Lansing Middle School conducts Student-Led Conferences in the spring. The conferences this February will be the fourth year we have conducted Student-Led Conferences. We implemented Student-Led Conferences as a goal to give students more responsibility for their academics as part of the KESA accreditation process.

The month leading up to Student-Led Conferences is a busy one for students and staff from a preparation standpoint. As part of the Student-Led Conference design, students prepare a slideshow that highlights their first semester grades and their current grades for the third quarter. Students also explain how they earned their grades. The slideshow contains work samples that students have gathered from their classes throughout the year. Additional pieces include looking at their attendance and behavior for the school year and setting goals in these two areas, if necessary. Finally, students are asked to incorporate a vision for their future from the informational results gathered from their interest inventories on the software program, Xello. The bulk of the work on the slideshow takes place in January and early February. Students also complete a self-evaluation for each of their classes.

One of the areas that we worried about the most in moving to the Student-Led Conference format, as opposed to the traditional Parent-Teacher Conference, is the fact that parents won’t talk to all of their child’s teachers. To alleviate some of this concern, we ask our teachers to fill out an informational sheet for each student that has a D or an F in their class for 1st semester or 3rd Quarter and make that available to parents at the conference.

The sign-up process for parents takes place in two parts – a) we first allow parents that have multiple students at LMS to sign up so they can arrange back-to-back conferences, if needed; and b) we then allow all parents with just one student at LMS to sign up for their conference. All parents use Sign-Up Genius to schedule their conference. We set aside 30 minutes for each conference with the goal that it is completed in roughly 20 minutes. Both of the sign-ups have been sent out and almost all parents have signed up.

To make sure students are fully prepared for their conference, this year we adjusted our schedule and added an extra five days with Advisory to the schedule beginning January 24th. This allowed time for students to complete the slideshow and to practice their conference with peers and with their Advisory teacher.

Another important piece for parents is to make sure that they do get a chance to speak to their child’s teachers, if they feel it is necessary. At the conclusion of each conference, Advisory teachers ask parents if there are any teachers from which they would like to receive follow-up communication. Teachers are then given this information and they are asked to speak to the parent within one week.

The amount of work that goes into the conferences on both the student and staff end is overwhelming at times. The culminating conferences at the end though are one of the best things I’ve seen in education. Students feel extremely proud of the work they’ve put into the conference and the parents enjoy seeing their child take responsibility for their own learning. We look forward to seeing you at Student-Led Conferences this Wednesday, February 15th and this Thursday, February 16th.

As mentioned before, during January, students had dedicated time in Advisory over three sessions to work on the software program, Xello. Xello is an interactive program that allows students to better assess themselves in terms of current interests and helps them to better prepared to make future choices. From the Xello website, "students complete interactie career, personality, and learning style assessments to help them better understand their unique interests, skills, and strengths. Each engaging assessment encourages reflection, helping students connect who they are with relevant career options." https://xello.world/en/middle-and-high-school/

After completing interest inventories and an Individual Plan of Study on Xello, we moved back into Second Step lessons during Advisory at the start of February. A reminder that Second Step is our Tier 1 behavior program at LMS, which means that all students are provided with it. "Second Step® Middle School helps early adolescents learn to cope with challenges, create and maintain positive relationships, and develop the mindset necessary for success in school and life." https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mVTSWdApXUTfVH4OVgP2S_OHMKsaRinV/view?usp=share_link

There are four units of study for Second Step. The current unit of study for all grades is the third unit, titled - "Thoughts, Emotions, and Decisions". The scope and sequence for Second Step is linked here -- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hsDDKW9sNKkGlV_FuHKJNRrMuG7wVtfk/view?usp=share_link

• Tuesday, February 14th – 4:00 PM – Boys Basketball vs. Tonganoxie (7th Home/8th Away)
• Wednesday, February 15th – Parent/Teacher Conferences (Student-Led Conferences)
• Thursday, February 16th – Parent/Teacher Conferences (Student-Led Conferences)
• Monday, February 20th – Staff Development
• February 21st, 22nd, 23rd – Boys Basketball – Kaw Valley League Tournament (7th Grade @ Leavenworth Warren Middle School, 8th Grade @ Basehor-Linwood Middle School)
• Wednesday, March 1st – Kaw Valley League Band Festival (@ Lansing Middle School)
• Thursday, March 2nd – 7:00 PM – LMS Vocal Music Concert
• Monday, March 6th – 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM – LMS Band Concert
• Spring Break - March 10-19. Classes resume on Monday, March 20th.
• Wednesday, March 22nd – Kaw Valley League Vocal Music Festival (@ Basehor-Linwood Middle School)

