Madison Staff Bulletin

Please click HERE for a Madison Family Calendar for the month of October. *Please note, events may be added, as needed. A copy of the full WCS Calendar is available HERE.

• Please take a moment to review our attendance policy HERE on pages 15-16 (including our vacation policy). In order to ensure we're helping your students reach their full potential, school attendance is vital. Help us help your Cardinal by ensuring they get to school (except when they're sick!) and on time (in seat by 9:20 a.m.)
  
• Parent Teacher Conference forms are due back by tomorrow, Friday, October 7th (see below for more information about our PTCs!)
• Tomorrow (Friday, October 7th) is CraZy SoCk Day! (more info below under "student recognition")

Students in grades 3-6 may sign up to participate in Madison's Choir Club with Mr. Bolduc. Choir club takes place on Wednesday mornings from October 5 - Dec. 14th from 8:15-8:55 a.m. in the music room (106). Permission forms are available in the music room! Students must have a permission form on file to participate.

Chess club flyers are available in the music room. Please see Mr. Bolduc for more information about fall chess!

• Boys Basketball Tryouts - Monday, October 10th and Tuesday, October 11th, after school until 6 p.m. Students must attend both tryout practices. The last day to sign up is October 6th. (open to students in 4th-6th grade)
• Girls Basketball Tryouts - Wednesday, October 12th and Thursday, October 13th after school until 5:45 p.m. Students should plan to attend both tryouts! (open to students in 4th-6th grade)
• Cheerleading Tryouts - Tuesday, October 11th and Wednesday, October 12th from 4:30-5:30 p.m. (open to students in 4th-6th grade)

*Please note, while we wish we could keep all students on our teams, it simply isn't possible due to the large number of students that try out. We are working to set up basketball clubs and cheerleading clubs to still enable those students who do not make our teams to participate in the sport that they love!

Each year, Warsaw Community Schools participates in the Feed My Starving Children initiative, which provides much-needed meals for children in need. Funds raised will help WCS to provide over 700,000 meals for children in need around the world. From October 11-14th, Madison’s 5th and 6th grade students will represent Madison Elementary School at the 2022 Warsaw Mobilepack event, whereby students will have the opportunity to join over 1,400 WCS students and volunteers pack meals with funds raised. For more information on the Mobile Pack Event, please review the video here. We are so proud of our #MadisonFamily for raising over $3,500 to help starving children in need. Our two winning classes were kindergarten and 5th grades, who won a donut party! A huge shoutout to Mr. Hendrikse for being the Madison building point person and making our fundraiser happen!

The safety and security of our students are of the utmost importance. To that end, we continuously review our policies and practices to ensure that your students are safe at all times. In the unlikely event of a school intruder, Warsaw Community Schools has adopted ALICE, a nationally recognized program. ALICE is a proactive set of responses to an active school intruder event that empowers individuals to utilize human action.

ALICE stands for:

Alert – Get the word out! Use clear, concise language to convey the type and location of the event.

Lockdown – Good starting point. We will continue to lockdown students in a secure area, however, we will include barricading the area for additional security.

Inform – Communication keeps the intruder off balance and allows for good decision-making. Counter – Apply skills to distract, confuse and gain control.

Evacuate – As soon as it is safe to do so, evacuate.

On Thursday, October 13th, Madison Elementary School will perform our 1st ALICE drill of the year. The drill will occur between 2:30-3:45 p.m., during which time, students will lockdown in their classrooms. As part of this drill, teachers will be speaking to students about what to do in the event of a lockdown. We encourage you to speak with your child prior to this date in order to prepare them (never an easy day!) the best we can.

Our first grading period ends on Friday, October 14th. Report cards will go home the following week.

PTO will host "Dads & Dudes and Donuts" on October 14th from 8:45-9:15 a.m. in the Madison gym. All dudes attending should please park in the back parking lot and enter through the gym doors. Participants will not be permitted to leave the gym to walk their students to class. #Safetyfirst

Parent teacher conferences will take place on Tuesday, October 18th after school and on Wednesday, October 19th. Parent teacher conference forms were sent home with all students by Monday, October 3rd. Those forms are due back from parents no later than this Friday, October 7th. Your student's teacher will be confirming your time with you sometime next week but no later than Friday, October 14th. We can't wait to see you then!

Please note, conferences are only 15 minutes per student in order to ensure we can meet all families. Please be mindful of this as you speak with your child's teacher

Students will be dismissed Wednesday, October 19th, Thursday, October 20th, and Friday, October 21st. As a reminder, parent teacher conferences will still take place on Wednesday, October 19th at Madison Elementary School (see above for more info!)

