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Spring is in the air, and the new season brings with it a new newsletter! Many of you requested a newsletter in the parent survey this past fall, so we have decided to bring it back. We hope you find it useful, informative and enjoyable. We will highlight each area of the school and also provide announcements, upcoming dates and much more. Please let us know how you like it.
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Lower School Music with Mrs. Kleven
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Our focus in March has been on dramatic performances! In the preschool and prekindergarten classes, we have read the books, The Three Little Pigs and The Gingerbread Man and then we acted out the stories with puppets. The children did such a great job and really enjoyed this activity.
In kindergarten we
listened to a fairy tale and retold the story with songs and puppets. This activity helps us develop our listening and recalling skills.
In first grade, we started working on a production of "The Mitten" and the children are busy learning lines and preparing for the performance.
Second, third and fourth grade have really enjoyed the introduction of piano in to their music classes. We now have enough keyboards for each child to work individually while they learn to read music and play the instrument at their level. We have also begun memorizing scripts to prepare for our big Spring performance!
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3rd and 4th Grade are Out of This World!
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The third and fourth graders have been busy studying the solar system in science. As an extended learning opportunity, the third and fourth graders attended the Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to further deepen their understanding of the planets in our solar system. Students were taken on a rocket ship journey through the Milky Way, visiting various planets and moon. Although we encountered some trouble with our spacecraft, all of the third and fourth graders returned safely to Earth. Upon leaving the museum, third and 4th grade students were overheard saying, “Wow! Space, really is a blast!” .
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From morning calendar to dismissal our school days are packed with important learning and some days it all seems like a race. Our whole-group math lessons happen every day for 8-12 minutes after we talk numbers and before small-groups and math centers. These short, intentional lessons help anchor our learning, set the foundation for teacher-table, and establish common vocabulary among my math groups.So far the students have covered topics ranging from number sense, geometry, data analysis, and fractions. Here are students are scooting around the room and determining place value based on pictorial representations of the number.
Over the last two trimesters, we have covered a lot of ground. We’ve explored each other’s classrooms, traded ideas, asked questions, and remembered why reading matters. Creating lifelong readers requires daily, dedicated time to read. We, as teachers, must give students time to fall in love with books.We explored how we build independence throughout the first weeks of the Daily 5 reading centers. Building independence is the most critical part of setting-up Daily 5 in a first grade classrooms. Without independence, I would never be able to pull small groups, confer with students, or assess growth. As we’re building independence, my 1st graders hear me ask (over and over) – “If we do __________, will that make us better readers and writers?” This is our driving question. Students have learned how to blend and segment words so that they can attack words during reading and become more fluent. These word attack skills have created students that are moving from simple books like the Bob reading series into chapter books like Amelia Badelia and more.
First grade science and social studies themes incorporated cross-curricular activities like writing, reading and math. Here is a picture during our human body unit, where a child is writing about different body systems on her human body book.
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GROWING in PreK with Ms. Gina
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Pre-K students have been working on The following concepts: writing letters and simple words, sorting, classifying, problem-solving, and working on the geoboard the children help make for our classroom. The children have decided to turn our salon into a dance studio. We continue to work on sounding out simple words and building large and small motor skills outside in our outdoor classroom.
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Preschool is Blooming with Ms. JoAnn
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In preschool, students are working on developing fine motor skills with a variety of activities to grow those little muscles! They are using books and exploration for cognitive growth. Preschool is a wonderful, safe environment to develop social skills such as empathy, understanding and communication.
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Kindergarten has had a very busy year! This is one of the most formative years for children. Kindergarten students are gaining confidence, learning to be good citizens and growing academically. They have learned what it means to be a good friend, responsibility, caring, fairness and respect.
The Kindergartners have visited the ArtStart program at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center. They have seen the Nutcracker in a Nutshell, a Magician, as well made pottery at the Arts Center.
We have learned about Native Americans and how they lived. We had a tee-pee and a fire pit. They tanned buffalo hides and learned about the different types of homes that Native Americans had. We also did an exciting study of the Arctic Circle! We made an igloo using over 400 one-gallon milk jugs. The igloo project was so much fun and we had awesome help from the community collecting the milk jugs.
This month we are focused on learning about weather and climate. The children are learning to collect data and make prediction for the weather each day.They are also learning all of the Presidents and a few facts about each. We can’t wait to see what we will explore next!
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As part of the visiting artist curriculum at McClelland School, Anne Scott, the mother of 8th grade student Rylan Scott, will be a visiting artist on Wednesday, April 19th at 2pm in the gym. Her presentation will be about clothing and sustainability of textiles; she will be showing us ideas to re-purpose our clothing.
Also, Maria Tucker, the mother of 6th grade student Alex Kennedy, will be a visiting artist on Monday, May 1st at 2pm in the gym. Her presentation will be about archiving and her books about Pueblo history. You are welcome to attend these presentations.
