School News: Des Moines
Elementary Schools
Carver
Throughout the month of February, the ELL department at Carver has been quite busy! We’re excited to share with you that our ELL testing, referred to as I-ELDA, has officially come to a close after two full weeks of nonstop work from both the students and the teachers. The students worked so very hard on these tests and we are abundantly proud of each and every one of them! Each ELL student was tested in the four domains of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The scores of these tests will help us to acquire a better understanding of the students’ English language needs. Thank you for your daily support of our students within your homes.
Downtown School
On February 19th the nine to ten year old students at the Downtown School had the opportunity to attend Sofrito! at the Des Moines Performing Arts Center. This amazing experience was made possible through funds from Connecting Kids and Culture. The students enjoyed listening to master storyteller David Gonzalez. He shared colorful stories and music with us. It was a zesty blend of music and folklore.
We also concluded our “Hoops for Hearts” campaign. Beth Peck from the American Heart Association helped kick off our campaign at an All School Sing on January 23rd. Students contacted friends and families and requested donations. Through online donations and individual contributions the Downtown School raised over $16,000 and helped save 322 lives! We are very proud of all of our students and their commitment to live “heart healthy” lives.
Edmunds
The fifth-grade student council hosted the second annual canned food drive at Edmunds. Student council members visited all of the classrooms to explain the can drive and encourage all students to participate. During the week of January 26-30th Edmunds students brought in canned food items for donation to the Food Bank of Iowa. A school-wide "hat day" was held on Friday the 30th to celebrate all students who donated to this great cause. Fifth-grade teachers Brooke Maxwell and Emily Bowman reported that 325 cans were donated to the Food Bank on behalf of Edmunds. It was a great community builder for the entire school!
Hanawalt
Gwen Roth’s first-graders are making remarkable progress! It is exciting to see the children's growth in math and reading. We have enjoyed watching them learn and work enthusiastically and cooperatively during science discoveries through the Balance and Motion units. The students are continuing to learn about culture, traditions and changes through diversity and differences between past and present by studying families and other places. The students are also learning and practicing community and environmental health. In literacy the children work daily to become stronger, fluent readers and proficient writers through phonics, phonemic awareness and language study. In math, the children are working on place value; reading and writing numbers from 100-120; the concepts of greater than, less than and equal to; and modeling and comparing two digit numbers. We encourage you to continue reading with your child every day, working on homework and practicing math facts. Thank you for all the volunteers and for the generosity extended for the Valentine’s Day party. We had a great time! We had our first field trip this year to The Science Center on February 20th, a great learning adventure. We are looking forward to conferences!
Oak Park
Oak Park Elementary School will be presenting Aladdin the Musical at North High School on April 14th. Aladdin is Oak Park’s first musical in more than ten years and will feature a cast of 27 third- fifth-graders. Students and staff will also be creating all of the art, set design pieces, and costumes for this production. Both students and staff are incredibly excited about this!
Oak Park students in grades second through fifth worked hard during the month of January to earn attendance at the Iowa Energy basketball game on February 10th. Students in kindergarten and grade one earned special time in the gym and a special snack that same day. Students with no more than two detentions were able to attend these special activities and 96 percent of students qualified.
Fifth-graders enjoyed a day at the Junior Achievement Biztown on February 12. After spending several weeks learning about different jobs, it was time to practice their 'real job.' Students were excited to practice being an adult.
Pleasant Hill
With the start of 2015, students began the Getting Along counseling unit focusing on problem solving and bullying behavior. Students learned many ways to handle bullying. One phrase we say to help each other out when you see bullying is “We don’t do that here.”
Our next unit is How We Are Unique. This covers anti-bias, harassment, family unit, life cycle, and diversity.
We will finish out the school year with three more units: Career Development, Transition, and Summer Safety.
The other two components of our counseling program involve individual sessions and small groups.
River Woods
The support staff continues to bolster students in their classrooms. Currently we are using a variety of technology applications to differentiate the instruction for students. Some of these applications include Raz-Kids, Smarty Pants, Pocket Phonics, and Front Row Math.
Samuelson
The Samuelson Singers will present their spring concert, Beautiful Noise, on Thursday, March 5, at 6:30 pm in the school gym. The group is made up of students in third, fourth, and fifth grades who practice before school. Selections include "Beautiful Noise," "If I Had a Hammer," and a Stephen Foster medley, among others.
