School Notes

Olga Brener Intermediate School

The fifth-grade students at Olga Brener study and do presentations on different countries throughout the world. As part of learning about countries, they got the opportunity to learn about Sweden from a foreign exchange student attending Shawano Community High School, Vendela Anderson. She gave a presentation on the similarities and differences of Sweden and the United States, and even brought money to be passed around for them to see.

Hawk Way Trait Award winners for the month of December are Brandon Reed, Jakobe Baumgartner, Braiden Mott, Dominic Helder, Morgan Van Eperen, Lindsey Peters, Addison Olsen, Will Bieber, Brandon Smith, Alexis Christopherson, Emma Hintz, John Zeise, Aidyn Poquette, Norma Roubideaux, Ella Skenadore, Alex Radtke, Taylin Ejnik, Gabe Bohm, Brianna Goetsch, Joseph Jumonville, Margo Gull, Ethan Schwitzer, Kylie Teetzen, Morghan Marquardt, Matthew Berg, Matthew Kaczmarek, Tea Tomow, Chloe Kissinger, Jordan Faubel, Maggie Wopshel, Bus Daebler, Isabel Colon, John Rhode, Mattilyn Koehler, Hunter Balcer, Morgan Westphal, Zach Rusch, Emma Krueger and Caden Nelson.

Upcoming: Friday, PTO Hoedown; Jan. 30, Family Math Night; Feb. 14, half-day in-service; Feb. 17, no school; Feb. 21, Gnome Games.

Shawano Middle School

We are beginning the second semester of the school year already! This year has been going by very quickly. The eighth-grade students toured the high school to receive information about next year, and everyone is working hard to make sure all students experience success here at SCMS, both academically and behaviorally. Discipline referrals to the office are cut in half with our PBIS efforts, and the walking club is wildly successful. We would like to share an interesting website that shows how important attendance at school is: https://getschooled.com/attendance-counts. Enjoy!

Bonduel Elementary School

What is occupational therapy and how does it help students in the school setting? Occupational therapy works on specific occupations. For example, in the school setting, a student’s main occupation is to complete academic tasks for learning purposes. Occupational therapy works to ensure students can functionally participate in school activities. In the school setting, occupational therapy is a related service that comes into play when a child is found to have a disability needing an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan). To receive special education services through an IEP, a student must have a disability that affects learning to a degree where specialized services are needed in order to be functional within the school setting. Occupational services that are commonly worked on in the school setting include motor skills, cognitive processing, visual perceptual skills, attention, organization and sensory processing. In conclusion, within the school setting, occupational therapy is a related service that may be provided to improve the function of students; allowing them to better perform in the classroom and be successful!

Hillcrest Primary School

In Trisha Springborn’s class, we started January by reviewing the rules, then jumped right back into working on letters of the alphabet. We had fun making a jack in the box for the letter j, cutting and reviewing shapes. We made an alligator for the letter a and had to cut out the sharp teeth in a zig-zag pattern. We have also picked out the first letter in our names and have been filling in sounds we know when writing our daily message. The boys and girls enjoy the surprise when giving clues to their peers on what is hiding in their letter of the week bag. We continue to work on line basics and following and listening to directions. Manners are reinforced daily. The theme of the year in our classroom is showing kindness to our peers and teachers.

Melissa Mahloch’s class has been practicing shared reading (reading with a partner) and discussing our thoughts on the pictures we see in books. We have been reading wordless picture books. We have been playing a lot of math games to practice counting, recognizing numbers and writing our numbers.

Sally Slezewski’s class has participated in making Mossy and Hedgie, two characters that they have learned about from our author study on Jan Brett. In our studies we have learned that she writes and illustrates her books. We have discovered that she uses borders in all of her books and draws detailed animals. We will continue with other author studies for the next few months.

In Michelle Oss’ LEADS Charter 4K class, the children had the opportunity to work with a literacy coach from Illinois, Jennifer Burton. Mrs. Burton taught us about text features in books such as bold words, labels, photographs and captions. Now the children are working on making their own text features book to help them remember to look for those text features when they are reading for information.

St. James Lutheran

Grade 4 recently read “Mystic Horse,” a Native American legend. After discussing the story, the students read about pow-wows in their readers. Desiree Pyatskowit, Thalia Crow and Kaden Cox told the class about some of the Menominee and Native American traditions. Desiree brought her jingle dress to school to show the students. Students also read Ojibwe, Navaho and Quiulette legends and retold the stories with their own pictures.

Our St. James Lutheran School is celebrating 125 years! The second milestone weekend is Saturday and Sunday. This is also the kickoff to Lutheran Schools Week. One of the guest pastors for this special weekend is Pastor Ben Vogel. He is the son of Susan Longmire and the late Pastor Jon Vogel, who served here as pastor for 10 years. Pastor Ben Vogel is also an alumnus of St. James. We are very excited to have him come and share a special message with us. The students of our school and preschool are going to be singing at three of the services. They are going to be divided by last name. Last names beginning with N-Z will be singing at the 5:30 p.m. service Saturday, A-G at the 9 a.m. service Sunday, and H-M at the 10:30 a.m. Sunday celebration service in the gym. They are singing the same song, so if you can’t make your designated time, you are welcome to come to another service time. Students will come forward when it is their time to sing, then return to sit with their families. This is going to be a great weekend you won’t want to miss. Bring your family and friends, too. We look forward to seeing you to there.

Congratulations to fifth-grader Molly Miesbauer who has read more than 1 million words this year through Accelerated Reader. Great job, Molly! How much is a million? Well, counting once per second (easy at the start, but tough when you reach the hundred thousand mark), eight hours per day, seven days per week (no weekends off), it would take you a little over a month to count to one million!

Sacred Heart Catholic School

Our basketball players thanked their parents by recognizing them during parents’ night Friday. Parents were announced and given a rose by their students to show their appreciation for supporting them in their extracurricular activities.

Maybe you drove by our school this past weekend and saw our new addition? We have installed a large billboard sign by our parking lot that shows off our new logo. It also states what we are all about: faith, family and learning. We would like to extend many thanks to the parish Building and Grounds Committee for installing our new sign before our special celebration this upcoming week. The week of Jan. 26 through Feb. 1 is Catholic Schools Week. We are excited to start off our celebration with an open house themed “Winter Wonderland.” We are welcoming our families, students, staff, parishioners and community members who would like to learn more about our school while enjoying some fun activities. There will be sensory stations, face painting, penny-barge building and a basketball shootout at 1:40 p.m. in the gym. The Home and School is offering a free spaghetti luncheon from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the cafeteria. The activities in Winter Wonderland take place from 12-2 p.m. We will also be taking names for registration for the 2014-2015 school year. If you would like to RSVP for the luncheon or would like more information, please call the school office at 715-526-5328 or email us at admissions@shcscardinals.org .