The Lion’s Tale Lambert Public Schools March 2018 From the supt. Happy Spring (Almost!) from the Office of the Superintendent: Now that we have had a couple of days of extreme weather, the 4 th quarter has arrived and I am sure we are all ready for spring! Looking back at the current school year, I am amazed at the progress our students have made and how hard our staff has worked towards continued improvement and progress at Lambert Public Schools. Thank you for all the hard work that everyone puts into our students’ success. While we prepare for the finish of this school year and looking forward to our next school year, there are a couple of chang- es we are implementing to improve school communication. We are looking to streamline communication from the school as we have many different venues for information to be distributed to the community. Whenever there is a change in schedule, it means that many moving parts need to be coordinated to distribute the same, accurate information. We have started to implement a Google Calendar that will have all of our activities schedules on it displayed in real time whenever an update is made. This will be coordinated with our website calendar and any other venue of communication the school has will refer to the one calendar so all information refers to one place. Additionally, we will be changing our website to help improve communication and to satisfy federal ADA requirements. Any urgent or last minute notices will continue to be communicated via School Messenger so please make sure your information is updated with our office. We will also be making a change with how our information is collected and updated with our office this spring/fall as we prepare for next year by utilizing an electronic. I know that our system is not perfect, but I can promise that we will continue to work to improve all that we have to the best of our ability. Please help us by communicating issues you may notice during this transition. Another item that we are looking to develop soon for next year is our school calendar. Currently we are creating our next calendar committee and will start planning our calendar for the 2018-2019 school year. Should you have any questions, concerns, or input please look to contact a member of the committee (will be published as soon as we can) so that they can bring it to the committee meetings. We hope to have a version of the 2018-2019 calendar ready for board approval at our next schedule school board meeting, March 26 th . A couple of updates coming up in March: Parent/Teacher Conferences are Tuesday March 20 th from 3:30 – 6:30 PM Our calendar “flex day” of April 20 th has been moved to March 23 rd to support our Prom activities. We will have a regular Friday school day on April 20 th and no school on March 23 rd . As always, thank you for your support of Lambert Public Schools and should you have any questions, concerns, or anything else we can help you with please contact us at the school and we will do our best to help support what is best for our stu- dents. Cordially, Mr. Sean Beddow
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Lambert Public Schools The Lion’s Tale...festival. Little Lion and elementary basketball seasons also have drawn to a close. All who work with the elementary are super-duper happy
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Transcript
The Lion’s Tale
Lambert Public Schools
March 2018
From the supt.
Happy Spring (Almost!) from the Office of the Superintendent:
Now that we have had a couple of days of extreme weather, the 4th quarter has arrived and I am sure we are all ready for
spring! Looking back at the current school year, I am amazed at the progress our students have made and how hard our
staff has worked towards continued improvement and progress at Lambert Public Schools. Thank you for all the hard work
that everyone puts into our students’ success.
While we prepare for the finish of this school year and looking forward to our next school year, there are a couple of chang-
es we are implementing to improve school communication. We are looking to streamline communication from the school
as we have many different venues for information to be distributed to the community. Whenever there is a change in
schedule, it means that many moving parts need to be coordinated to distribute the same, accurate information. We have
started to implement a Google Calendar that will have all of our activities schedules on it displayed in real time whenever
an update is made. This will be coordinated with our website calendar and any other venue of communication the school
has will refer to the one calendar so all information refers to one place. Additionally, we will be changing our website to
help improve communication and to satisfy federal ADA requirements. Any urgent or last minute notices will continue to be
communicated via School Messenger so please make sure your information is updated with our office. We will also be
making a change with how our information is collected and updated with our office this spring/fall as we prepare for next
year by utilizing an electronic. I know that our system is not perfect, but I can promise that we will continue to work to
improve all that we have to the best of our ability. Please help us by communicating issues you may notice during this
transition.
Another item that we are looking to develop soon for next year is our school calendar. Currently we are creating our next
calendar committee and will start planning our calendar for the 2018-2019 school year. Should you have any questions,
concerns, or input please look to contact a member of the committee (will be published as soon as we can) so that they
can bring it to the committee meetings. We hope to have a version of the 2018-2019 calendar ready for board approval at
our next schedule school board meeting, March 26th.
A couple of updates coming up in March:
Parent/Teacher Conferences are Tuesday March 20th from 3:30 – 6:30 PM
Our calendar “flex day” of April 20th has been moved to March 23rd to support our Prom activities. We will have a regular
Friday school day on April 20th and no school on March 23rd.
As always, thank you for your support of Lambert Public Schools and should you have any questions, concerns, or anything
else we can help you with please contact us at the school and we will do our best to help support what is best for our stu-
dents.
Cordially,
Mr. Sean Beddow
Kindergarten News
Miss. Schultz
Page 2 The Lion’s Tale
From the principal
Mrs. Triplett
We are a couple of weeks away from the final quarter of school already, and, like every year, our calendar
is filling up on a daily basis, with all sorts of events and activities. The end of the quarter is March 11th,
and parents, please mark your calendars for Parent-Teacher Conferences on Thursday, March 17th, from
3:30-6:30 at the school.
