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

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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!

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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

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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,

video games, smart phones, and social media.

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ART/GUIDANCE March News Letter Wherever you go and whatever you do, may the luck of the Irish be there with you.

Seniors: ACT Test, sign up now if you haven’t. Please be sure to sign up for the writing section on the ACT most colleges will require a

writing assessment which is easily done with the ACT test. Dates for sign up:

As scholarships come in I will put them in the white book in the Guidance room and post them.

Register and take ACT or SAT test, https://www.act.org/ Lambert School Code: 270-540

Request college application and make arrangements for a college visit

Search for scholarships and ways to pay for college

The MUS Scholarships are available on- line: https://mus.edu/ , please go there for more information, a letter will be sent

to you on this also.

Complete college application

Give a copy of your college acceptance letter to Mrs. Rehbein.

Juniors: The State of Montana will be providing the Junior class with the ACT Plus Writing on March 20, 2018 at no cost to the

students. We will be setting up for the Non-testing portion of the test on Monday, March 19.

You may get Boys State and Girls State applications now, from Mrs. Rehbein.

Research college choices (http://www.smartaboutcollege.org/)

Check out the MUS site about Montana Colleges: https://mus.edu/

Take an ACT practice test, come talk to me about this and I will help you find them.

Schedule college visits if you have narrowed down your college choices

Come in and talk with me if you have any questions about college visits and/or college choices. I am available 3rd and 5th

periods most days and 4th period on Monday, Tuesday and Friday.

Sophomores and Careers Class: If you are interested in applying for the HOBY program in June please come to the guidance room and get an application.

Students in Careers class will be working on Power Points about careers they are interested in. They will also be looking at

colleges and life after high school, and work on a Power Point on a college, Tech or Apprenticeship program.

Elementary Art/Guidance Classes Students will continue working with color in various media. We will also be discussing Caring and Fairness.

TEST DATE Registration Deadline Late Registration Period Photo Upload Deadline

April 14, 2018 March 9, 2018 March 10 - 23 April 6

June 9, 2018 May 4, 2018 May 5 - 18 June 1

July 14, 2018 June 15, 2018 June 16 - 22 July 6

Art/guidance news Mrs. Rehbein

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TESTING CRT Testing for Science only: grades 4, 8 & 10

Criterion-Referenced Test (CRT) for Science only are scheduled for March 6th periods 3 & 4 for the 10th graders, March 8th

periods 2 & 3 for the 8th graders with Mrs. Rehbein. The 4th graders will be taking the test on Tuesday, March 13 in their

classroom with Mrs. Beddow.

Smart Balance TESTING for grades 3 – 8

Smarter Balance testing will be scheduled for 7 & 8th graders the week of April 16 - 19 and for

3,4,5 & 6th graders it will be done the week of April 4 – 12. Elementary teachers will be deciding on the exact day for their

testing so please check weekly bulletins for exact days and times for the test.

Please help your students to do well on all tests by encouraging them to get plenty of rest, eat a breakfast each day and come to

school with a positive attitude to “show what they know!” It would also be helpful to not plan dentist and other appointments during

testing days. Please be on the watch from your student’s teacher for more details.

TESTING TIPS:

Global Test-Taking Tips

Show what you know. Answer the questions you are sure of first and go back to others.

Read each question carefully.

Keep working until you reach the “Stop” sign for the session. It is located on the bottom-right corner of the page in both

the test booklet and answer booklet. Do not go beyond the “Stop” sign.

When you finish a test session, you may check your work in that session only.

Place your answer booklet inside your test booklet. You may read silently until the next test session.

For constructed-response questions, make sure your work fits in the space provided. You may use scratch paper as a draft

for your response.

Mark the answer to each multiple choice question by filling in the correct bubble in your answer booklet.

Check to see if you are answering the question in the right place.

You may underline or use a highlighter in the test booklet but not on the answer booklet.

Enjoy!

Social studies Mr. Anderson

Busy busy in the history room. We are finishing World War II with the seniors and the Civil War with the Juniors. The

sophomores are finishing off the Middle ages and are beginning the Age of Exploration. The Middle schoolers are studying

American government and pop culture is enjoying comic books. Lots of great stuff going on in here.

Business/Computer & Science Mrs. Carda

Business News

In Computer Applications, the students are learning how to use Adobe Illustrator.

In Desktop Publishing/Annual, the students are busy creating portfolio assignments, creating t-shirts, and annual pages.

In Video Editing, the students are creating videos on a range of topics. They are experimenting with the special effects

available through our editing software.

In Photography, they are creating an ABC book with their original photographs. We plan to donate them to the preschool when

we are done.

In Keyboarding, the eighth graders are learning to code using a program developed by MIT called Scratch.

In Accounting, we are learning to close out the specialty journals and are moving on to the aspects of payroll accounting.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to ya'

BPA News

THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN! March 11th is the first day of the State Leadership Conference in Billings. The students are

tweaking their projects, studying their books, and hoping to compete and earn the privilege to compete at the national level.

Be checking our school website in mid March to find out if our members will have the opportunity to represent Lambert at the

National Leadership Conference in May. The students also did some fundraising for Special Olympics. They donated a portion

of one of the home basketball game’s 50/50 pot to this cause. At the state leadership conference, we will be presenting $118

to representatives from Special Olympics. Thank you to all that purchased tickets at this game.

