The AO/MV Middle School students held their annual holiday food drive in early December. A week-long competition was held between Hawk groups, and the winning group, Mrs. Else’s Card Sharks, collected a whopping 272 items! Even more amazing, eighth grader, Lorissa Mauch brought in over 200 of those 272 items!
The food drive was completed in correlation to the character counts pillar of caring. The middle school students illustrated they certainly do care by collecting nearly 800 food items, personal care and cleaning products in all. Those items were donated to less fortunate families prior to the holidays.
Photo by Ashley Buth. Thanks, Ashley!
Eighth graders are trying to make a difference with their words. They recently spent written language time writing in journals for six soldiers. The soldiers were either graduates from our school and had been in Mrs. Berning's class or they were acquaintances. Each of the students wrote in four selected journals filling 50 pages in 6 journals. The journals were then mailed to these six soldiers: Sara Harbaugh, William Kuebler, James Moody, Brent Juelfs, Joshua Tillman, and Dillon Cloud. It was amazing how many soldiers we all knew. And it was awesome to read their kind words and words of thanks for serving our country. They also shared what's happening in their lives as an eighth grader.
After writing in these journals, they decided to write to Tye Petersen in the same way. Each student wrote a page in their class journal thus sending 3 journals to him. We also included a Hobbit book as the students are enthusiastically reading it together now. Karissa Morehead also included a scented wax puppy with our journal and book. She makes these with her mom for a business.
We're hoping these words inspire Tye to come back to school soon. We miss him.
Editor's note: Tye Petersen is a fellow classmate who was hospitalized for a lengthy amount of time. While he has now come home, he cannot attend school for extended amounts of time.
The Northwest Iowa Choral Association’s 31st Annual Middle School Honor Choir Festival took place on November 6, 2007, at the LeMars Community High School. Ms. Mary Kay Knapp, who teaches vocal music at West High School in Iowa City, directed this year’s festival chorus. The guest choir for the evening was the Iowa All-State participants under the direction of Randy Ewing, vocal teacher from LeMars High School.
There were 45 schools participating in the music festival this year with 340 talented 7th and 8th grade singers in the choir. Students from the Anthon-Oto/Maple Valley Middle School who participated were: Sopranos-Halie Edgington and Nicole Boysen, Altos-Katie Samuelson and Anna Duncan, Tenors-Ryan Dougherty and Beau Wolfe, and Basses-Nathan Hollingshead and Cody Nelson. The day was spent learning about new music literature, new vocal techniques, fine-tuning their performance skills and practicing for the evening concert that was open to the public.
One of the Anthon-Oto/Maple Valley joint Board goals set for 2007-08 is to celebrate our districts by communicating “Quality is #1.” They decided to recognize a teacher from each building each quarter as their “Featured Teacher” to sport on their joint website. Each of the 4 teachers for the second quarter received a certificate and a photo op with MVAO Administrative team, and each is the proud displayer of the traveling plaque for Featured Teachers.
Anthon-Oto Elementary Ð Laura Boustead: Laura’s persistent positive attitude and love for kindergartners is evident every day; we appreciate that enthusiasm! Recently Laura was heard saying something like this; “That kindergarten program conference I went to was just awesome, even after teaching for 8 years I still found so many new ideas to improve my classroom!”
Maple Valley Elementary Ð Shari Blake: She is always willing to go the extra mile for her students and colleagues. Plus we like to watch her blush when she has her picture taken! Between the ING Grant and Blue Ribbon School photos we thought she might be used to it, not a chance!
AOMV Middle School Ð Mona Kirchgatter: She teaches Art in both elementary buildings and at AOMV Middle School. Mona puts forth a lot of effort as the K-8 Art teacher and is dedicated to her students. Her classes helped create banners and posters for National Education Week and Blue Ribbon School celebrations, just to name a few of the extra efforts!
MVAO High School Ð Mary Joan Dougherty: She was selected as our MVAO High School Featured Teacher because she is always smiling and willing to help with whatever comes her way, even if it is not in her job description! She is the pianist for most concerts, plans mentor group activities, she organizes the high school birthday celebrations for staff, orchestrates Pennies for Patients and even the Secret Santa event! She is an asset not only to our school, but to our communities.
The Maple Valley 2nd & 3rd graders have been “Ringing in the New Year,” with resolution bells in Mrs. Bollig’s Multiage classroom. Each student made a bell and wrote their resolution on it. Next they customized it by decorating with ribbons, sequences and, Mrs. Bollig’s favorite, glitter! Some of their resolutions are to: “Keep my room clean, help my mom with my brothers, do dishes, feed my pets, scoop the sidewalk, and be nice to my sisters!”
This month the classroom is celebrating the season of SNOW! To set the scene the room has been decorated with snowmen and snowflakes. Math activities and writing projects are centered on, what else, SNOW! The students are working on a progressive class story entitled, “When It Snows I Like to . . .. “ Each student writes a sentence to correspond with the previous sentences, thus creating a twenty page book with illustrations for each sentence.
With all of the enthusiasm their second semester is sure to be full of fun and learning!