April 4, 5, 11, 12 – 6th, 7th, and 8th Grade Reading Assessment

April 17, 18, 19, 20 – 6th, 7th, and 8th Grade Math Assessment

April 24 and April 25 – 8th Grade Science Assessment

May 1-19 – 6th, 7th, and 8th Grade Fastbridge Assessment in Reading and Math (this is not a state assessment but is an important end-of-the-year test for all students)

How our Parents Can Help –

• Talk to your child about the importance of doing his/her BEST on the assessments
• Be positive and supportive regarding the assessments
• Make attendance a priority and please be on time for the start of the school day
• Make sure your child has a good night’s sleep (minimum of 8 hours)
• Provide a healthy breakfast
• Help your child remember to charge his/her iPad

6th Grade Language Arts – Kathy Baughman, Pecos Miller, Tiffany Simmons, Rachel Szmed

The 6th grade language arts classes continue to refine their writing and grammar skills. We began the new year learning about restrictive and non-restrictive elements and punctuating them with parentheses, commas, and dashes (W.6.11.a). We then moved to learning about different cases of pronouns and their usage as subjective, objective, possessive, reflexive and intensive (W.6.10.b, c, d, e). We will begin our next creative writing unit in February - Poetry! Students will learn about different types of poetry and try their hand at writing poems. This unit culminates with a Poetry Cafe in which students will present their favorite original poems to an audience of their peers and parents. (W.6.4, 5, and 10, and SL.6.5, 6, and 7).

6th Grade Literature – Kathy Baughman, Cheryl Borgeson, Connie Evans, Alisha Holyfield, Pecos Miller, John Riggs, Tiffany Simmons, Rachel Szmed, Amanda Thomas, DeeDee Wiley

The 6th grade team has been exploring Language Arts standards using the novel The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963. The students are learning to apply and use their higher order thinking skills to analyze and determine different elements of the novel. These elements tie into the state standards for determining the theme (RL.6.2), how characters respond to change in relations with the plot (RL.6.3), how a particular sentence, chapter or stanza help to develop the story (RL.6.5) and the ability to explain how the narrator's point of view develops (RL.6.4). As we explore the wonderful world of the Watsons, we are also developing our foundational reading skills to help deepen our comprehension of the different materials we will get to read this month. The skill focus for the month is text structure. The students are working to be able to remember the difference between the different text structures so that they can better recognize and implement this knowledge with other materials they will read. We will have the students demonstrate their knowledge of this content during selected text structure activities so we can check for mastery of the concepts from each student. This knowledge is being developed through the use of the novel and bell work.

6th Grade Math – John Riggs, DeeDee Wiley

This past month, 6th grade has been working with everything dealing with proportions. The students have worked hard on identifying equivalent fractions as well as creating them to solve real-world problems. Part of learning this was identifying if you could easily multiply or divide to get from the left to the right. They learned that sometimes you must simplify to find your answer. We are now putting fractions, decimals and proportions together to find percentages.

6th Grade Science – Alisha Holyfield, Amanda Thomas

The 6th grade science classes just completed their Electromagnetic Force unit. As we enter the month of February, we are springing into our Waves unit. To start the unit, students will be learning what a wave is. They will have an opportunity to use springs to create their own waves. Students will explore how energy transfers in waves. Students will also learn the properties of all waves. Next, students will investigate light and properties of light waves. Students will evaluate visible light and the electromagnetic spectrum. Last, students will study communication waves and how waves can transfer over large distances.

