Mrs. Mumm’s 3rd Graders are participating in the Ag Pen Pal Program this year. It is through the Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation. Their mission is to engage youth, educators and the general public to promote an understanding of the vital importance of agriculture in the lives of Nebraskans. Their website is: www.nefbfoundation.org.
The Soaring Jeffs Quiz Bowl Club is off to a terrific start! We currently have 34 members of our Club! The students meet weekly after school to answer questions, play games, and even participate in Quiz Offs! Two competition teams recently traveled to Thayer Central to compete in a Quiz Bowl Competition against 7 other schools, Bruning Davenport, David City, Diller Odell, Meridian, Osceola, Sutton and Thayer Central. Our 5th grade team, consisting of Adeline Blatny, Brody Schmidt, Izzy Ausk, Heidi Ramos, and Landon McBride took 2nd place in the 5th grade division with a 5 – 2 record. The 6th grade team made up of Blake Starr, Brook Tatro, Lily Ausk, Jakolbe Atkins, and Toby Julin-McCleary took 1st place going undefeated in competition! The Club is coached by Nicole Comer and Angie Judd. Competing in competitions like this couldn’t happen without the support of our entire Quiz Bowl Club! Congratulations to all of the members of the Soaring Jeffs Quiz Bowl Club!
Third graders at Jefferson Intermediate School are learning to Code in their Enrichment class with Mrs. Shinn. Maybe you are wondering why students should learn to code. Well, coding, also called programming, is a skill set that students could use for a future career in a world that has a shortage of skilled coders and programmers. However, coding can also help students in their other subjects, too—coding can improve skills like perseverance and problem solving. Coding is can also be beneficial to students who are struggling with reading and math. In addition, students often feel empowered when they can create using digital media and share it with others.
The earlier we introduce children to coding, the more comfortable they will be when presented with it in middle and high school. Also, early exposure to coding helps teach children how important it is to understand computers as the valuable tools they are rather than merely fun playthings.
When students learn the fundamentals of coding it will help provide students with skills that will benefit them in any career they choose. Plus, there a lot of excitement in a room full of students learning to coding in a 3rd grade class.
These third graders want to learn how to code. They are motivated to learn how to make tablets and computers do useful things and they want to learn how to build programs and websites. To them it is actually a very cool thing to learn how to do.
However, while “cool” is nice, what really matters are the life long benefits of building these skills:
Lately, students in the 6th grade have been working on basic ear training skills in music. Given a sung or played musical pattern, students use colored cards to transcribe what they hear. Possible rhythms are written on the cards, and the colors of the cards indicate the pitch (high or low, do/re/mi, etc.) The development of these skills is crucial to attaining independent musicianship, which allows students more opportunities to explore and understand the music they love.
During 5th grade enrichment, students focused part of their time on multiplication through the fun game, “Multiplication Squares”. The students partnered up with someone around the room. Each partner had a different colored pencil. Each group had one paper and a pair of dice. They took turns rolling the dice. When the two numbers appeared, they multiplied those numbers, found that number and place a line by it. Once they had placed 4 lines around that number, they filled in that square with their color. This was a fun way to help them practice their multiplication facts in an interactive way. Students’ comments about the activity were, “This is a blast!”, “This is so much fun!”, “Can we do this again?” “I really need to practice these!”. Learning and knowing multiplication facts form the foundation for solving mathematical concepts.
Students in Mrs. Ruhnke’s fifth grade Social Studies class are learning about the “Three Branches of Government.” They have been studying the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches and the function of each. Mrs. Ruhnke shares lessons with students using the “Nearpod” website which provides interactive activities that include collaborating with classmates and going on “Virtual” field trips.
Once again Southeast Community College Beatrice Nursing Students came to Fairbury Public Schools to assisted in conducting the school health screenings. The State of Nebraska mandates that schools screen students in Preschool to 4th grade, 7th and 10th graders, along with any new student to the district.
“It is so nice to have the SCC nursing students come and assist with these screenings,” said FPS school nurse, Becki Schmidt. “They screened over 500 students in three days. They not only helped me but they were also doing their clinical rotation for their Growth and Development class.”
The students are screened for height, weight, vision, hearing, and dental. If the student fails a screening the school nurse will rescreen the student at a later time and if they fail again a letter will be sent home to parents.
During Homecoming week each morning, Jefferson students lined the hallways for a Jefferson/High School Pep Rally. The FHS team members for each Fall sport walked/jogged/ran through the hallways giving and receiving High Fives with Jefferson students. They also played “Colors,” the FHS Fight Song, over the Intercom.
Each day of the week the students also dressed up to their theme “SOARing Over the Rainbow with Jefferson Pride” for homecoming. Each day they wore something different that fit the theme:
Showing our #jeffpride for the Cross Country team!
Jefferson Intermediate School wants to wish our Fairbury High School sports teams “good luck” in their seasons.
5th grade students in Mrs. Wright’s class were learning about text features through the use of quizlet and quizlet.live! Quizlet Live is designed to bring energy, collaboration, and of course, thinking into classroom. The program creates teams of students who work together to learn the material in a Quizlet study set. The Correct answer moves them ahead, but wrong answers send teams back to zero. In order to win, students need to collaborate and work as a team. This was a great learning experience for the students.
