Steinkamp's Scoop

Merry Christmas Parents!!   Here are a few pictures taken today. I hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas! I will see you January 4th, 2016!! Eating with Advent Angels.  Last caroling day for these kiddos. I had some of the 7th grade sneak in their too. ;) 

The Christmas masa was a success! We didn't get to Skype with Svetlana in class, but I am hoping during their study hall they will be able to.  Here are some pictures of our big meal. Thank you to all the parents who purchased a little something for the meal and secret Santas!  Okay, not so masa, but these are the windows from Barb's. They had SO much fun! And the windows turned out so cool. Barb made me one with all the kid's initials on the little people. I have Ms S. on my dress. SO cute and a great way for me to remember these lovelies. Thanks Barb! Christmas masa layout. Boys telling me how they liked the taste of their hot tea. Looks like they liked it, or were just pretending to for me.  Payton on the other hand didn't seem to like it. :)  Getting ready to reveal secret Santas!!  The boys are spending their time wisely by playing with hot wheels, that was given to Ayden by his Secret Santa. While I type this the whole class i

The 8th grade making Polar Express theme tickets.  Some of the finished product. In the middle they had to write the theme or the topic of the book.  The winners of the Knights of Columbus Essay Contest! 1st place: Spencer. 2nd place: Payton. 3rd place: Beau. Congratulations guys! :) 

Greetings! The time has come for CHRISTMAS WEEK. We start today! However, the 6th grade will start tomorrow due to an assignment they have to complete. 8th grade: They will be reading The Polar Express and be focusing on literary elements of imagery, theme, figurative language, ext.. Thursday they will walk to Barb's shop for a Book Club activity so please remember to sign the permission slips! Friday we will be having our masa! Thank you for those who have already bought their items. If you wish not to participate, just let me know, not a big deal! Also, we will be revealing our Secret Santa Friday too. I am positive your child has informed you of this. 7th grade: They will be reading a 6 scene play based around A Christmas Carol. This play allows the students to do a lot of literary devices such how the dialogue and actions of the characters affect theme, characterization (direct and indirect), character development, foreshadowing, and the list goes on! Today they will read

Dear Parents, Merry Christmas! I think I have made it pretty clear this is my favorite time of the year. You are familiar that I lived in Eastern Europe. So, I would like to share my Moldovan experience with the 8th grade in a masa . Masa is Romanian for table. Moldovans have two meanings for this word. 1. the literal meaning, table. 2. they use masa in saying a party where friends and family join together to have a meal and celebrate special times. I would like to have a masa with the kids on the 18th. I thought this would be a great time to come together to discuss our Christmas book, talk about the true meaning of Christmas, and try to Skype with my host mom, Svetlana, in Moldova. I know she loves to talk with the 8th grade. To have a masa I am asking each student to bring a little something that can be found on a typical Moldovan masa. They have each been assigned a food item. If you prefer not to participate, just let me know and I can come up with the difference. Let

And the winners are... Congratulations to the following students for winning the door decorating contest. We had a lot of fun and the doors look great! First Place: Spencer and Ellie!  Second Place: Halle and Rowan!  Third Place: Beau and Garon!  Congratulations to the winners! All the doors looked great!  Reminders: The school will be traveling to the high school on Friday to practice for the winter concert. The concert is on Sunday afternoon at the high school!  Friday is also Hour of Code for the middle school. The kiddos can bring their devices to participate in activities that we will be doing. 

Hi Parents!  Just a reminder that tomorrow the students will be voting on the classroom doors they decorated for a Civics Club fundraiser. The votes cost $1. If they bring $5 they can vote five times, ext... The money that is raised will go to a family in our community that will help with the holidays. The voting will take place in the gym before school! Thanks!! P.S. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO DONATED FOR OUR ADOPTED SOLDIERS CARE PACKAGE!!

Hello Parents,  Your child may have came home saying they need something for a care package. The 8th grade adopted a soldier, Nicole earlier this school year. While the 7th and 6th grades have adopted Darrin, a solider stationed in Kuwait. We would like to send these soldiers a care package for Christmas. All of the classes have a list of things they can bring. These items will be due on Monday, the 7th of December. Do not feel obligated to participate! If you do, myself and the soldiers will greatly appreciate it. The soldiers have responded back to the kids' letters and cards. It is pretty amazing to listen to the responses. 7th grade parents: Darrin wrote to each and everyone of them. It was awesome!! Let me know if you have any questions and thank you for your participation.

Happy Thanksgiving Parents! Barb Coenen stopped by for her monthly Book Club activity. This time she had the kids make "thankful" banners. They turned out super cute and you can see it below. They read Two Thanksgiving Day Gentleman by O. Henry. They kids seemed to like it because it involved a lot of irony. 8th grade has just wrapped up their informative speeches. They were to present on something they know quite well so they could present rather than read off of note cards. Everyone did a fine job!  They will be finishing unit 3 next week, then we will move onto our poetry unit before reading novels as a class. They are really looking forward to both novel and poetry. 7th grade has been learning a lot about theme and symbols this past unit. They read Winter Dreams  by F Scott Fitzgerald. It was a difficult read by themselves but we spent a day discussing the symbols in the story and they said that helped. Next week they will be reviewing recurring theme in stories and

Hey Parents!  A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, so let me give you a run down of what has been going on. 6th: This class read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for their Halloween story. Unfortunately it was just bad timing and poor planning on my part because usually this week is so much fun, but there was so many things going on that took away for a spook-tacular week! I just loved their book reports. I saw a lot of creativity and hard work in their little people. (In some cases the people weren't so little, but that is great!) They wrapped up unit 2 last week and took the test. Today they will be correcting the tests and moving on to unit 3. This unit is where we focus on theme and topic. They are currently working on making Thanksgiving cards for their adopt-a-soldier, Darrin. We found out he works in a hospital in the Middle East. Darrin is working on responding to some of their letters and cards from before.  7th: We read The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, my fa

My PowerSchool has been down this week, so I haven't been able to put in grades. I hope to do this over the weekend to get caught up. Happy Halloween! I hope to see you at the parade at 2:30 this afternoon. The 8th grade has a surprise in store. :)

Welcome back!  As I mentioned before, on the 20th a group of middle school students and myself went to the Writers in the Middle conference at Graceland University in Lamoni. I think everyone enjoyed themselves and learned a little more about writing stories. Here are a couple of pictures of the kiddos. Sting found us!  Yesterday we participated in Back to the Future day. I snapped some pictures of the 8th grade helping the 2nd grade in the "future room". This room was filled with new technology such as robots. The middle school will be working more with these items in December for Code Day.  A heads up: the 7th grade and 8th grade will be taking their unit 2 test on Monday. Then we will proceed with Halloween week. I LOVE this holiday so we will be doing various activities. It will be learning activities, don't worry, but it will also be FUN!! Also, the 27th of October is when ALL books reports are due. Friday the 30th is wh