6th Grade Social Studies – Cheryl Borgeson, Connie Evans

We began the second semester with our unit on Ancient China. As with all our preceding chapters, the importance of geography was discussed, and the role it played in the development of Chinese civilization. Students were introduced to China’s first dynasties and shown how they helped Chinese society develop. Using Actively Learn, students compared and contrasted the Indus River of India and the Huang River of China and how they impacted ancient civilizations. Students learned about the different philosophies of Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism and how they each attempted to bring order to China. Students were taught how to make a “claim” to prepare them for 7th grade state assessments. Students then created a poster stating a claim and using evidence to support it. Students will also be completing a project on either a dynasty or a Chinese emperor they have learned about from this unit. Next, we are preparing students for their next common formative assessment (CFA) over common characteristics of the ancient river civilizations. Looking ahead – we will be starting our unit on ancient Greece.

7th Grade Language Arts – Mindy Brinker, Brandy Hamilton

Seventh grade language arts students started off the new year by making a new year’s resolution for themselves. They wrote a paragraph detailing the steps they would take to achieve their goal. (We will revisit those at the end of the year!) Our grammar focus this month was on using commas effectively in writing. Students learned/reviewed many comma rules and practiced incorporating commas into sentences and paragraphs. We specifically focused on commas between coordinate adjectives for our formative assessment to address Kansas standard - W.7.11: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. a. Use a comma to separate coordinate adjectives.

7th Grade Literature – Tom Cretors, Katie Larson, Becky Lowery, Brandy Hamilton, Rachel Sheeley, Stephanie Smalley

Seventh grade students have been working on Unit #3: Justice Served in the Study Sync program. This unit includes informational text including speeches that have been written about or by activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. Other texts included in this unit include a poem praising Cesar Chavez and a poem written by Gwendolyn Brooks. Seventh grade students are working on figurative language and main idea with the text being read and discussed in this unit.

7th Grade Math – Denise Dixon, Theresa Jones, Angela Remington

Math 1 Students worked on reviewing Percent and Proportion concepts at the start of January. Students have completed expressions. One and two step equation solving will be completed by the end of January. We will start inequalities at the beginning of February.

Math 2 Students have completed all of the equations and inequalities concepts. . They have transitioned to the geometry unit. Geometry concepts will continue into February.

We will perform our 3rd CFA for the year assessing students' understanding of expression and equations. This will be given the last week of January.

7th Grade Science – Stacey Jenkins, Stephanie Smalley

In 7th grade Life Science, students have just finished a unit on Ecology, learning how living things interact with their environment. To practice the basic unit vocabulary, students created picture books rewriting the definitions for young children and adding illustrations to support each term. Symbiosis was an important part of the unit as students analyzed the relationships among a variety of species to determine if they were examples of mutualism, commensalism, or parasitism. Another aspect of the unit dealt with the impact of reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone National Park where they looked at it from the perspectives of environmentalists, ranchers, and hunters, with a written debate on whether this should or should not have happened. The focus now turns to reproduction as students learn the differences in asexual and sexual reproduction looking at the pros and cons for each type.

7th Grade Social Studies – Tom Cretors, Edward Fenton

In 7th grade Social Studies, we have just completed the HGSS State Testing Project over the question of “Should John Brown be remembered as a hero or terrorist in American history?” Students spent time investigating reasons why someone would be remembered as either. Then spent time diving deep into who John Brown was before making their claim. Students created either a wanted poster or commemorative award plaque for John Brown and then wrote an essay supporting their claim with solid reasoning that is supported with evidence. Now that the projects have ended, we will be jumping back into Kansas History by learning about who moved to Kansas during the post Civil War population boom.

8th Grade Language Arts – Tracey Carney-Linn, Julie Price, Danielle Perry/Diane Peintner (Long-Term Sub), Stacey Ward

Eighth grade has been working on the Unit 3: Following the Crowd. It has stories that the characters must explore how being in a group affects a person’s behavior and decision-making skills. They have practiced how to write a universal theme statement. We will also be looking at how to write an argumentative essay. Learning about a set of twins coming to a new town/school and the very different reception they get with the story Cheboygan Day. Read a non-fiction piece of the levels of conformity that you can go through in Conformity. Looking at a couple of stories that go to the extreme with All Summer in a Day and The Lottery about a groups decision to go after another member of the community and the effects on the group after. We had discussions on The Dangers of Traditions and how some traditions get started. Students were able to talk about some traditions need to stop like the story The Lottery where a community member would be stoned, but traditions like throwing graduation caps into the air were not going to hurt people so they could continue. We discussed that everyone must be in control of their own choices. Students will be working on how to write a strong argument using text evidence from several of these stories. Students have spent time working on No Red Ink with parallel structure, active and passive voice, and writing complex sentences. Vocabulary is also being used over the course of this unit with the stories and their writing.

