Mrs. Hines' Kindergarten celebrated Dr. Seuss and Read Across America.

Mrs. Noll's first grade participated in Mindful Moments!

FRANKLIN ELEMENTARY

Franklin 1st grade students in Ms. Holder's art class drew and colored Cat in the Hat to celebrate Dr. Suess' birthday!

Students in Ms. Machael's Third Grade Class shared their research notebooks with their peers.

5th graders in Mrs. Weeks' class listened to the Water Rocks presentation put on by ISU. Students learned about biodiversity and how human changes to ecosystems affect animal species.

GRANT ELEMENTARY

Miss Dindinger's Begindergarten class at Grant School has become awesome at working independently in literacy stations. They love to write in their journals, work on words/letters, and listen to reading on the iPads.

Grant Elementary celebrated Read Across America Day and Dr. Seuss's birthday with an event called Muffins with Mom and Donuts with Dad. Parents came and read with their kids and enjoyed a treat!

JEFFERSON ELEMENTARY

Jefferson staff and student's decorated classroom doors in celebrating of Dr. Seuss' birthday! ...

and held a Family Fun Night with games and student talent show! ...

and then had a special celebration with Super Heroes talking about bullying followed by special guest readers in classrooms. The afternoon was topped off with A Parade Down Mulberry to honor Dr. Seuss.

Read across America was celebrated by Miss Zitzow's first grade at Jefferson with a guest reader and Cat in the Hat masks for our school wide walk down Mulberry Street!

Students in Mrs. Hepker's class also participated in Read Across America with special guest Maria Ricaurte!

MADISON ELEMENTARY

Today Mrs. Swailes' Pre-K at Madison played rhyme or slime to work on identifying rhyming words

Mrs. Swift came from Junior Achievement to teach Mrs. McGill's 3rd graders about city zoning and planning.

Madison students get ready for the Big Brothers Big Sisters Bowl for Kids Sake, March 25th. Join us for the fun!!!

MCKINLEY ELEMENTARY

McKinley School had their Reading Night on Thursday this week! Students got to do a craft, read with families, show their parents ThinkCentral and how they use it in the classroom, and check out the book fair! Students also got to pick a free book!

Mrs. Strouf's first graders playing "whack-a-word" with their weekly spelling words! They also love buddy reading with their new Journey's curriculum.

First graders at McKinley getting their Boy Scout awards at the awards banquet.

Mrs. Bobay, the district's data specialist, showed McKinley 4th and 5th graders how to read their ASPIRE reports in order to share this data at their student led conferences next week. Thank you Mrs. Bobay!

MULBERRY ELEMENTARY

Mrs. Green's kindergarten class had fun learning with Dr. Seuss books on Read Across America day!

Third Graders in Mrs. Dindinger's class earned the PBIS award for having great hall behavior! Way to go 3rd Graders!

CENTRAL MIDDLE SCHOOL

Ms. Christenson's 7th grade Honors ELA students participated in their "Teaching Tolerance" Magazine Expo. This is where students worked in teams to create magazines with informational articles about topics that related to tolerance or injustice. They presented them to a panel of judges to compete for an internship at local news stations.

Mr. LeClere's PLTW: Design & Modeling class built air skimmers and raced them in the West Middle School Small gym this week. This project works on the 6th graders measuring skills and their ability to follow directions.

Students at Central recently participated in Battle of the Books! Teams of four students read at least four books each and compete against each other. The winning team will then advance to battle the teacher team!

This past Tuesday the CMS Orchestra Students and the MHS Philharmonic Students presented their concert. Pictured here are the CMS 8th graders and the MHS Philharmonic performing their combined piece together.

WEST MIDDLE SCHOOL

On Thursday Mrs. Blanchard's WMS orchestra students and the MHS Freshmen Orchestra had their concert. Pictured here is the WMS 8th graders and Freshmen performing their combined piece.

Do West Middle School Coders Dream of Electric Sheep? In Mr. Kvapil's computer science class, coding students organized columns from shortest to tallest by using the Bubble Sort algorithm to gain insight on how computers think and organize data. The Bubble Sort is a true-false algorithm in which each pair is compared and swapped if they are not in order. They timed themselves to see how fast they can do it!

MUSCATINE HIGH SCHOOL

Last Friday, February 24th, the MHS Chamber Orchestra presented the world premiere of a new string orchestra piece titled, An American Waltz. The piece was written specifically for our Muskies, and based off of Mark Twain's quote about sunsets in Muscatine. The piece featured Nicole Garrido, Emily Fillmore, Kaleb Drawbaugh, Alex Sichterman, Bronson Brown, Brooke Steele and Jack Eichelberger on solo parts. Composer Josh Reznicow was present for the premiere, which was met with a standing ovation at it's conclusion. (Photo Credit: Tammi Drawbaugh and Tim Doyle)

Both Muscatine High School Show Choirs competed on Saturday February 25 at the Marion Masquerade Invitational, Marion High School, Marion Iowa. They received 1st Runner Up at the competition! Congrats Muskies!

Additional details can be found here:

Members of the Teen Library Committee visited Grant Elementary and Mulberry Elementary on Thursday, March 2nd to share books with students as part of their Read Across America celebrations.

Muscatine Agricultural Program competed at Hawkeye Community College Wednesday March 1 in a Regional Envirothon. We finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th at the Cedar Falls location. There will be four more regional events and then the top fifteen teams will compete at the State Event April 24th. The teams skills and knowledge were evaluated in wildlife, soils, aquatics, forestry, and this years current issue of soil health.

In Mrs. Walker's Physics classes this week, students started their unit over Momentum and how it changes through an impulse, or external force acing upon the mass as it is in motion. To introduce this concept to the students, they went outside to do a water balloon toss and see the differences in how they toss and catch a water balloon without it breaking from different distances. The farthest a water balloon was tossed without breaking was 24 meters and the shortest distance that one was tossed and broke was 3 meters.

In Mrs. Walker's Chemistry classes, students completed a lab where they decomposed Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda) by heating it gently for 10 minutes. The students then had to calculate the theoretical yield, which is the amount of solid product they should have at the end of the experiment, of Sodium Bicarbonate. They had three possible chemical equations for the decomposition of it. They then compared their actual yield, the solid mass remaining in the crucible after gently heating it, with the three theoretical yields to determine which reaction was the correct one for the decomposition of the Sodium Bicarbonate.

In Mrs. Walker's Earth Science classes, students started their unit over Weather and Climate by watching the movie An Inconvenient Truth and discussing global warming and what it is and means for the Earth. To continue this unit, students are creating powerpoint presentations over the nine different climate zones that exist around the world. They will be presenting their findings in regards to the annual weather patterns, animal and plant life and other fun facts they learn about their assigned climate zone to their classmates next week. Look for pictures of the presentations to come next week. :)

DISTRICT-WIDE STAFF

The MCSD Employee Recognition Award is for those employees who go above and beyond on a continual basis for students, staff, and/or parents. Nominations can come from community members, parents, and staff members. The district would like to take this opportunity to introduce to you and congratulate March's best of the best at MCSD!