The third-graders took a fieldtrip to Central Campus to see a production of The Billy Goats Gruff on February 18th. The Opera Iowa performance was coordinated for all third-graders in the district to attend. The students spent time in music class studying opera before the trip.
The Kindergarten, first, and second grade students will present their annual music program on Thursday, April 16th in the gym. Kindergarteners perform at 6 pm, first graders at 6:30, and second graders at 7 pm. The students will showcase the music they’ve learned throughout the school year.
Studebaker
In Amy Drew's fifth-grade class we have been focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). The students really get excited to build with K’nex blocks and create structures. We have built bridges and roller coasters. We look forward to other grades joining into STEM next year.
The first graders have reached an educational milestone! They are officially 100 days smarter! To celebrate the 100th day of school the first graders had many exciting learning adventures with the number 100. Working as a team they had to see how quick they could stack 100 cups. This challenge was not as easy as it sounds. The first graders put their math skills to work by tallying how many licks it takes to get to the middle of a tootsie pop. They drew pictures of what they might look like when they reach the age of 100. They also wrote stories about how things might change in the next 100 years. They worked as a team to collect 100 flying chickens and put them in numeric order as quick as they could. Hooray for the 100th day of school! Learning is great! We can't wait to see what the next 100 days will bring.
Windsor
Windsor kindergarteners have been very busy with reading and writing skills. In math they are doing simple addition and subtraction and working with story problems. They have fun making up story problems! They are also working on being respectful citizens and learning what role the community has in our lives.
The 100th day of school celebration was a blast! The kids dressed up as though they were 100. They did a great job. Everything that day was based on the number 100. They had their pictures taken and applied an app that aged them to 100 years old. They wrote about what they would do when they reached that age.
All of the kids enjoyed trading cards and candy to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
Now it’s time for conferences to share all the growth and progress that’s been made.
Wright
Some teachers and students at Wright are exploring “mindfulness” in their lives. Through book study and practice together, we will learn to keep our heads and hearts in the moment. Third-grade students have been focusing on breathing to help with focus. A strategy they use now is taking animal breaths to relax. After practicing some animal breaths that were presented to them, dolphin breath and butterfly breath, students used their creative minds to invent their own animal breaths. Their amazing ideas include the dog bone breath, giraffe breath, and shark breath!
Middle Schools
Goodrell
On February 24th, the Goodrell jazz band participated in the first annual DMPS Middle School Jazz Bands Concert at Callanan Middle School. This concert featured jazz bands from seven middle schools as well as a directors’ band where the directors performed together for their students! It was a night the students will never forget. The Goodrell jazz band will also perform at the Hoover Jazz Fest on Saturday, March 8th at 8:40am at Hoover High School.
Goodrell Healthy Choices is excited to announce we will be purchasing 35 Bulgarian workout bags. In April we will receive 25 six-pound and 10 eleven-pound bags which will enable full range of movement workouts. These bags were purchased with the money raised last fall through our Entertainment coupon book sales.
Merrill
Merrill was delighted to host the 2015 Iowa Chinese New Year Celebration on Saturday, February 21st from 11am-9pm. Festival-like events were scheduled during the day followed by a dinner and reception in the evening. The students and staff prepared excitedly, including the eighth-grade art students crafting posters to publicize the event. The Merrill jazz band worked up a special arrangement of the Gong Xi Chinese New Year’s song and the Merrill seventh-grade orchestra also performed.
High Schools
Central Academy
23 students from across DMPS participated in Model United Nations at the University of Chicago from February 5-8. Model UN students apply for this exciting, but rigorous program in the fall and work towards the competition in February. Students give up lunchtime for meetings and complete all work outside of the normal school day which demonstrates these students’ dedication! Students are required to submit detailed “position papers” on assigned current issues as well as historical ones. As the title suggests, the position papers take the position of an assigned country. This year our country was Iraq-a very complicated and often tumultuous country. The students enjoyed the challenge of seeing current issues from a different perspective. Our school won two special awards: Jane Rice won “Verbal Commendation” on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Committee and Cole Rehbein won “Verbal Commendation” on the Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence Committee. Congratulations to them! A special thank you to Jake Appel and Jenna Pokorny for serving as our co-captains and keeping everyone organized and prepared.