8th Grade Literature – Dana Blew, Tracey Carney-Linn, Jessica Graves, Julie Price, Danielle Perry/Diane Peintner (Long-Term Sub), Stacey Ward

Eighth grade has been busy with our unit Moral Compass that focuses on how character is formed. These stories share that people are not simply good or bad but reflect the diversity of human experiences and have student explore the complexities of morality. We have read excerpts from Little Women with the idea of satisfaction in giving to others, poetry from Langston Hughes with Mother to Son about a mother’s wish for her son, Home by Anton Chekhov with a father’s battle to reach is his on his bad habit of smoking, and other rich stories. The novel we are reading is The Adoration of Jenna Fox. Students have been able to make several connections on choices the character is making to recover from an accident to try to find out the secrets her parents are keeping about her accident and how far will a parent go to “fix” their child. All these stories will provoke discussion with ways to investigate their own potential in the world. Students have been practicing the skills of theme, character development, setting, how words can provoke a decision, point of view, and connotation and denotation.

8th Grade Math – Miranda Cote, Penny Wagner

8th Grade Math is in Unit 5 Geometry. They just finished Angle Measurements with transversal angles and triangles, as well as triangle similarity. Currently we are working on the Pythagorean Theorem with Right Triangles. Next week they will transition into Volume of 3-Dimensional Figures. We are gearing up to finish with Scatter Plots by the time we enter the testing window for State Assessments.

Algebra has been working through the 8th grade Unit 5 Geometry work the past two weeks. They will finish with Volume and Scatter Plots by the end of February and rejoin the Algebra curriculum.

8th Grade Physical Science – Josh Yoakam

Students completed an applied engineering project to design an energy efficient home to wrap up the thermal energy exploration. Students learned about chemical hazards and use of safety data sheets. Students completed a review of states of matter and classification in preparation for transition to learning about the structure and makeup of the atom. Students completed and presented a research project, “Adopt-an-Element” where they learned more about a chosen element. Students utilized the University of Colorado-Boulder PhET’s simulation to build an atom and learn about atom stability, isotopes, and ions. We will be learning about makeup and organization of the periodic table, elements, and their properties next.

8th Grade Science – Jessica Graves, Kaylea Roth-Longe/Brock LaPlante (Long-term sub.)

This month students are learning about earthquakes and volcanoes. We will have our 3rd CFA and will move on to density and weather in the upcoming weeks. This week students are exploring catastrophes and how to engineer safer buildings.

8th Grade Social Studies – Ann Andrews, Dana Blew

In January, eighth grade Social Studies learned about the changing geography of our nation during the Westward Expansion. Students learned about individuals moving west and their motivation and determinedness (Mormons, missionaries, farmers, 49ers, etc.) to make the long and dangerous journey. We studied the impact the move west had on places like the Alamo and Chapultepec. Students are seeing how the acquisition of the Texas Annexation and Mexican Cession will bring more division to the U.S. as our government struggled to decide whether the new areas will be free or slave states. We will finish up our Westward Expansion unit by watching the classic Jeremiah Johnson. After which, Mrs. Peterson will be bringing an informative lesson on the anti-bullying. Finally, we will begin our unit on The Nation Divided 1846-1861.

Advanced Studies – Josh Yoakam

Students in the sixth and seventh grade classes, and a portion of students in the eighth-grade class completed work on their Future Cities projects. On Saturday, January 28th, a group of 17 students representing three teams traveled to Seaman Middle School for the Future City Competition. Three representatives from each team presented their city plans, model and answered questions from a panel of engineers. The future city competition deliverables included a 1500-word essay, scale physical model, various project planning requirements, presentation, and question and answer session. Students had the opportunity to view models from different teams across the region. The Future City Competition culminated with an after-action activity. Students not involved in future city competition continued their independent projects during this time frame.