The past three months have been filled with three-dimensional ceramic projects, drawing and painting using a variety of mediums. Art history, architecture, and skilll building have been emphasized in all classes.
Kindergarten art students have been learning about the art of China and Japan. They painted hanging Chinese banners using ink. Each student used watercolor and origami folding skills to create a Japanese paper-person dressed in a kimono. They watched a video on the Living Treasure artists of Japan as they demonstrated how a bell and swords were cast, paper was made, bowls were fired, and how puppets were made for the puppet theater in Japan. For a ceramic project each student made their favorite animal.
1st grade created a pop art ceramic cupcake for their clay project. Food and objects were the focus of pop art paintings. Chinese and Japanese art paintings were made using watercolor and ink. Drawing and painting a winter animal at night and a bundled-up freezing person by day are recent projects. Students learned about African masks and created their version of one.
2nd grade art students designed art based on the weaving and masks of Africa. For example, the 2nd grade artists have learned why the masks were made and used earth colors, seeds and beads to enhance our version of an African mask. The class has watched a video on the building of a cathedral and created a drawing of their concept of a cathedral. Leonardo da Vinci was the background for a recent project on inventions.
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3rd and 4th grade art students have created ceramic Storyteller dolls and Kachina dolls for their project on the Southwest Pueblo. A video on Chaco Canyon in New Mexico explained how the Anasazi built a complex of buildings aligned to the moon and the sun. A unit on watercolor techniques has been completed with each student painting three or more watercolor paintings.
5th and 6th grade art students have been learning about the art of the ancient world. We have studied the art of Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome. Students used imagery from Roman busts to a create shaded drawing of a person. The students have practiced their watercolor skills by painting an image of an antique car. Doodle art and the art of Keith Haring were projects for the past three months. For their ceramic piece, the students made a middle ages tower using hand-building techniques.
7th and 8th grade art students have complete a round weaving using a hula hoop as a loom; yarn and cloth was woven around the warp to complete a decorative textural affect . They made hand-built ceramic mugs for one of their clay projects. A comparative study of Renaissance and Baroque art history has been the focus of many projects the last half of the year. Students have explored a variety of techniques for drawing the moving figure through space; drawing from life and collages using various colored and patterned paper were created. Learning how to draw and space letters on a large scale has been a challenge for the large pop art candy wrapper project.
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Second Grade gets
Hands On!
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The second graders just finished a fun and educational pioneer unit. The kids read a variety of non-fiction pieces about why pioneers moved, what traveling west was like, and what life was like on a homestead. The kids worked in groups to complete STEM tasks. They built covered wagons, rafts to float them across a river, a water-tight barrel, and a pioneer toy. Journals were kept to record new vocabulary terms and to record their travel experiences. For a home project, second graders designed a timeline of their own lives to present to their class and parents. Check them out in the hallway! Our pioneer unit was topped off with a visit to Fort Buell and the western frontier (Sangre de Cristo Arts Center) to get hands-on experiences of pioneer life and to see western-themed art in the gallery.
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Alumni are invited to a special reception, prior to the Luau beginning at 5:30pm on
Saturday, May 13, 2017
at The McClelland School.
If you are able to join us please RSVP by calling 719-543-5271 or email
[email protected]
We hope to see you there!
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For many of us, when our children were in school at McClelland we were consumed with the McClelland community. At times it seemed like a second family. As our kids have grown and gone on to create their own lives, our attention has shifted. Yet, it is always so great to run into an old McClelland friend and catch up on what our kids and families are doing now. And while our children and McClelland alumni families have moved on, McClelland keeps doing its work with the continued belief in the promise of all children. As the only independent school choice for education in our region, McClelland holds a valuable and unique place in the Pueblo community. The ever-growing alumni community is key to helping promote the school to ensure that it remains strong for many generations, and that it is always there to touch the lives of many other families, as it has touched ours. I hope you will consider getting involved with the McClelland alumni community. It’s good for the children, it’s good for McClelland and it’s good for Pueblo.
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Dear Alumni,
Welcome to another glorious Pueblo spring. I hope the winter treated you well. At McClelland, the arrival of spring allows us to eat outside and to enjoy some wonderful weather, although our grass is already in poor shape because of the lack of snow and rain.
If you are like me, you are feeling adrift because of the events going on around us. As the years pass, it is becoming clearer that we are gasping towards the finish line of one historical period, and we are entering a new time in our American/global society of tremendous social, economic, civil, cultural, and technological change that is disrupting the norms of our past without offering clear insight into the future.
At McClelland, we are charged with working in the present and honoring our past while preparing for this unknown future.
And what is the future for our children and grandchildren? Serious people are seriously starting to discuss an end to work. They suggest a Jetsons society with automation moving beyond low skill jobs and into professions such as the law and medicine. It will be a 24/7 world where our children will be more connected than ever before, but that will lead to greater social isolation because they don't know how to interact; a world where privacy no longer exists. It will, also, be a society offering tremendous opportunities for those prepared to take advantage of them. Preparation no longer just means being able to read and write, but having critical thinking and problem-solving skills; possessing tremendous social-emotional skills that allow people to better understand themselves and others, especially those from other cultures; offering the ability to think critically, all tied with the bow of technological know-how.
