Join the celebration! National Library Week is April 7 – 13, 2019. This year’s theme, Libraries = Strong Communities, illustrates how today’s libraries are at the heart of our cities, towns and schools.Students at Central Elementary and Jefferson Intermediate enjoyed working together to learn, build, and create through a variety of makerspace activities. Students also voted for their favorite book in the Nebraska Golden Sower Program.
Central students enjoying makerspace activities during National Library Week.
If Small Towns Matter to you, nominate our school now! From March 1st until April 30th, News Channel Nebraska is inviting students, parents, teachers, and community members to nominate an elementary school to win a $5000 Grand Prize and bike helmets for EVERY student in the elementary school…just in time for summer! The winning school will be chosen at random on May 1st and contacted by phone. News Channel Nebraska and UnitedHealthcare will present the Grand Prize and bike helmets before the end of the school year. Submit your nomination below.
This first grade reading group recently read a series of stories about two sisters who were stranded on a deserted island and had to survive by eating fish, coconuts and bananas. In a parallel story they read a nonfiction passage about the layers of a coconut and where coconuts grow. To understand how hard it was for the characters to crack a coconut, these students got to experience it themselves. Using a hammer, each student took turns hitting a coconut until it was in pieces. They identified the different layers of the coconut and had the option to sample the coconut milk and coconut meat. It’s a good thing they weren’t depending on the coconut for survival because only one student liked the taste!
On Saturday, March 30th, Jefferson Intermediate Division One team traveled to Tri County to compete in the State Reading Classics Competition .In the first round Fairbury competed against 9 other nearby counties. After 30 questions, the top two teams were announced and Jefferson was one of the two!! The students were so excited to make it to the final round, also known as the buzzer round! In the Final competition, fifteen oral questions are asked. Jefferson students were amazing and surpassed Seward with a score of 8-4! Congratulations to some excellent readers and competitors! We had 75 books to read for this competition!
On March 25th the Division II team from Fairbury competed at the Jefferson County Reading Classics Competition. This competition was the culmination of six months of extensive reading of 74 books for the six sixth graders on the team. Heidi Ramos,Natalie Heidemann, Adeline Blatny, Addison Marschman, and Mailee Garner, put in a good effort outscoring two Tri-County teams 32 to 20 to 12 out of 50 questions. They will head to Tri-County School March 30th to compete in the State Reading Classics Competition. Good Luck and Well Done Team!
The annual Copacabana oversaw a gathering of local talent in the Burkley Fine Arts Center on Saturday, March 16. The evening featured performances from FHS’s music department, soloists and individually-formed groups along with the display of works from art students.
Potential acts auditioned prior to the event for a place in the show. Some individuals earned several spots for the evening. More preparation time was seen as a necessity for them. Dakota Gladson ’19 believes the time put in was crucial to a successful concert.
Sara Huss ’20 performs a piano piece for the public dinner prior to the Copacabana concert. The meal, along with the main event, featured several musical acts including an appearance by FHS’s Ukulele Club and the playing of a classic Czech polka song by various Band students. Photo by: B. Novotny
“Copa was not only a blast but it was such a privilege to work with the rest of the performers and MCs,” Gladson said. “I personally think that this was our smoothest and best Copa at least since I’ve been in high school. The alumni are missed and greatly praised, but I feel that we either did as good or better than years before!”
Brylee Yantz ’21 plays the saxophone alongside other members of the jazz band. Yantz also participated in two piano solos, a vocal and ukulele duet with Hailie Nicholson ’21 and pieces performed by the general high school band. Photo by: B. Novotny
Some performances featured a more personal undertone. Michaela Buchli ’19 and her mother, Karie Buchli, joined together to sing Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” with former director Karen Grefe Reynolds utilized as a piano accompanist. Karie performed this piece in 1986 as a solo act for the very first Copacabana.
“When I talked to [Karie] about doing a piece for Copa, she brought up this idea of singing as a duet,” Michaela said. “It felt amazing to perform with my mom. She was so excited to be able to relive the moment and I was excited just to be a part of it.”
Other unique moments arose from the event. What resonated with performers and attendees varies from individual to individual. For Gladson, the unveiling of an original work [“Dream With Me”] that included audience participation and publicly asking Jasmine Snyder ’21 to the upcoming Prom stood out.