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Ag Ed/Shop Mrs. Verschoot

It has been an exciting month in the agriculture classes. In the Horticulture class we have turned on the greenhouse and

have it up and running. This class has ordered plants and has started some flowers and vegetables from seed. They are very

excited about having a Mother’s Day plant sale this year and have been working very hard. In the welding classes the students

are working on grills and plasma cam signs. The 7th graders are busy working on a birdhouse project.

The Lambert FFA is getting ready for our State FFA Convention which will be held April 4th – 7th in Billings. We will have 13

students who will be going to compete in the following contests; Livestock, Farm Business Management, Mechanics and Ag

Sales.

The Horticulture Class will once again be making corsages for prom. If your student is interested in ordering one, please stop

down to the shop and fill out an order form ASAP. We will make these the day before prom but I will need some time to get the

supplies. They will be available to pick up Thursday after school or Friday morning of the Prom.

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Life Science is completing a unit on Reproduction in Organisms. They learned about the technical processes of sexual and

asexual reproduction. They were able to model meiosis and view some types of asexual reproduction by watching yeast cells

bud, and by making their own vegetative cuttings of geranium plants. They are now exploring some of the animal behaviors and

plant structural characteristics that aid in reproduction. Biology spent quite a bit of time developing their understanding of two of

the most important processes to living things – photosynthesis and cellular respiration. They modeled the processes and

completed a critical thinking activity in addition to regular bookwork. Physics students worked in groups to make Rube Goldberg

machines, thereby demonstrating conservation of energy. They will move on to electricity next. Earth and Space science

students most recently studied the star cycle and formation of elements. They worked together to create a poster that

summarizes their understanding.

Science Mrs. Knotts

The junior class took a brief break from the normal class work to complete their English MAPS tests. Now that they have

finished their MAPS tests for English, they will resume reading and discussing Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible. Every

student has an assigned part, and while they don’t act out the play, they each read their character’s part as they come up.

After finishing up their Native American unit, the sophomores also took their English MAPS tests. Now that those are wrapped

up they will begin learning about ancient Greek plays. They will be assigned a part from Oedipus Rex to read aloud, and they

will learn about the famous tragic king of Thebes.

The freshmen class also had to take a break from their unit to complete their MAPS tests in English. Once they are done they

will resume reading and discussing Mary Shelly’s classic novel of horror Frankenstein. We will continue to intermix their

reading and discussions with viewing of the movie version to help them visualize what they are reading.

The eighth graders finished up their novel, and once they are done with their MAPS tests in English they will be working on

their Native American unit. Once they finish up the review portion of the unit they will learn about medicine wheels, and they

will create their own personal medicine wheel.

The seventh graders finished up their letter writing unit and moved on to their English MAPS tests. Now that those are all done

as well, they will be working on their Native American unit. They have already learned about the different tribes and

reservations in Montana before they began the MAPS testing. Now they will finish up the unit by creating their own winter

counts and class seals.

The Creative Writing II class have been learning about journalism writing. They have researched and read examples of good

and bad review writers and investigative writers. They have discussed what qualities were included in the good examples, and

have tried their hands at writing their own reviews. They are currently working on an investigative report based on the good

qualities they determined investigative reporters have.

The Dystopian Literature class finished up discussing Scott Westerfeld’s novels The Uglies and The Pretties , and has created

a Facebook page for one of the characters. To wrap up this dystopian universe the student will write an analysis paper about

what the author’s intended message to society might have been when writing The Uglies. After that the student will chose a

classic dystopian novel to read and discuss.

English Miss. Alexander

Our students continue to press on academically as we are beginning to see the end of the school year approaching. In junior

high, our seventh graders are studying a unit of geometric figures with emphasis upon polygons, and the eighth graders are

working on a unit of geometry, with attention directed towards perimeter, area, and volume. Our Algebra One students are in

the midst of working with exponents and exponential growth and decay functions. Our Geometry students have recently

finished a chapter on Quadrilaterals. In Algebra Two, our students have been making the correlation between logarithmic and

exponential functions. The Advanced Mathematical Concepts students are finishing a section on logarithmic functions, with an

emphasis upon solving exponential variables. And our Calculus students have assessed their college readiness and are

working on bridging gap areas before they head off to college.

Excited as March slowly encroaches….

Mark Pust

Math Teacher

Answer to Last Month’s Problem:

What is 6÷2(1+2) Since our order of operations directs us to work the parenthesis before we multiply or divide we solve 1+2

first: 6÷2(3). Next we multiply and/or divide working left to right: 6÷2=3. And finally, we multiply: 3x3=9

This Month’s Interesting Math “Facts”:

1 x 1 = 1

11 x 11 = 121

111 x 111 = 12,321

1,111 x 1,111 = 1,234,321

11,111 x 11,111 = 123,454,321

111,111 x 111,111 = 12,345,654,321

1,111,111 x 1,111,111 = 1,234,567,654,321

11,111,111 x 11,111,111 = 123,456,787,654,321

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

However, 1,111,111,111 x 1,111,111,111 = 1,234,567,900,987,654,321

Page 10

Math Mr. Pust

NOTICE

Two three-year school board positions will be up for

election on May 8, 2018. Parties interested in running for these three year school board positions

may contact District Clerk, Sammie Nelson, to obtain a Declaration of

Intent & Oath of Candidacy for Trustee Candidates Form.

Deadline for submitting this form to District Clerk, Sammie Nelson, is no

later than 4 PM on March 29, 2018.

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