Art – Emily Bucher

6th Grade – After reviewing rules, procedures, and supplies, students began watching "Cave of Forgotten Dreams". The film explores the oldest form of art (found on cave walls) located in Chauvet, France. Students were asked to take notes and draw sketches of cave animals like bears, lions, antelopes, horses, and rhinos shown throughout the movie. Students created a glue outline and used oil pastels to make a drawing inspired by the art found in both Lascaux and Chauvet locations. There was an extra credit component to this project that allowed students to create colorful handprints with various symbols and designs to accent the hand. Next, students worked on a dinosaur drawing, in which they were given several prompts to add including cosmic elements, fern plants, dinosaur footprints, crystals, and their choice of dinosaurs. Currently, students are completing a Minion selfie that reflects elements about themselves and their personality.

7th Grade – After reviewing rules, procedures, and supplies, students were encouraged to create a memorable portrait of Lincoln to be submitted to St. Mary's Annual Lincoln Art Contest. Early finishers were encouraged to complete the Dinosaur drawing. Currently, students completed a reading followed up by a short CBS Sunday Morning video clip about the life and work of pop artist Wayne Thiebaud. He was famous for creating cakes, pies, and other delicacies along with cityscapes and other iconic pop art paintings. Students are asked to design and depict their favorite food both 2-dimensionally and 3-dimensionally. To begin, students will create an oil pastel and watercolor painting before creating a clay sculpture of the same food. The sculptures will be bisque fired and students will cover them with colorful glaze to add depth and detail.

8th Grade – After reviewing rules, procedures, and supplies, students were encouraged to create a memorable portrait of Lincoln to be submitted to St. Mary's Annual Lincoln Art Contest. After the completion of their Lincoln artworks, students completed first-name graffiti featuring lava lamp designs using bright, fluorescent acrylic paints. Currently, students learned about the history and tradition of the piggy bank. Originating from 'pygg' clay, a shift in language occurred, sparking the accidental concept of a 'pig bank'. From then on, piggy banks are still considered a tradition and have been given as gifts to children as early as the 15th century. Students are creating small-scale versions of pigs, piggy banks, or other vessels that may have the ability to store money using terracotta clay. Terracotta is similar to the orange 'pygg' clay used long ago. After the initial bisque firing, students will cover them with colorful glaze to enhance their piggy banks to add depth and detail. There is an extra credit component to this project that asks students to create 2-dimensional piggy bank drawings with coins, or cash money, or other money-phrase illustrations like "breaking the bank" or "bringing home the bacon".

9th Hour Art Enrichment – Some students worked on and completed entries for St. Mary's annual Lincoln Art Contest. Students then created "altered book" designs in which they took a book page, or several pages, destroyed, subtracted, added, and/or recreated it to devise it into a completely new piece of art. This is very popular and common among contemporary working artists. Currently, students are creating self-driven clay sculptures, finding inspiration from their daily lives or personal interests.

St. Mary's Annual Lincoln Art and Doodle for Google contests are open to the entire student body, 6th-8th grades until their respected deadlines.

Band – Aaron Edwards

The Middle School Bands are continuing to work through their books at an efficient pace. The 7th and 8th grade bands are beginning to rehearse the music for the KVL band festival that we will host at LMS on March 1st and their concert on March 6th. We have also had several students sign up to participate in the solo/ensemble festival at Lexington Trail MS on March 7th. The Jazz Band and Pep Band have also begun rehearsing for 2nd semester and has grown in numbers.

Choir – Josiah Ketterman

All Choirs at the middle school are hard at work learning their music for their spring concert! Their concert is March 2nd, at 7pm in the district auditorium and will feature 6th, 7th and 8th grade choirs. Shortly after, 7th and 8th grade will participate in the KVL Festival at Basehor-Linwood MS. There, they will each perform two pieces for a judge/clinician. Many of our choir students are also going to be featured in the Middle School’s Musical, High School Musical Jr., on February 3rd at 7pm and February 4th at 1pm.

Computers – Sara Meyers

The start of second semester and 3rd quarter is in full swing for computers class. 8th grade began the semester with creating Google Slideshows with an emphasis on “All About Me”. Students then explored protentional future careers and created Google Slideshows informing others the educational pathways necessary to obtain that career, as well as salary and promotion potential for the career selected.

