Visiting Artist: Mandy Harvey

Mandy Harvey, from Americas Got Talent, an amazing singer, song writing, and musician who happens to be Deaf, was amazing Last Friday! She inspired our school, our students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing and each adult who was fortunate to participate in her coming.

In the morning she did a musical workshop for the musically gifted and talented kids at Central. Then she joined the DHH kids at Jefferson for a casual Q & A session about becoming Deaf and successful. The students gifted Mandy one of our new Deaf Awareness shirt and a pop up card in sign language. In the afternoon Mandy performed for Central Middle School, teaching everyone some sign language. After the performance she invited our deaf kids to come up and feel the instruments vibrate when played. She shared her vibrating metronome, pitch perfect visual tuner and how the piano vibrations feel different for low vs high sounds. She is such an A-mazing person and inspired our students to push past barriers to pursue your true passion in life! A once in a lifetime opportunity for the students of Muscatine fortunate enough to share this experience.

PARENTS AS TEACHERS

Parents as Teachers families enjoyed a fun-filled morning at Mulberry School.

COLORADO ELEMENTARY

Students in Mrs. Noll's 2nd grade class at Colorado celebrated great behavior choices with fuzzy hats and hot chocolate on a snowy day!

GRANT ELEMENTARY

Leadership Labs began last week at Grant Elementary School. Led by teachers and community members, students get to choose from many different areas of interest to support Leader in Me Habit 8, Find Your Voice! Some of the Labs include Sewing, Just Dance, Creating a Legacy Garden, Cool Chemistry Concoctions, Coding, Nature Camp, Origami, and more!

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Mrs. Brewer’s begindergarten class at Grant has been working on ramps and pathways during center time! The first challenge was to get the marble into the cup using the ramps.

JEFFERSON ELEMENTARY

Mrs. Randleman’s 3rd graders worked as doctors to practice multiplying with the distributive property. It was a fun and engaging lesson!

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Jefferson 4th and 5th grade girls, their parents, and staff attended a University of Iowa Hawkeye volleyball game on Wednesday evening. The group met at the school for pizza and pop before heading to Iowa City for the game. Nearly 100 students and adults attended and everyone had a great time!

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Art Club has started for 4th and 5th grade students at Jefferson just submitted their handmade ornaments to be exhibited and sold at the Muscatine Art Center. It is part of the Heartfelt & Handmade Ornament Competition which supports the Art Center.

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At Jefferson, Ms. Story's DHH students have made 3-D models of their ears to best understand the parts of the ear and where their hearing loss affects their anatomy. Then they later explained the process again with play-dough models.

MADISON ELEMENTARY

Mrs. Skidmore's Kindergarten class and Ms. Zitzow's 2nd grade class enjoy reading together as reading buddies.

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Mrs. Poppe's 5th graders have been focusing on Science and STEM this week! On Monday they got to go inside of StarLab and learn about the stars and constellations.

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Fifth grade students in Mrs. Poppe's class are working to complete a research project about animals. Mrs. Poppe and Mrs. Berry, Teacher Librarian, are collaborating to teach students many skills including how to choose and locate resources, use online and print encyclopedias, cite sources, take notes, evaluate internet sites, and create a google slide show presentations. Students will share their learning with each other to culminate the project.

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Students at Madison School finally got to participate in their first Makerspace rotations. Stations included Snap Circuits electronics, Keva Plank challenges, a Makedo Cardboard Construction Station, little Bits Coding kits, and Dash Robots. Thanks to DonorsChoose.org and Bandag/Bridgestone for providing funding for our Makerspace!

MCKINLEY ELEMENTARY

This week Mrs. Luna and Mrs. Stange’s 1st grade classes worked together to identify similar traits in animals (babies and their parents).

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Students in Ms. Pedersen's 2nd grade class are reading about jelly fish and learning about contractions in ELA.

Congratulations to Ms. Pedersen's October perfect attendance students! Way to go!