Jason Hughes ’20 and Lauren Patton ’20 carry out a skit between acts to keep the crowd entertained. Other emcees included seniors Toriann Likens, Joy Ondrak, Dakota Gladson, and Mikasa Lierman. Photo by: B. Novotny
“One part of the night suck out to me the most, and that was when the entire audience stood up and sang with me,” Gladson said. “It took my breath away and made me so honored that I was in the presence of such a great audience. The ‘promposal’ was a big deal to me so I wanted it to be perfect. I no-joke practiced in the mirror so that I wouldn’t freeze up.”
Fairbury will host the District Music Contest April 11-12.
Imagine what it would be like to lose your home or your livestock and crops. Well this is the reality for many Nebraskans at this time. People throughout the state have had to evacuate their homes and leave everything behind. Flooding has left people without homes and also without water. Water in flood areas have been contaminated leaving them undrinkable and many people without water. The boys track team decided to do something to help those people in need and hold a water drive in Fairbury.
“I thought of how I couldn’t enter Beatrice from where I normally do due to the flooding, so then I thought about contaminated pipes, and how water could be pretty nasty at other towns. Then I made a flyer and I asked my parents and if they could get this out for publicity and if I could store it somewhere in the schools,” Freshman Zane Grizzle said.
So far the track team has had great success with the Water drive. There have been multiple business that have donated cases of water to the flood victims. There has also been a delivery made to Peru State College on Wednesday morning. 350 cases of water have been donated so far.
The boys track team is also challenging other track teams across the state to help by starting their own water drive for the flood victims. If you are interested in donating water to the water drive, you can drop off cases of water at Central, Jefferson, and the High School.
Geometry students study right triangle properties as they prepare for the ACT. After mastering Pythagorean Theorem and its converse, students worked with special right triangles (45-45-90 and 30-60-90) before learning a valuable trigonometry concept. Right triangles exist everywhere! Math skills allow us to apply our knowledge to life outside the classroom and beyond the ACT.
SohCahToa is an acronym used to solve not only for sides of a right triangle, but also for angles. Mrs. Petersen’s geometry students calculated the height of objects around Fairbury High School while using not only their calculator, but also a tape measure and clinometer. The height of the classroom is 13′ 4″. The height of the entryway to the building is 20′ and the flag pole is 35′.
A popular question that Mrs. Petersen hears and answers frequently is “When am I ever going to use this?!” As you may have experienced, story problems are challenging in a math class. Labs are like a real live story problem! Students enjoyed using a new tool, called a clinometer, to measure angles. The frustration was not with calculations, but with the tape measure! But hey! There’s an app for that. Marching our way up Bloom’s Taxonomy Pyramid for education, the next thing students get to do is create their own story problem using Adobe Spark. Here is an example and this is another example.
Fairbury has been fortunate to have several donations of pork and beef throughout the last two years. The DeBoer families donated two beef to kick off our Farm to School Program in the spring of 2018. Since that time, we have had more beef and pork donated by several generous families. We have also had many monetary donations. Monetary donations are used to help defray the cost of processing the beef and pork. In addition to pork and beef, in the fall we have had donations of fresh garden produce.
The Farm to School Program is great for our school. It gives our students pride in where there food is produced. They get fresh from the farm foods. The cafeteria staff does a great job in serving the foods in creative and tasty dishes. Some of the beef dishes served have been, fresh 100% ¼ lb. hamburgers, roast beef, beef and noodles and beef enchiladas. The variety of pork dishes include: Pork Tetrazinni, Pulled Pork Sandwich, Southwest BBQ Pork Pizza, Roast Pork Loin and Pork Tacos. Fresh salsa was prepared with some of the locally produced and donated tomatoes and peppers. Fresh cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes have enhanced flavor and color of the fruit/vegetable bars. Nothing is better than a home-grown tomato. Yum…
Donations are accepted throughout the school year. Please contact Mr. Grizzle at the district office (402-729-6104) for more information on donating beef or pork. For donations of fresh produce, please call Jane Rhine at the high school cafeteria, (402-300-3094)
A big thank you goes out to everyone for all generous donations. Our students really appreciate all the fresh local food.
