic Awareness; Writing; Speaking; Mathematics—Operations; Geometry)
*We followed Cone’s clues and direction to make homemade pizza “pi” for Pi Day! (Reading—Foundational; Phonics; Phonemic Awareness; Mathematics; Science)
*We learned about the essential “ingredients” needed to produce rainbows, prior knowledge of rainbows, and the arch shapes rainbows make. (ELA—Reading Informational Text; Compare/Contrast; Phonics; Science; Mathematics)
We are excited to continue our “work in progress” with STEM-Infusion. Our discoveries and level of engagement within multiple, intricately-connected subject areas is evidence of genuine learning.
