Scroll down to see what our students and staff have been doing This Week in Our Schools!
Featured this week:
- District-Wide Students: Gifted/Talented Future Problem Solvers.
- District-Wide Students: 8th-9th Grade Orchestra Students.
- District-Wide Students: Middle and High School FFA Students.
- District-Wide Students: CMS/WMS Robotics Team.
- Parents as Teachers: Home Visit Fun!
- Colorado Elementary: Kindergarten Thanksgiving Feast.
- Colorado Elementary: Mrs. Hines' Kindergarten Class.
- Franklin Elementary: Student Leadership Team.
- Grant Elementary: Mrs. Sitzmann's and Mrs. Paul's Kindergarten & 4th Grade Classes.
- Grant Elementary: Mrs. Dusenberry's 1st Grade Class.
- Grant Elementary: Mrs. Paul's 4th Grade Class.
- Grant Elementary: Rocco Receives Recognition!
- Jefferson Elementary: 2nd Grade Pajama Day.
- Jefferson Elementary: Ms. Story's Deaf and Hard of Hearing Class.
- Jefferson Elementary: Ugly Sweater Wednesdays!
- Madison Elementary: Miss Yetter's Class.
- Madison Elementary: Student Leadership Team's Buddy Bench Fundraiser.
- McKinley Elementary: Ms. Pedersen's 2nd Grade Class.
- Mulberry Elementary: Mrs. Green's Kindergarten Class.
- Mulberry Elementary: Kindergarten-Third Grade Thanksgiving Feast.
- Mulberry Elementary: Miss Blaesing's 4th Grade Class.
- Central Middle School: 6th-7th-8th Grade Ag Classes.
- Central Middle School: Mrs. Mrosko's Class.
- West Middle School: Mrs. Duran's ESL Class.
- West Middle School: Mrs. Soy's 6th Grade Math Class.
- West Middle School: Mrs. Bloomquist's 6th, 7th, 8th Grade Library Classes.
- West Middle School: 8th Grade Girls Basketball Team.
- West Middle School: Mr. LeClere's PLTW Design & Modeling class.
- West Middle School: Mrs. Matteson's Home Room Students.
- West Middle School: Mrs. Matteson's 6th Grade Classes.
- Muscatine High School: All State Musicians.
- Muscatine High School: Ms. Christensen's Geometry and Pre-AP Algebra 2 Classes.
- Muscatine High School: Ms. Reade's World Language Students.
- Muscatine High School: Ag 1 Students.
- Muscatine High School: Mr. Paul's Animal Nutrition Class.
- Muscatine High School: Mrs. Huot's English 12 Classes and Mr. Smith's Economics Classes.
- Muscatine High School: Mr. Day's Ag Students.
- District-Wide Staff
DISTRICT-WIDE STUDENTS
K-8 Gifted and Talented
GT Future Problem Solvers across the district did field research on toxic materials at the Scott County Waste Disposal Station and the Muscatine South End Fire Station.
8th and 9th Grade Orchestra
On November 17th, five of our 8th & 9th grade students were selected to participate in the Iowa Junior Honors Orchestra in Ames. These students were selected from hundreds of other students from around Iowa as some of the best 7th-9th grade string players in the state. They rehearsed all day and performed an amazing concert that evening. Congrats to these well-deserving students!
Middle and High School FFA Students
A few of the Muscatine FFA middle and high school girls volunteered to wrap presents at Sinclair's Ladies Night Out on Thursday.
CMS and WMS FTC Robotics Clubs
CMS & WMS have new FTC Robotics Clubs this year!! Teams have been working hard to design and build their robots to take to competitions. At their first competition, the Muscatine teams finished in the top four spots – out of twelve teams competing. Way to go!!
PARENTS AS TEACHERS
Parents as Teachers held fun home visits this week!
COLORADO ELEMENTARY
Kindergarteners at Colorado celebrated Thanksgiving with a class feast!
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Mrs. Hines' Kindergarteners worked on measuring and comparing objects in the classroom to their string. They also compared the length of their names to their friend's names.
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Mrs. Dusenberry's 1st grade class enjoyed showing their family that “thumbody” is SO thankful for you and we love you a handful!!
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Students in Mrs. Paul’s 4th grade class learned about reptiles from Michelle Berns from Discovery Park/Muscatine County Conservation Board.
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Congratulations to Grant Elementary's therapy dog, Rocco! He will be inducted into the Flat-coated Retriever Society of America Breed's Club! There are approximately 12 dogs in the country who earn this honor each year!
JEFFERSON ELEMENTARY
Second graders at Jefferson celebrated the short holiday week with a pajama day. All Jefferson students and staff could choose to wear their jammies to school. Everyone especially loved Miss Buster's awesome Chewbacca pjs complete with mask
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Starting the day off right in Ms. Story's DHH Classroom on pajama day at Jefferson! ...
... The Men of Jefferson lend their faces during No Shave November to Ms. Story's class of students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing for an incidental/social language lesson.
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Jefferson Student Council sponsors Ugly Sweater Wednesday’s from now until Christmas! Here are a couple of second and third graders who participated this week!
MADISON ELEMENTARY
Miss Yetter's students had a a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving party. Complete with popcorn, pretzels, and jelly beans!
