GCIS Weekly News 5/13/2016
Weekly Celebrations, Successes, and Up Coming Events!
GCIS Drive In Movie Night Postponed!
Due to the lovely weather that is forecast the outdoor movie: Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is being moved to Saturday June 11th. Movie will be in the same place: (High School Parking Lot) with Lot opening at 8:00 pm with movie starting at dusk (9:00ish)
This is the weekend of Bell Tower Festival! Hopefully we can generate more friends and families to join us! If you have any questions please call the GCIS office at 515-738-5721
GCIS Office News
GCIS Parents: as we work to continually improve safety measures we ask that all parents wait in the office area regarding all matters. If visiting, we ask that you sign in and wear a visitor badge.
Please remember to send lunch money with your students. There a various ways to pay! Just ask us how! All accounts must be in the positive before the end of the school year. If you have questions or concerns regarding this topic please give our office a call! 515-738-5721.
End of the Year!
Parents I can hardly believe that we are down to the final days of what has been a great year at GCIS! We only have 2 newsletters left for the Year! I wanted to highlight some of our GCIS Successes this year! As always, we are always striving to be better every day! Thanks for your on going support!
Highlights:
- Year 1 of Genius Hour: Many students explored passions that they were interested in! Focusing on listening, speaking, reading, writing, and research! So many great projects were shared! Looking forward to expanding Genius Hour next year!
- PBL (Project Based Learning) has been a huge success! Staff has spent the year learning how to create learning opportunities that are authentic and engaging for students! We've started with performance tasks and working on moving along the PBL continuum towards full blown PBL.
- We've had 4 successful incentive trips for students related to PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Supports)
- We've intentionally planned and collaborated with multiple businessmen and women throughout the community to come in an talk with students about their expertise. It's been fun to expand our students knowledge by reaching out to our great community!
Lunch accounts need to be paid in full before the end of the school year. If you have any questions or concerns in regard to this topic, please give the office a call! 515-738-5721.
If your child will be out of school for the day, leaving early, or change in schedule, please be sure to notify the office. 515-738-5721. Please notify the office of the schedule changes by 2:45 at the latest. This allows us plenty of time to get the notes delivered to our students.
Infinite campus is a great tool! It allows you to check your child’s grades, attendance, lunch balance and more! If you are interested in signing up for this tool, please contact the office! 515-738-5721.
M.S. Bracelets are for sale in our office. They are $2 each. We have four 4th grade girls who have done research for multiple sclerosis as their genius hour project. In result, they are raising money by selling the bracelets. Please stop by and pick yours up!
As we are closing in on the end of the year, please encourage your students to check out the lost and found table! It has dwindled down but there are still a few remains. Please let us know how we can help!
GCIS Key Players of the Week!
Join us for our first ever GCIS Color Run!
We met our goal. Great job raising funds for this great event, and also for future projects at our great school!
We are so excited to join up with families and our community for fun and fitness! Not to mention getting all colored up! Hoping for wonderful weather!
HERE is the link to the website and details!
Contact the office with any future question you may have. We can get you signed up even the day of the event! (515) 738-5721
Parents! Mark Your Calendars and Join Us If You Can!
4th Grade Happenings!
Math- We have been adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators. We’ve worked on adding and subtracting mixed numbers as well. So many things to do with fractions!
Lit/S.S.: We are continuing our work with regions. The students are working on projects to share their learning. It is still important to keep reading every night to keep our skills fresh.
Science- We are learning about the human body. Random fact of the week- A baby has 300 bones and an adult has 206.
5th Grade Happenings!
Lit/SS: In reading, we are continuing to work on our poetry unit. In social studies, we are studying important people, places, and events in Iowa history.
Science: This week we are studying sedimentary rocks and fossils. We will move on to metamorphic rocks with a quiz next Tues. or Wed.
Last Friday, our 5th grade field trip to Living History Farms was great! The kids represented Greene County Intermediate School very well!
6th Grade Happenings!
In science, students received a free energy saving kit from Black Hills Energy. Please take time to help your student fill out the surveys. We are talking about ways to help conserve energy and the importance of conserving our natural resources.
In math, students are still working on algebraic expressions. We are also working on solving inequalities.
In reading, we are continuing our Political Science unit. We have just finished researching the three branches and their functions within our government. The students are now beginning elections for our mock class government. Each homeroom will elect a president, vice president, representatives and senators. The president will also nominate supreme court justices.
Physical Education
Thank you parents for coming out to support your 5th child as they performed their musical, Get in the Game. Kids worked hard during their PE time and music time to make sure they put on a good show.
