Washington 4-5 Center
• The Tiger Cub Band is back in the band room and ready to roar at Washington 4-5 Center. Ninety-nine fifth graders participate in Tiger Cub Band, which meets three times a week in two separate groups: the Orange Band and the Black Band.
The band members adopted a new year’s resolution to practice more at home, and to start back up if their resolution fails.
Tiger Cub Band members are preparing for their third monthly performance day, which they look forward to each month. Each player will prepare a line of music to perform in front of the class. Tiger Cub families will begin to notice some progress at home in the next few weeks. They should be delighted to hear two new notes, the first differences in dynamics, and the introduction to eighth notes by the end of the month.
From Laura Beck, Tiger Cub Band director
Huron High School
• The Human Development I class at Huron High School has spent this semester learning about pregnancy, parenting, and development of children from infancy through the age of 5. The students also served as a temporary caregiver for the RealCare® Baby, which is a computerized infant simulator that must be supervised by the student at all times. The baby will cry and need to be fed, burped, rocked, and have diapers changed. It is the student’s responsibility to tend to the baby’s needs.
A small computer inside the baby is programmed to follow actual schedules of 15 different newborns. Each 24-hour period the baby was on a different schedule. The program also kept track of the baby’s body temperature, how many minutes it cried during their care, how many minutes it was in its car seat, abuse, neglect, and shaken baby syndrome. Also recorded was the time of day or night that these neglects or abuses occurred.
The students received a feedback sheet letting them know how they did during this experience.
The class explored physical, social, emotional and intellectual development of infancy through age 5, and had several opportunities to work with children at M&M day care, Kindernook, Head Start, and the Buchanan kindergarten classrooms.
Students were able to observe the children in their classrooms or centers environments, and helped in the classroom with the children gaining a hands-on experience. At the end of the class, students planned and presented art activities to the children. The students were involved in several hands-on learning opportunities and were able to work with children from infancy through 5 years of age.
From Kathy Engst
Buchanan K-1 Center
• It has been a busy year so far in the Buchanan K-1 Center Counselor’s office. The second annual Unity Day Celebration was held in October. Unity Day is a day to educate students and raise awareness of bullying prevention. Students celebrated by wearing Orange district wide. There were also several activities that promoted kindness, acceptance and inclusion.
Students were busy in December writing letters to Santa Claus. Students participated in a campaign that was put on by Macy’s and Make-A-Wish South Dakota. For every letter that was sent to Santa Claus, Macy’s donated $1 to Make-A-Wish. Dec. 8 was National Believe Day, in which Macy’s doubled its donation for each letter. Buchanan K-1 Center sent in a total of 442 letters, which raised $625 for Make-A-Wish.
Jan. 22-26 is the week of The Great Kindness Challenge. Students at Buchanan will be completing different kindness challenges throughout the week, as well as being challenged to participate in as many acts of kindness as possible.
The Buchanan Counseling Program has guidance classes in each classroom once a month. In the kindergarten classes, students learned basic feelings: happy, mad, sad, and scared, and how to recognize those feelings by looking at details and expressions on someone’s face, along with the situation they are in, to help identify how they might be feeling.
First-graders continue to look at those basic feelings, and identify times they have experienced those feelings. Students are also learning ways to show care and concern to others. Lessons will eventually move into emotion management.
From Laci Hettinger, counselor
Huron Middle School
• Eighth-grade language arts and reading students at Huron Middle School have been reading a novel in small groups known as literature circles. In a literature circle, small groups of students read a common novel and discuss their reading on a daily basis. Students use several different reading strategies to work on comprehension and fluency skills.
These strategies include making connections, asking questions, summarizing, highlighting key text, finding important vocabulary, and making mental pictures while reading. When finished with their literature circle novel, students will make an iMovie book trailer to share a summary of the novel with the rest of the class
From Mandy DeJong