East
The annual East High Golf Classic will be held at Copper Creek Golf Club in Pleasant Hill again this year on Friday & Saturday, May 15th & 16th.
We would like to encourage you to invite sponsors and contributors to be a part of this event. The advertising and/or prize contribution is a great way to help East High. In addition, the committee would appreciate any help you would be willing to provide.
Foursomes who played before will be given the opportunity to enter early with a choice of A.M. or P.M. tee times. The deadline for all early entries will be Friday, April 24th. After that date, entry forms for vacant spots will be accepted on a first come basis. Late entry will be subject to tee time space available.
The Friday afternoon format will be lunch and 1:00 P.M. tee time. On Saturday the morning group will tee off at 7:30 A.M. and finish about 12:00 to 12:30 P.M. The afternoon group will tee off at 1:00 P.M. and finish about 5:00 to 5:30 P.M. Between sessions a lunch will be served at the Copper Creek clubhouse. When the afternoon group finishes play, all participants are invited to the awards banquet to be held at Prairie Meadows.
Separate tickets will be issued for the evening banquet to non-golfing guests @ $10.
As has been the case in past years, a member of the East Side community will be recognized for outstanding service to East High School and the community as a whole at the evening banquet.
For more information please call the school office @ 242-7788.
Thank you for your support.
Hoover
Congratulations to the students from Hoover Drama who earned All-State honors from the Iowa High School Speech Association. Courtnie Caldwell, Jamie Malone, Claudia Sbaffi, Maddy Sheets, and Jordan Wolfe performed an Ensemble Acting scene from the play The Miss Firecracker Contest. They were coached by Mr. Ken-Matt Martin.
Government students wrote children’s books about the structure of the US government. Teacher Jason Danielson’s oldest son read the books and awarded candy prizes to his favorites.
AP US History students are about to begin a newspaper project chronicling the developments from World War I through World War II. Sections will include news, culture, and editorials.
AP Government students have formed teams of lawyers and judges and recently did a mock trial for Miller v. Alabama. They are now working on appellate court cases for Lee v. Weisman and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and will conclude before spring break with current Supreme Court cases assisted by an actual Iowa judge.
Last year’s Hoover yearbook received an Award of Achievement in the 2015 Whole Book Yearbook Contest sponsored by the Iowa High School Press Association and Jostens. The award was based on evaluation criteria such as unifying concepts, reader services, and section coverage.
The Hoover boys’ bowling team won the district championship on February 17th and qualified for the state meet on February 24th. Also, Tanner Peeler placed first overall and is an automatic individual qualifier. Justin Kimball earned a third place individual medal and his sister Sam Kimball earned a fifth place individual medal for the Hoover girls’ team. Congratulations, Hoover bowlers!
North
While dipping hands in washable paint may seem like an activity for elementary students, English 1 students at North were seeing red on February 12th. Since 2002, this day has served as a worldwide, annual reminder of the signing of a protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that forbids the use of children in conflict. The purpose of Red Hand Day is to draw attention to the fates of child soldiers, children that are forced to serve various roles in wars and armed conflicts, and urge the United Nations to take stronger action against those that use child soldiers. The symbol of a red hand has been used all over the world to oppose the recruitment of child soldiers. Though in its 13th year, there are still over 15 countries using boys and girls in armed conflict.
Through activities and appeals to local, national, and worldwide leaders in the coming month and a half, students at North hope to be part of this movement and provide some relief to youth traumatized by warfare. After displaying their red hands and personal messages in the commons area of North High, students engaged their followers through social media (#ChildrenNotSoldiers) to take notice of their cause and ask for support in the form of letters and pictures sent to local and worldwide leaders.
North students first became aware of these grievous circumstances while reading the memoir of Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, himself once a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Through their research of the Sierra Leonean civil war during the 1990’s and foundations dedicated to ensuring the rights of children, students have dedicated themselves to raise money and contribute to one of those organizations in order to provide some support in the rehabilitation of those affected by war. Other curricular areas including history, English Language Learners, fine arts, and math will be adding their own nuances to this rigorous project to deepen and strengthen understanding and empathy of less fortunate children.
A celebration of their work and thank you to those that donate is set for early April.
Alternative Schools
Scavo
Built into Scavo’s new space at Central Campus is a fantastic food pantry. Scavo has teamed up with the Food Bank of Iowa to stock the shelves full. We were featured on Channel 13 news on February 10th.