Currently, 8th grade is beginning to explore and learn a CTE pathway of business marketing and culinary. Students are learning about target markets, the 4 P’s of marketing, and culinary attributes in order to create their very own business of a Food Truck. Students will be using digital technology platforms to create, design, and implement their own business menu items, branding, and marketing to prospective customers.

7th grade students also kicked off the new semester creating “All About Me” Google Slides as well as creating their own digital family quilts. These assignments assisted students, as well as myself, to learn more about one another and some of their family history. Students also integrated social studies into state research projects. 7th graders were tasked with researching an assigned state and inserting pictures, information, and fun facts.

Currently, 7th grade is continuing the integration of social studies and computers and are learning how to use Google Earth and find various landmarks, wacky and wild places, and coordinates to new and exciting locations.

With the start of the 3rd quarter, our 6th grade students began learning more about how to edit, format and use Google Docs to create menus, flyers, and checklists. Students will also begin learning how to use Google Earth and create a Google Slideshow about various landmarks they have found in the upcoming week.

Math Intervention – Emerald Peters

During January, Tier II and Tier III groups were re-evaluated based on December 2022 Fastbridge data. Students were moved in and out of tier groups as needed shown by data. Students continue to work on foundational math skills that they are missing as shown by Fastbridge, Moby Max, and IXL data. Additionally, students have been pre-building their skill sets for more advanced math they are going to learn in their core content class.

PE – Jennifer Bishop, Jason Floetke

This is a new semester for all of our students, so we started the year with baseline fitness testing in the area of push-ups and sit-ups and will do the mile when weather permits. Fitness (taught twice a week when not in Health class) includes various lifelong fitness skills, muscular strength and endurance training and cardiovascular workouts. Currently we are teaching the basketball unit to coincide with the current boys basketball season and will move to ping pong and badminton next. Health class includes various topics depending on the grade level, but some topics include positive and negative health behaviors, communication skills, conflict analysis, Nutrition, Refusal Skills, etc.

Reading Intervention – Rachel Sheeley

We are finishing the serial provided in the Leavenworth Times. The serial has provided historical information from 1821 to 1993. Students have been able to also obtain vocabulary words and apply them within our reading and through classroom discussion. The newspaper will continue to provide articles on inventors and other topics of interest.

New tier groups were formed after Winter Benchmarking. Some students continue to work on refining skills while some students were released from tier and others joined tier. We have now completed our first round of progress monitoring since Christmas break. Practically all students have made progress in their fluency, retell, and comprehension. Students are anxious to share their progress monitoring graphs during our Student Led Conferences in February.

Spanish – Cristy Quinn

Spanish 8th Grade

The 8th grade Spanish students have been working really hard on a written and oral project about their life. This includes activities they like to do, favorite food, movies and favorite books. They also talk about how many brothers and/or sisters they have. Also, how many pets they have, their names and many more interesting facts about their life.

They have included a beautiful baby picture with this project.

The posters are displayed in the hallway outside of the Spanish room. It has been an amazing experience to be able to listen to the students' presentations in Spanish. Great job 8th grade! We will continue with the verb “gustar” - to like- during the month of February.

Spanish 7th Grade

Practicing spelling words with the Spanish alphabet.

Learning the culture about Paraguay and other Spanish speaking countries.

Colors, Days of the week, Months of the year, Students will count and give dates in Spanish, talk about the classroom objects and useful phrases for class.

Noun and adjective agreement.

Spanish 6th Grade

Practicing spelling words with the Spanish alphabet.

Learning the culture about Paraguay and other Spanish speaking countries.

Days of the week, Months of the year. Students will count and give dates in Spanish, talk about the classroom objects and useful phrases for class.

Technology – Ron Averill

Technology classes have gotten off to a great start for this semester. We have worked our way through orientation and are beginning to work in the modules where the students will experience different areas of technologies as they are applied in various Expeditions of study. Hopefully, this will give them a direction that they want to follow as they pursue their educational experiences in high school.