2-By-2, a program donated by Toyota of Muscatine, gave each child in 2nd graders their own "pet" cat or dog to help them learn responsibility, kindness, and respect for living things.

Mr. Steve, McKinley's custodian, gave a student a ride to breakfast at McKinley Elementary this week!

CENTRAL MIDDLE SCHOOL

6th grade Design and Modeling students in Mr. Edkin's class created puzzle cubes. They will be 3D modeling them next week.

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Thank you to Jill Goldesberry and the Stanley Foundation for sharing the Earth Balloon with Central's 6th-grade students. We are studying geography and learning about latitude/longitude, map scale, time zones, and the continents/oceans. This visit was a fantastic opportunity to apply our learning on a larger scale and gain new information about the world.

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8th grade Robotics II students designed bridges. These bridge models can open and close, mimicking the use of road traffic when closed and boat traffic when open.

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Ms. Story's students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing at the middle school have been talking about life choices (college vs. career), independent living (housing expenses, food, clothing, etc), in addition to life goals, career choices and much more. At Central, students enjoyed earning lots of money from having a high paying career as a doctor while Ms. Story was a race car driver with MANY expensive kids.

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Congratulations to this week's 6th Grade Avenger's Superheroes of the Week!

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The Central Middle School Mock Trial teams competed in the Dubuque regional rounds on Monday. They faced some very experienced teams and put up a great competition. The teams were joined by two alternates from West and worked together as they battled to the finish. Great job Muskies!

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Students in Mrs. Negus' 7th grade ELA classes are discussing dramas and plays. Below is a student production of the Christmas Carol.

WEST MIDDLE SCHOOL

Students in Mr. Yerington’s 6th grade science class are learning about the signs of a chemical reaction which include color change, temperature change, production of gas, and formation of precipitate.

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West Middle School 7th grade PLTW Medical Detective students are learning that patients signs and symptoms tell information about what's happening in the human body. Along with that they are understanding through labeling the sheep brain the many different parts of the brain. After learning about the brain, students are finding out how the nervous system allow our bodies to interact with the outside world.

MUSCATINE HIGH SCHOOL

The MHS Choral Department has kicked off their yearly discount card fundraiser! We have fantastic deals that will save you WELL over the $20 cost of the card. In fact, by using the three one-use tabs only, you can save $15! That's three-quarters the cost of the card back into your pocket. PLUS the deals on the card last until October 1, 2019. That's right--this card's deals are good for the next eleven months. Get a couple pizzas every week or even every month for an easy family dinner! With our card, you can buy a Domino's pizza and get a pizza of equal or lesser value FREE. Get a free medium drink with any purchase of a footlong sub at the Muscatine or Fruitland Subway! Winter is on its way, and Iowa winters are hard on our cars--head over to Miracle Car Wash for their Complete Rain-X wash, and get $5 off with your card!

This card can save you money on purchases that you are already making ($5 off your minimum $50 purchase at Hy-Vee!). You can't afford NOT to buy this card! For information or to buy a card, see any MHS choir student or contact Mr. Ryan (jonathan.ryan@mcsdonline.org) or Mrs. Burford (teale.burford@mcsdonline.org). See the pictures below of the actual deals on the card. Bottom three tabs are one-use only and must be turned in at time of purchase. Support our Boosters program, support our students, and support the arts!

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Students in Mrs. Phelps' yoga class were so lucky to have one of our students, who is from India, guest teach a class. The room was packed with his fellow students supporting him. It was an amazing experience.

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MHS Ag students learned about poultry this week.

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Mrs. Coffman's AP Prep Biology class studied osmosis by designing gummy bear labs.

MUSKIE SPORTS

BOYS CROSS COUNTRY

DISTRICT-WIDE STAFF

NOVEMBER'S OUTSTANDING MCSD EMPLOYEES!

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 the community, parents, staff members and students. The district will be recognizing employees monthly in their buildings as well as at the televised board meeting of that month. The district would like to take this opportunity to introduce to you and congratulate November’s best of the best at MCSD!