Our elementary WIN groups are going strong, with this supplemental time devoted to individual student
math and language arts needs. Our elementary teaching team met to analyze the winter data and found
some adjustments, but, overall, we are pleased with the majority of the improvements we are seeing.
The Richland County Spelling Bee was held a couple of weeks ago, as was our Elem/JH District music
festival. Little Lion and elementary basketball seasons also have drawn to a close. All who work with the
elementary are super-duper happy that the weather has taken a turn for the better, and our students can
get outside. With the cold snap, the students spent a lot of time inside for recess, and it’s always great
for them to get fresh air!
Our PAW Power Proud citizenship program seems to be working well. We consistently have a strong
number of nominees, and it’s fun to recognize those students/staff who demonstrate character traits of
Positive activity, Acting responsibility, and/or making Wise choices. February’s emphasis was the
character trait of “Trustworthiness”, while March’s trait will be “Fairness.” Each month we have a class
help us define the trait over the intercom during morning announcements, and then the teachers
re-emphasize this within their classes throughout the month.
We have scheduled all our 7-12 testing and will also work in our Spring MAP testing. It’s difficult to bal-
ance the importance of taking class time to give these tests, while sacrificing critical teaching time, which
is so limited in the spring, but we also know this data assists us in doing a better job of meeting our
students’ needs.
School-wide, we celebrated National FFA week, with the FFA sponsoring all sorts of fun activities in order
to promote the organization and our agriculture program. Many BPA students qualified and will be
participating at the State BPA Convention in a week, as well.
The District tournament has concluded. It was a marathon, for sure. Our girls lost out Friday, and our
boys qualified for Divisionals after a battle against Bainville. The boys played well in Divisionals, but lost
out in two.
HS track and golf begin in March 14th!
In English 12, seniors are working on their final drafts of their research papers, and in drama, we are re-
hearsing “Virgil Goes to Hollywood”, with a performance date of April 21st not too far away.
This month has been a busy one for us in kindergarten. We celebrated our 100th day of school. What a
fun day that was! Reading 100 words, writing 100 words, counting to 100, 100 stickers, 100 math
problems, 100 pieces of snacks-Whew! Makes me tired just thinking about it.
In reading, we have started reading stories out of our storybooks. This is a day we have all been looking
forward to since we started learning sounds. We love finishing a story, turning the page, and getting to
look at the silly picture. The kindergarteners are turning into awesome readers, and I am so proud of
them. In math we are giving our brains a little rest from all the hard number work and are working on
measurement and classifying objects. It’s hard to believe that it is March already, but we are looking
Page 3
First Grade
Mrs. Combs
Second Grade
Mr. Carda
Are you ready for Spring? We are!! Our 1st grade friends have been working so hard in what we call the
“meat and potatoes” part of the 1st grade year. We begin our year with a heavy review of what we learned
in kindergarten and begin to build on those skills. By December, we have truly entered the 1st grade
common core curriculum. The reading and math skills are very demanding now!
We are currently learning about “Heat and Light” in Science and how they affect everything on Earth. The
friends don’t find this quite as “fun” as our Magnets Unit, but it still IS interesting. I tell you, those
magnets tested about everything we own in the classroom! We thoroughly understand the terms
“attract” and “repel.”
It won’t be long and we’ll be doing our final Spring testing over reading and math. It will be exciting to see
how far we have come on our benchmark sheets!
The month of February was exactly what we in Montana are used to dealing with and that is cold weather!
The weather is hanging around for a bit, but spring is just around the corner! I hope!
We had three spellers compete in the Richland County spelling bee this month. They were Quetzal
Marquina, Charlie Beddow, and Felixe Becker. They represented us well and congratulations for a job well
done!
Our focus in math now is money. This is a fun topic as we have been practicing counting coins all year.
Then, it will be on to telling time with an analog clock. Our class has been working hard on learning their
addition facts with the FASTTMath program.
In Science we are being introduced to a unit on animals. We learned about how they grow and change.
Our unit also talks about and discusses animal homes or habitats. This is another favorite topic and will
be discussed widely in class!
Our next Social Studies is a topic that affects all of us and that is how to be a good citizen. We will
discuss what a person can do to be a good citizen of our community.
In Language Arts we will be working with adjectives and how they are used in sentences. We have been
busy learning all the important parts of a sentence this year.
The class has been working diligently with cursive handwriting. They are excited as they learn new letters
and put their skills to work when writing! We are also excited to be reading AR books and just enjoying
reading every day!
We hope to see you soon! Stop by and say “Hi!” if you are in the school!