Puzzle Club – Amanda Edwards

The LMS Puzzle Club is gearing up to start the Unified Special Olympics Bocce Ball season. We will have 2-3 teams with students of diverse ability levels playing together on a cohesive team. There will be a match day on February 18th and a tournament on March 4th where we hope to bring home some gold medals! Puzzle Club is also planning a Valentines craft and game night in February for students to socialize and make Valentines cards for their friends.

Lansing Middle School hosted administrators and educators from several other school districts and multiple states on Thursday, January 19th as part of the BIST (Behavior Intervention Support Team) Leadership Conference. As part of the site visit, outside educators were provided with a tour of Lansing Middle School, information about the journey that Lansing Middle School has undergone with BIST, and students from LMS talked about their own experiences with behavior and BIST.

Lansing Middle School is in its tenth year as a BIST school. It is an honor to be chosen as a site visit school; this was due to our ongoing commitment to BIST and it is a tribute to the work that all staff members at LMS put in with BIST.

The middle school BIST Vision Team facilitated the visit. The BIST Vision Team at LMS consists of the following staff members –

Karen Averill, Librarian
Denise Dixon, 7th Grade Math Teacher
Nick Flynn, Vice Principal
Brooks Jenkins, Principal
Josiah Ketterman, Vocal Music Teacher
Emerald Peters, Math Interventionist/BIST Vision Team Chair

Maggie Peterson, Social Worker
John Riggs, 6th Grade Math/Literature Teacher
Stephanie Smalley, 7th Grade Math/Literature Teacher

DeeDee Wiley, 6th Grade Math Teacher

• The boys’ basketball season is nearly completed. We have had good participation and it has been a very successful season thus far, overall. Our 7th grade “A” team is currently 2-4, and the 8th grade “A” team is undefeated with a record of 6-0. The season will conclude the week of February 21st with the Kaw Valley League Tournament.

• Spelling Bee Results at Lansing Middle School

8th Grade

1st Place – Ethan Hohensinner

2nd Place – Lilly Banister

3rd Place – Chisaraokwu Njoku

7th Grade

1st Place – Ethan Valverde

2nd Place – Gabe Hawkins

3rd Place – Charlotte Kuhn

6th Grade

1st Place – Jenna Taylor-Shapiro

2nd Place – Conner Walsh

3rd Place – Furious Irlmeier

All students taking 1st Place represented LMS in the Leavenworth County Spelling Bee. Ethan Valverde took 3rd place for the 7th grade at this event.

All place winners attended the Kaw Valley League Spelling Bee on Tuesday, January 31st. At the KVL Spelling Bee, Jenna Taylor-Shapiro took 6th place for 6th grade and Ethan Hohensinner took 3rd place for the 8th grade.

• Lansing Middle School had two 6th grade students selected to play for Team Kansas in the All-American Bowl for football. Aiden Edwards and Brodie Clark were recognized for their play and took part in the event on January 13th – 16th in DeSoto, Texas.

• Lansing Middle School presented a musical on February 3rd and February 4th. The cast performed, High School Musical, Jr. This was the first musical that Lansing Middle School had performed in over ten years. Jonnie Brice served as the director and Josiah Ketterman was the assistant director. We had 54 students in grades 6, 7, and 8 that participated in the performance. On February 1st, we had a modified schedule so that all Lansing Middle School students could preview the performance.

• The Lansing Middle School Science Club was named one of 300 state finalists for the 13th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition. They earned a $2,500 prize package for being selected. They are now competing in the next phase in hopes of being one of 50 state winners. Lansing Middle School Science Club Members that participated in the competition - Hailey Ptacek, Emmalin Mains, Kamaree Owens, Charlotte Kuhn, Andrew Clark, Genevieve Gillespie, Katie Croley, Adam Galey, Griffen Duncan, Jacob Finnigin, Silas Williams, Amelia Gould, and Sophie Hileman. An expanded article on this appeared on the USD 469 website - https://usd469.socs.net/vnews/display.v/ART/63cea2a007753

Please use the link below to access the February issue of the student newspaper – “The Lion’s Paw”. Again, this is a great resource to see the viewpoint of LMS students on events at LMS.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XMvvH5dgE7FLEsGmJYgkCuG_yUYg-BaI/view?usp=share_link