Thanksgiving Eve activities

On Wednesday, November 26 we had some additional excitement at Sioux Trail. Here are some photos from the activities. These two photos are from the second grade feast. The food was traditional thanksgiving food, including corn bread, apple cider and popcorn. The clothing that the student wore reflected their heritage and there were some wonderful outfits and represetnations of the student's ancestry.

The next two photos are from the Stone Soup cookoff in first grade. The first graders each brought in various vegetables from home, prepared them and then made Stone Soup using the book "Stone Soup" as the recipe. It wouldn't be complete without some songs and Thanksgiving jokes and both classes pulled it off without a hitch.


Mr. Khamratthanome set Wednesday as the day for the fifth graders to launch the catapults they had been working on. Tuesday was testing day and there was a fair bit of fine tunining to do. On Wednesday the fifth graders took over the gym and had a shooting for distance and accuracy contest. Mr. Bones was set up on a moving target and got hit with lots of flying corks. This was a great hands on science activity that is good example of application of what had been learned.

Saturday, November 22 - Book Fair

Saturday, November 22nd was our book fair at Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble runs the book fair the entire time they are open - 9am - 11pm and contributes 15% of a purchase for anyone who makes a purchase and uses the prepared flier or tells the clerk that are with Sioux Trail. We raised over $3,000 and 15% of that comes back to our PTO.

We had an author and an illustrator join us for the event and several teachers and parents also came and read aloud. The 4th graders joined us and under the guidance of Mrs. Willemssen sang some wonderful songs. This brought in a number of families and helped to build the excitement.

Here are a couple of photos from the event.
The 4th grade students singing with Mrs. Willemssen

Illustrator David Geister shares his work in the book "Legend of Wisconsin".

S p e l l i n g B e e

Today was our Spelling Bee and we had 21 contestants. Our judges were Dr. DeeDee Currier; retired principal and ISD 191 board member elect, Vicki Roy; Chair of the ISD 191 School Board and Elizabeth Kautz; Burnsville Mayor. Mrs. MaryLou Foster was the pronouncer and Spelling Bee officiant. Mr. Barton and Mrs. Laatsch are the Sioux Trail Spelling Bee Coordinators.

All total there were 144 spelling words (not including the words used during the practice rounds). The Spelling Bee started at 9:30 and concluded at approximatley 11:20. We had a very attentive audience that included families, community members and students from grades 2-6.

The words that the contestants were asked to spell were challenging. Here a some of the spelling words that our contestants were asked to spell. I selected these as these are the words that a contestant misspelled.

Parliament
Entitled
Arousing
Speaking
Respiration
Allotted
Arising
Innocent
Corduroy
Antenna
Precede
Football
Astronomy
Prying
Beauteous
Fundamental
Alfalfa
Altar
Oppose

Math Night is Magnificent

Organized by Mr. Barton and Mrs. Laatsch, Sioux Trail's Night is a perfect example of what we are all about - learning with a twist of fun! The energy in the room was high and it was all about math. Our gym was transformed from a space where students are usually very physically active to place where families were very mentally active. There were at least 8 different stations that families could rotate through. Each station had a different math activity that engaged students in applying mathematics skills from all of the various strands that make up mathematics.

As always we have terrific volunteers that help make these events a success and several teachers stayed to be a part of this great event.

Tuesday night was a busy night for many families, going to Burger King Night and then back to Sioux Trail for Math Night. Our sixth graders continued making progress towards their goal of raising money for an end of the year send off by selling concessions at Math Night. Thank you to the families that assisted with that ongoing endeavor.

In February we'll be hosting Literacy Night. Last year was the first year for Literacy Night and we're very excited to continue this great opportunity - stay tuned for more details!

This rocket is "can-structed" entirely out of cans and is part of the ongoing food collection that Sioux Trail sixth grade students are leading. The idea was to collect canned food in November and then use the collected cans to construct a model. The designers selected a rocket and set to work. Cub donated the cart and we used it to store the canned food. The initial construction took over two weeks as additional building materials were required. In the end Sioux Trail families brought in over 400 cans which equaled over 570 pounds of food.

The sixth grade students posing for the picture are in Mrs. Istas' class and are the class responsible for bringing in over 1/4 of the entire cans. On Thursday the rocket was disassembled and delivered to the Eagan Resource Center.

Today (Friday, 11/14) Susan Schmidt and her crew of volunteers took over the same space (and the rest of the main hall) to sort and disitribute the Sally Foster and cookie dough that was purchased through our fall fundraiser. The fundraiser surpassed all expectations and according to inside sources we raised more money that some of the larger ISD 191 elementary schools! Thanks to all of the Sioux Trail familes and community members for their support.

Increased access to technology

Mr. Kleven asked his third grade class to join him for part of their lesson in room 216. Room 216 is being used a multi-purpose space this year. Mr. Kleven was using it because he wanted to share website on American Indians with the entire class. Thanks to a donation from our PTO this classroom is equipped with an LCD projector.

The third graders were collecting information on the different lifestyles of American Indians. Mr. Kleven was able to pull up webpages with information, share this with students and then let them engage in selecting what the appropriate type of shelter for each area would be.

At Sioux Trail we have LCD projectors in the following areas:

• Media Center
• Upstairs Computer Lab
• Downstairs Computer Lab
• Science classroom
• Music Classroom

We have been able to increase teacher access to these important tools through help from the PTO, a grant from Glaskow, Smith, Kline (through one of our parents) and money budgeted for capital expenditures.