Page 4 The Lion’s Tale
Gym/ Health Mr. Sommerfeld
Things are moving right along in 4th grade. We have just finished up reading and comparing The Golden
Touch and The Chocolate Touch. We have quite enjoyed both stories! We FINALLY wrapped up long
division in math class, and are very excited to move on to patterns and sequences. We are moving about
the United States to learn our states and capitals; our current region is the Southwest. In science, our
current topic is rocks and minerals. As we seem to have sniffly noses constantly, our Kleenex supply is
just about diminished. Any donations of tissue boxes would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your help
in this matter!
Fifth & Sixth Grade Mrs. Clausen & Mrs. Pust
As I’m sure you are aware, Mrs. Kiena Murray has been student teaching in the 5th grade classroom. She
has been transitioning from being an observer in our room to teaching some of the classes herself.
Starting in the second week of March, she will take over all classes for two weeks. Then she will begin
transitioning back out of teaching those classes. During this time, she will be an active participant in the
Parent Teacher Conference on March 20th. Then, by the end of March, Mrs. Clausen will take over
teaching all classes again and when we return from Spring Break, Mrs. Murray will return to being an
Elementary Paraprofessional. Thank you so much for being patient and understanding during this time
In gym, class students are working on kickball in the kindergarten through eighth grades. Kindergarten
through sixth grade will be working with scooters soon. Students will also be working on badminton for
the sixth through eighth grades. We will be working on a hockey until in the future.
Third Grade Miss Schields
After completing the Belgian folk tale, The Soup Stone, the third graders actually made Stone Soup. Each
student brought one ingredient to add to the soup, and collectively we enjoyed a tasty and nutritious soup
just as the people in the village did many years ago. The aroma drifting through the halls brought rave
reviews as well!
We will complete our “Book-It” project at the end of March. Several students have participated all six
months! What an accomplishment in terms of time spent reading and successfully completing a project or
AR test. Thanks to Ms. Killick for her help in selecting books at the appropriate levels. We hope reading
exciting books will continue into the summer months and thus lessen the forgetting that often occurs
during this time.
Capacity, mass, and telling time have been our Math topics. The most challenging aspect of this chapter
was telling the amount of elapsed time, especially to the exact minute. Elapsed time will be a work in
progress!
State and local government will be the Social Studies discussion, while weather is the Science topic.
Fourth Grade
Mrs. Beddow
Page 5
Resource Room news Mrs. Patterson
Music/band news Miss. Shumway
Hello everyone!
There are only 28 days until spring! It’s an exciting time here in the music room. We previously had our
junior high music festival in Glendale on February 3. We took ten students who performed together as a
band, and then we had two soloists. I’m happy to report that all performances received a 1 - the highest
rating that can be achieved. Congratulations to all performers involved.
The junior high and high school have been busy in the classroom working on a wide variety of concert
band rep. They’ve also been busy in the gym as we finished out our home games and looked forward to
tournaments. It has been great getting to work with the new students involved and seeing what we are
capable of as a band.
Choir has grown as well. We have been busy learning about different genres of vocal music, and have
begun working on music for festival. We are excited for music festival in the end of April!
The music department has started a new class this year - an independent music class called studio
piano! Students get to learn piano while working at their own pace through various levels of Alfred’s Basic
Piano Library. Congratulations to all students in the class as they have all passed the first level and
moved on the second.
Elementary music has been working on compositions, adding to their word wall that focuses on music
vocab, and learning about opposites in music such as loud/soft, fast/slow, and high/low. I am happy to
share that while learning all of these things, the 3rd and 4th grade class has earned their first party of the
year! Each day a class makes it through music without getting three strikes for misbehaving, they get a
key. When they fill up all the keys on their piano, they get a key! Congratulations, 3rd and 4th grade.
3rd and 4th graders will soon be starting recorders. Parents, try to control your excitement. If your child
has their own recorder, they are welcome to bring it to class. If they do not have a recorder, they are able
to use one of the school’s or they can bring money and I can order them their own. Be on the lookout for
a take-home from the music room with more information sometime in the next few weeks.
What to Do When Your Kid’s Struggling Academically
excerpted from https://teach4theheart.com/parents-what-to-do-when-your-kids-struggling-academically/
Accept responsibility. When your kid is struggling, it’s so easy to blame the teacher, but you have to realize that, as the parent,
you are ultimately responsible for your child’s academic success.
Expect their best. It’s so important to expect the best of your kids, no matter what their best looks like in the form of a grade.
For some, their best may be a C; for others, it’s an A.
Communicate with the teacher. Talk to the teacher about why your student is struggling and what you can do at home to help.
Focus on what you can do and how you can collaborate with the teacher to best help your student succeed.
Make sure they’re doing their work. Often when students are struggling it’s because they are either not doing all their work or
they’re doing it haphazardly. If they’re not doing their work, not only are their grades likely being penalized for that, but they are
not learning the material as well.
Help them with their work. The first place to look for help should be you, the parents. So help them study, quiz them for their
tests, and help them through problems they don’t understand.
Limit distractions. If you’re finding that your child or teen can’t focus on schoolwork, consider limiting distractions such as TV,