Hopefully the weather will start to warm up and we will be able to finish our activities outside. Our post testing on their pacer test will begin next week.
Band
A big thank you for a good year and a successful concert last week. The link below is for 4th grade parents with students interested in band.
Music Mania
5th Grade music students have worked extremely hard the last few months to prepare their musical. Through the use of technology, I am bringing an awareness of the depth of music that infiltrates our world. Youtube carries some quizzes that test the student's’ musical knowledge of TV Theme songs, and songs from Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks movies. The students have enjoyed testing their musical skills with the 15 second snippets trying to guess the title before the answer is given. This is a good segue into introducing them to works of other artists throughout history and helping them use the same skill set to memorize and identify music of Classical composers.
Again, what a pleasure it has been working with your children. They are a very talented young group of musicians.
OPUS Honor Choir 2016
5th and 6th grade students will have the ability to audition for the Iowa Choral Director’s Association’s 2016 OPUS Honor Choir. The auditions are held in September. Preparations are being made to assist any student wishing to audition for this choir. Requirements include, learning the song America, a major scale on solfege syllables and approximately a 16 measure excerpt from one of the song selections for the concert.
If you would be interested in having your child work toward this goal, please contact me at 515-975-4288. I am willing to set up a practice time once a week during the summer months. Knowing that families vacation, I am flexible with scheduling.
FCS
Both classes are getting ready to cook. We are discussing the importance of safety and sanitation in the kitchen. Where are the dangers and how do we be safe when working in a accident prone area?
The other important part of working in the kitchen is learning how to work as part of a team and doing our part of a project.
Media & Tech Lit
Students continued working through the different puzzles found on the web application Lure of the Labyrinth.
So, what’s the story??
Your beloved pet's gone missing and you've got to find it - but how? Before you know it, you're dropped into a strange (and extremely smelly) world where your only friend is a mysterious bean-loving girl with wings. She says there are others ... Others? Other pets? Well, there sure are plenty of monsters. They're all over the place, stinking up the joint and forcing you to do crazy jobs - you have to make pet food out of carrots and eyeballs? ICK! How in the world can any of this help you find your pet? And can you come to its rescue ... before it's too late? There's only one way to find out ...
Art
4th grade art students are finishing up their landform scenes and labeling the different types that they learned about in class. We used cut paper of different colors and added details and labels!
5th grade students are finishing their Kaleidoscope name designs and started on a 3D drawing landscape. They have to draw a background, middle ground, and a foreground and then we put it together to make it look 3D! How cool!
6th grade art students are going to be doing a waterfall in perspective. I will demonstrate how to make the rocks/hills in the background and then how to make the waterfall look realistic. Then they are going to color them either with warm colors or cool colors. They will have a complete opposite look when they are done!
TAG
4th grade TAG students finished up their work on the castle and are close to presenting it to their classrooms! Now we will need to figure out what to do with it afterwards!
I also talked to the kids and not very many of them have kept up on reading their Battle of the Books. I think we are just going to have a mock battle as a group at school. I want them to see how it affects their team members.
5th and 6th Grade TAG students will be launching rockets FRIDAY!!!! So excited to see how they do! There are some really cool looking rockets in the group! Hopefully will get some pictures and maybe videos of the launch!
Counselor's Corner
The Value of GRIT
Tenacity is one of GCIS’s Words of the Month.
Another word for Tenacity is GRIT. People who have a growth mindset tend to demonstrate higher levels of grit and perseverance--they don’t easily give up. This is often the difference in one’s success in school, work and life.
Some characteristics of grit include:
*Perseverance and Tenacity
*Deliberate Practice
*Ability to Delay Gratification
*Passion-Driven Focus
*Self-Control and Self-Discipline
*Long Term Goal-Oriented
*Stick-to-it-ness Under Difficult Conditions
*Consistency of Effort
Do you have GRIT? Take this quiz to find out.
Angela Lee Duckworth, math teacher, developed this scale to measure Grit found at https://sasupenn.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_06f6QSOS2pZW9qR
Nurse News
The current health risk in the news is the Zika virus spread by mosquitoes. Transmission from mosquito to human has not happened in the United States as of today. According to the CDC the most common symptoms of Zika virus are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis. Most people have only mild symptoms and may not know they have been infected. Mosquitoes may also transmit West Nile virus. Preventing mosquito bites is the best way to protect yourself against these viruses. The following is a link to information from the CDC to prevent mosquito bites. http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/pdfs/fs_mosquito_bite_prevention_us.pdf