October 18, 2017 Elementary Schools: Bayview, Laketown, Southview Homecoming week is an exciting time at the elementary schools. Our week consisted of a variety of dress up days including Jersey Day and Wildcat Purple and Gold. The students all learned a number of Wildcat cheers and the Waconia Fight Song. Our high school students do an amazing job of getting the students excited at the pep fest, what great role models. It was fun to have the captains from all of the teams, the royalty, and the Waconia Pep Band visit our schools. GO WILDCATS! The teachers had a big agenda on October 18th. Reading instruction was the focus, including the melding of reading workshop and balanced literacy, conferring protocol, continued development of common pacing guides, and on-going development of formative and summative assessments. Other departments also had time to meet across district to focus on curriculum development, assessments, and pacing guides. This important work is vital for instruction consistency across teams and sites. Waconia Middle School: On Wednesday, Oct. 11th, seventh grade students went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to take part in a field trip called The Edible Festival. The Arboretum helped create a bountiful buffet of attractions about plants, food, and nutrition that align with multiple MN state standards for our 7th grader s information and enjoyment. The Arboretum, with the help of several Waconia Middle school teachers, assembled many attractions and activities and used the whole day to explore! It was a beautiful day and fantastic learning experience! Character Counts awards for the month of September were recently handed out to WMS students this week. WMS staff members nominate students who they see demonstrating actions and behaviors that align with our WMS Core Values of Respect, Responsibility, Kindness, and Integrity. September WMS Character Counts recipients included: Clayton Adams, Ezra Baggenstoss, Audrey Boberg, Chase Britz, Samuel Busch, Amber Carver, Nicholas Clemens, Christopher Fulford, Jackson Green, Blake Iverson, Ella Kester, Logan Klein,
Abigail Kopp, Mariah Port, Ariana Ryskoski, Natalie Uecker, Jack Ulrich, Maya Yancey, Brady Garmen, Hayden Johnson, Bianca Llerena, Adam Wagner Congratulations and thank you to the students that were caught showing great character here at WMS! The Wild Wild West book fair was available to students and families at Waconia Middle School 10/16-10/18 from 7:30 am - 4 pm daily and during evening conferences from 4-8 pm. Proceeds from sales of books, posters, accessories and concessions go right back into purchasing more print and audio books for the library. Homecoming week was a great success. Students had fun with the daily dress up days and enjoyed the first pep-fest in our new gym. It was an amazing site to see all 900 plus students in the bleachers (see image below). Thank you to the high school pep band, homecoming court and dance team for sharing the "Wildcat Spirit" with WMS students. The first annual Homecoming Spirit Fest on Friday, Oct. 13 was filled with fun. Students enjoyed the bouncy obstacle course, DJ music, dancing, photo booth pictures, face painting and hair coloring. Thank you to the WMS PTO for organizing and staffing the concession stand. At the end of the Homecoming Fest, many WMS students rode busses to the fairgrounds and joined the Wildcat Walk to the Homecoming football game. All in all it was a successful event planned and organized by student council. Thank you to our advisors, Tana Meyer and Michelle Backes for planning and providing a fun event.
Waconia High School: To say it s been busy is a huge understatement. Homecoming was hectic and exciting week for everyone at the high school. The Student Council did a great job of overcoming all the challenges that came with new spaces (and some unavailable spaces, i.e. the gym) and used the opportunity to do some things differently. Everything from pepfests, to the Homecoming Court, to a Movie Night, to coronation was new and students had a great time. Kudos to the Student Council and advisors Sara Peoples and Maddie Gartmann. We moved right from Homecoming to Open House this past Sunday. It was so much fun to open the building to our public and let them roam freely through the building. It was even more fun to hear all the positive feedback and enthusiasm for the new Waconia High School. The place looked amazing, and I believe the public left feeling their tax dollars have been well spent. We followed up the Open House with our first round of Parent Teacher conferences on Monday evening. The furniture in the Commons was arranged so parents could meet our teachers in the arena-style setting we ve used for years at the high school. The new space worked extremely well, and the u-shaped Commons resulted in the space feeling less crowded and more welcoming. On Wednesday we tried a more distributed model where the teachers were clustered, by department, throughout the building. We ll gather feedback to guide us with setting up the next round of conferences. Activities: www.waconiaathletics.com Community Education: Community Education along with Waconia Middle School teacher Michele Melius are taking their annual MEA trip! This year we are off to New York City. This trip is designed for Middle School kids to experience history in other cities. Ms. Melius has many of these kids in her classes and loves to be able to provide this opportunity for kids to see other parts of the United States. The trip is full this year will 61 participants going. Some of the sites that will be visited are: Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, 9/11
Memorial and Museum, American Natural Museum, Central Park, a show on Broadway called School of Rock and a guided tour on top of a double decker bus. The weather looks great and it will be a fantastic trip! Superintendent: Great Week and Well Deserved Break It was a short week with students this week, but a very good week. Students had two days of school and are on a well deserved break Wednesday through Friday. The Elementary School Staff had a wonderful Professional Development Day with many activities concentrating on student data and our new Lucy Calkin s Language Arts Curriculum. The Middle and High School Staff were busy with Parent/Teacher Conferences on Monday night and during the day Wednesday. The conferences were well attended and are scheduled at a great time of the year for our parents to have a discussion with teachers about the academic progress of their child/children. Pictures of the Events from the week: WHS Open House, Jason Paulson Band in PSC, WHS Conferences, Elementary-PD Laketown- Move N Groove-A-Thon
Bayview- TEAM Read-A-Thon Southview- FIT-A-THON Wildcat Girl s Soccer, Tackle Cancer-WHS Football- Good crowd for MEA break Homecoming Pepfest
WHS Girl s Volleyball vs Orono..great student cheering section!! School Scarecrows for Waconia City Chamber Rubiks Cube Art at WMS
Wrestling Room subfloor, Gymnastics Room painting, WMS shop floors finished Waconia Learning Center progress All in All a very good week with a lot of progress, achievement, and fun. Have a GREAT week!!!