We are so proud of all of our Cardinals of the Month for September!

• Ellie McConnell (Mrs. Lursen's class)
• Ava Pontius (Mrs. Klinger's class)
• Gunner Gest (Mrs. Tabor's class)
• Alianna Nunez (Mrs. Berger's class)
• Rafael Delfin (Mrs. Straub's class)
• Liam Jimenez (Mrs. Weaver's class)
• Piper Brown (Mrs. Kelly's 2nd grade class)
• Norah Hendrikse (Mrs. Shepherd's class)
• Lizzy Boocher (Mrs. Walker's class)
• Olivia Rangel (Mrs. Kelly's 3rd grade class)
• Cora Byrd (Mrs. Rizzo's class)
• Annaleise Tobin (Mrs. Reneker's class)
• Jose Rico (Mr. Ketrow's class)
• Liam Konieczny (Mrs. Williams' class)
• Hudson Harreld (Mr. Sims' class)
• Addison Goon (Ms. Hale's class)
• Anna Jones (Mr. Hendrikse's class)
• Evan Goshert (Ms. Jones' class)
• Jivan Gooden (Mrs. Byron's class)
• Braeden Foster (Mr. Lancaster's class)
• Mariana Morgan (Mrs. Reichard's class)

Beginning Friday, September 16th, we kicked off our "Cardinal Friday Rallies" - a whole-school gathering in the gym, whereby we will recognize students who win our "Cardinal Kindness Coupon" drawing for the week, review expectations (as needed!), and generally celebrate together. As a reminder, our "Cardinal Kindness Coupons" are a new initiative this year to celebrate student kindness. When a student earns a "Cardinal Kindness Coupon" for being caught in the act of being kind, the student places their coupon in a grade-level bucket in the cafeteria. Students' names are drawn each week, and the reward for our winners varies. For example, our "Cardinal Kindness Coupon" winners from last Friday were dismissed from class for a half hour Monday to partake in a "top secret mission" with Mrs. Hoffmann.

This past week, the following students won our "Kindness Coupon" raffle for the week:

• Julian Ibarra
• Kyle Nyhuis
• Owen Ellis
• Jivan Gooden
• Carlos Garcia
• Gemma Schmidt
• Makenna Dougall
• Olivia Ernsperger
• Rayna Whitaker
• Elder Garcia Marroquin
• Zalen Whetstone
• Jayden Flenar
• Declan Jones
• Jahydine Rodriguez

We are also so proud of our cardinal kindness winners and those who received Cardinal Kindness Coupons this past week whose names weren't drawn! Students will have a chance to win our kindness drawing each Friday. Please continue to help us by encouraging your cardinal to continue to show others acts of kindness! #KindnessAlways

To date, students have received over 300 Cardinal Kindness Coupons at Madison Elementary since the beginning of the school year.

FRIDAY RALLY WINNERS - Each week, the grade level(s) that exit the quickest and quietest and generally exhibit the best behavior/choices during our whole-school rally to set an example for others have the opportunity to win a privilege for the following Friday. This past week, our WHOLE SCHOOL earned "Crazy Sock Day" for this Friday, October 7th. Students are permitted to wear crazy socks to school tomorrow!

Congratulations to our Madison volleyball team, who went undefeated to win the city championship! We are so proud of ALL of our fall sports teams for their hard work and dedication--soccer, volleyball, and cross-country.

In September, our students had the opportunity to learn about our environment and how to keep it healthy! Through our partnership with the Lilly Center, students learned about the wetlands and how to prevent pollution. In partnership with the Kosciusko Soil and Water Foundation, students learned about how to tell if our lakes, streams, and watersheds are healthy. Thank you to our partners and volunteers; without you, this learning experience would not be possible! As part of this initiative, 1st grade visited the Lily Center; 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades visited Cherry Creek; and our 6th grade students went on a rafting trip through the Kosciusko Soil and Water Foundation.

This month, our 4th grade students also had the opportunity to partake in a series of lessons on WCS's traveling WILL bus! Students participated in an engineering and coding project: they used legos to build a car that had to be dropped that would not break from impact using trial testing. Students then programmed the car using a computer (coding) to make the car move.

Our kindergarten students have had the opportunity to take part in "Kindergarten Cruise-in Thursdays"! So far, our students have had the opportunity to see a combine (special thank you to Patrick at Greenmark), a sheriff's car (thanks to Officer Mulligan from the Kosciusko Co. Sheriff's Department), a helicopter (thanks to Mark Walsh). Students will also see an ambulance and firetruck in the coming weeks!

A big "thank you" to Mrs. Klinger for organizing this series for our tiniest Cardinals!