This is our work at McClelland. The bedrock values that have always served as the foundation of the school and that helped to grow your child into the person he or she is today remain the same; the mission unchanged to prepare our children as students and people.
We ask for your continued support. Please let family and friends know of our mission. Our Board of Trustees has committed to supporting the children of Pueblo even more through a new, exciting index tuition system ( a video about which is on our website). Please let them know.
McClelland is a school that changes lives. Be that difference in a child's life by connecting the family to us.
Brendan Sheerin
Head of School
The McClelland School
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April 10th-14th Book Fair!
April 14 Good Friday, 11:40 Dismissal
April 19-21 Terra Nova Testing Grades 2-8
April 16 Easter
April 17 No School-Professional Development
April 19 Visiting Artist, Anne Scott
April 20 5th and 6th Grade Play
April 27-May 2 8th Grade to Washington DC
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Out and About:
March was a busy month for the middle school. The seventh and eighth grade science class took a trip to the Planetarium for Mrs. Wilson’s science class. Our fifth and sixth grades hiked The Barr Trail in Manitou Springs for our outdoor education program. In early April, the seventh grade participated in the History Day at CSU-Pueblo. Noah Nesbit will be moving on to the State-wide History Day in Denver, Co., on
May 6
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A Day in Their Shoes:
St. Mary’s High School in Colorado Springs and Jo Nesbit, the McClelland Admissions Director, have created a fantastic and exciting opportunity for McClelland’s seventh grade class to spend a day in the shoes of a high school student. Each Muskrat will pair up with a St. Mary’s student and shadow them in order to see a typical high school day. This is an excellent opportunity for our seventh graders to get a feel for how life and education works after McClelland.
Community Initiatives:
Under the guidance of Kami Baumberger and the rest of the WAVE comittee, students in grades 3-8 are working to help the less fortunate in our communities. The students decided that Hunger was the most relevant and impactful cause for them to support. The students look forward to leading McClelland to make an impact in our community. Please look out for more information to come as the organization sets up drives and sends out information.
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Congratulations to Ezra Potts & Caitlyn Bailey
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Eighth graders, Caitlyn and Ezra, have each been awarded Summit Scholarships at the Fountain Valley School of Colorado in Colorado Springs, for the upcoming school year. Summit Scholars demonstrate outstanding academic achievement by earning a strong GPA throughout a challenging middle school curriculum, along with standardized test scores that reflect their ability. Scholars often rank with in the top 10% of their class, maintain a GPA at or above a 3.5, and score among the top 15% of independent school norms on the SSAT. This is a remarkable honor for both these McClelland School students as the applicant pool for the Fountain Valley School is worldwide.
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Congratulations to
Noah Nesbit
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Noah placed 2nd in his National History Day category, Junior Individual Performance. Noah will represent McClelland at the state level for his project, CS Lewis: The Author and His Books.
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Congratulations to
Ally Henrikson
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In Ally's first Crossfit Open she placed 17th overall in the South West region and 181st overall world wide. With this placement she will move on to stage 2A: of the open online qualifier April 20-24 and compete against the top 200 athletes in her division for a spot at the games!
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Here is a quick run down on what students in grades 3-8 are working on in Math!
7th/8th Grade Algebra
Introduction To Polynomials
Identifying Monomials,
Binomials
and Trinomials
Adding and Subtracting Polynomials
Multiplying Polynomial by a Monomial
Multiplying a Binomial by a Binomial
5th/6th Pre-Algebra
Greatest Common Factor
Greatest Common Factor of two numbers, three
numbers
and monomials
Least Common Multiple
Least Common Multiple of two numbers, three
numbers
and monomials
3rd/4th Grade Math
The students are currently working on division. They are dividing by one and two digit divisors. We will be tackling decimals next.
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7/8 is exploring the solar system. We discussed the moon phases, rotation, revolution, and orbit. We are now entering exploration of the planets in our solar system.
5/6 is moving from habitats, habitat destruction, and endangered species into the human body. We are also going to be working on our water posters for the Water Festival at CSU-Pueblo in May. The theme for the posters is Go with the Flow.
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Middle school students have been very busy for the start of our 2nd semester in Music and Theater. For the first time at McClelland School, students have the wonderful opportunity to participate in piano as part of our music curriculum. Everyone enjoys the time at the keyboards and it plays a significant role in reinforcing music knowledge.
The new year also brings the excitement of upcoming play productions for the Spring! February was filled with reading and picking plays and ultimately auditioning for a variety of roles. Now that plays have been chosen and roles assigned, students are intensely studying lines and rehearsing for their performances to come!
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We are hiring!
Click below to access our employment page.
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