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Madison's student leadership team is raising money for a buddy bench for their new playground. Here are some members of SLT selling lollipops before school.
MCKINLEY ELEMENTARY
To kick off Thanksgiving, Ms. Pedersen's 2nd grade "turkeys" participated in a turkey race!
MULBERRY ELEMENTARY
Kindergarteners in Mrs. Green's class made corn bread in preparation for their Thanksgiving Feast.
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The kindergarteners at Mulberry hosted a Thanksgiving Feast, and invited their 3rd grade reading buddies. Everyone had good company and great food!
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Miss Blaesing's 4th grade class at Mulberry is learning about chemical weathering of different rocks.
CENTRAL MIDDLE SCHOOL
Excited Central 6th grade Ag students got their only trip to the Muscatine Agriculture Learning Center this semester to see the animals they have learned about in class.
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7th grade Ag students did a scavenger hunt at the Muscatine Agriculture Learning Center to gather facts about the animals that are housed at the Ag Center.
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Central 8th grade Ag students put their horticulture and floriculture knowledge to use by making centerpiece arrangements and propagating aloe vera plants.
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Students in Mrs. Mrosko's class at CMS made a Thanksgiving feast for the entire staff last week!
WEST MIDDLE SCHOOL
At West Middle School, Mrs. Duran's ESL class is learning how to compare and contrast, through a "Holidays Around the World" unit. Students are also learning how to write and state a claim using supporting evidence. Each day the class "visits" a different country from around the world. Students learn about the culture and a winter holiday traditionally celebrated in that country. Afterwards, students compare their winter holiday to the country they learned about that day. This week, students learned about Scandinavian countries and made Danish Hearts!
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It’s not easy to learn how to divide fractions and also understand what it means to divide up wholes and parts. These students in Mrs. Soy’s 6th grade class are showing great competencies using dominoes to help explain their mastery of this concept!
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Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students enjoyed a library lesson with teacher librarian Mrs. Bloomquist which had them running to locate books, find answers in the books, and then earning a number to unlock a padlock. The first team to get all 4 padlock numbers AND unlock the padlock won a free high five! (Not really, they actually won a prize, but it was fun to see their betrayed faces!)
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WMS 8th grade girls basketball team coached by Brendan Nagel and Bob Long had their last basketball game this week. They had a great season!! Great job WMS Muskies!
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6th grade students at West are working toward finishing their wood cube puzzles in Mr. LeClere's PLTW Design & Modeling class. The project has students building a prototype with plastic cubes before drawing the individual pieces and finishing by building them out of wooden cubes.
Since the beginning of the year, the sixth grade students at West Middle School have been collecting Box Tops and turning them into their homeroom teacher. Ms. Matteson's homeroom students made a poster for each of the homerooms to represent which class is in the lead for this challenge. At the end of every quarter, they will update the graphs. Keep up the good work, sixth graders!
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Last week, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, sixth grade students in Ms. Matteson's classes participated in an activity where each student had their own paper, and each classmate wrote a positive note about them. These kind notes were returned to the students so they could look at them whenever they need to be reminded of how great they are!
MUSCATINE HIGH SCHOOL
Sixteen students were chosen to be a part of the All-State Band, Orchestra and Choral Festival! Congratulations to all who were chosen and participated!
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Ms. Christensen's Geometry and Pre-AP Algebra 2 classes explored the mathematics behind the new Premier and Champions League footballs (soccer balls), seeing how the 'traditional' truncated icosahedron soccer ball of hexagons and pentagons has changed. Students looked at different ways the Premier League balls are constructed, all based on dodecahedrons, and then built their own version of the Champions League ball, which is based on a cube.
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The World Language Department at MHS took seniors to the University of Iowa to learn about different options available to students for classes, majors & minors, and study abroad. Students participated in a foreign language class and spoke with current university students and professors, as well as touring the campus and a residence hall.
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High school Ag 1 students learned about agricultural careers at the Muscatine Ag Learning Center this week.
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Mr. Paul's Animal Nutrition Class got some hands-on experience applying technology to ag and working with cattle while learning how to retinal image scan cattle.
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On November 15th, several business people from throughout the community came in and met with Mrs. Huot's English 12 classes and Mr. Smith's Economics classes. The professionals sat on a panel and answered career and education questions from the students. Then each student participated in a mock interview with a professional. The interviewers were very impressed with the students and offered great feedback to help them in their future career endeavors.
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MHS Agriculture students in Mr. Day's classes made holiday wreaths as a part of their coursework. They helped cut the evergreen trees, select and trim material, use the wreath making tables, as well as bow making to finish off the wreath.
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On Wednesday, November 22, the MHS 10-12 Academy had a Thanksgiving Feast at the Board Office. Teachers and students prepared food, played games, and enjoyed a wonderful celebration together.
DISTRICT-WIDE STAFF
Career/Technical Education Teachers
Career/Technical Education (CTE) Teachers got the opportunity to come together as a team to collaborate and review important information including the high school post-secondary vision, MCC academies, Perkins, etc. They also were given time to learn about each others' courses and discuss vertical alignment of skills. The collective role of MCSD's CTE staff is to provide all students skills to be successful in college or a career, to help them become life long learners, and provide career exploration.
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West Middle School Lunch Ladies get into the Thanksgiving and Christmas spirit while serving nutritious and delicious meals to our students!
