Sunliner - February 23, 2012

Feb. 23, Sept.

29,2012 2011 FEBRUARY

23 Parent/Teacher Conferences, 4-8:00 p.m.

24 Reading Party 28 Parent/Teacher Conferences, 4-8:00 p.m.

MARCH

1 Parent/Teacher Conferences, 4-8:00 p.m.

6 6 9 20 23 23 29 30

Open Gym/Tech Night, 6:30 p.m.

PTSA Meeting, 7:00 p.m.

BAT Day, 4th grade, 9:30 a.m.

Coffee with the Principal—9:15 a.m.

Plant Sale Kick-off Carnival 6:00-8:00 p.m.

No School for Students No School for Students

APRIL

2-6 Spring Break

9 School Resumes 13 Plant orders Due

MAY

7 MN Twins , 7:10 p.m.

Once again the Sunset Hill Choir will be singing the national anthem at a Minnesota Twins game. Monday, May 7 is Sunset Hill Night at Target Field. Look for a flier both online and sent home and reserve your tickets!

Thanks to all who coordinated and purchased items at the Book Fair. It was our most successful ever. We would not have the fantastic presentation and organization without the amazing work of Angi Marquette, Heather Van Krevelen, Leslie Sell and all of the volunteers who made it a fun experience.

Many of you have seen the news report that Minnesota was among 11 states that were granted a waiver from the federal regulations under NCLB. Minnesota’s “No Child Left Behind” waiver is a great step in the right direction. It will allow the Minnesota Department of Education to be in a better position to work with school districts to demonstrate accountability in student learning from a local perspective, which makes more sense.

The waiver is a good thing because it allows those closest to the work the ability to decide the appropriate materials, lessons and instructional methods to help students grow academically. Schools will still be held accountable for student learning, but will have the flexibility to determine how to best meet student needs.

Teachers will have more flexibility. There will be less teaching to the test and more personalization in meeting student learning needs.

Sunset Hill Elementary 13005 Sunset Trail Plymouth, MN 55441 Office: 763 745-5900 Health Office/Attendance: 763 745-5915 Karen Keffeler, Principal Joanne Doucet, Secretary Internet Address: First name.last name@wayzata.k12.mn.us

Accountability for student proficiency and growth in reading and math will still be measured by state assessments, and we will continue providing our students a challenging, engaging and personalized learning experience.

More detailed information can be found in the March 1 Thursday efolder.

BOOK FAIR Results The 2012 Book Fair results are in and we had another outstanding year of sales and One For books donations!

Our results are better than any of the previous Book Fairs on record.

2012 Total Book Fair Sales = $14,591.62 (an increase of $1875.78 over last year).

We split our profits up between Cash and Scholastic Dollars in the following way: $2000 Cash Profit for PTSA Funded Events such as the Reading Party and Family Breakfast. $3993.29 Scholastic Dollars for the Media Center (an increase of $596.32 over last year).

One For Books 2012 One For Books Donations = $1356.19 (an increase of $466.64 over last year).

Our One for Books Classroom Competition was a great success! We want to thank all of the Sunset Hill Families who donated to the One For Books program, including the Fesenmaier Family who donated $250.

The One For Books donations collected from each classroom and at the cash registers, allowed us to give 115 books to the Media Center and 76 books to the Sunset Hill Classrooms already, without even spending any of our profit from the Book Fair. We also receive further benefits to our school from the One For Books donations in our overall profits, because for every dollar we raised, Scholastic will match it with 55 cents more, giving us an additional $745.90 in Scholastic dollars to use for future purchases for the Media Center.

Lastly, since we raised $1356.19, Scholastic will donate 1356 books to children in need.

The One For Books Classroom Competition Winner was Mrs. Howard's am Kindergarten class with donations totaling $379.40. Honorable mention goes to Mrs. Wachs' kindergarten class who raised $139.74.

Both classes received a book, and of course Mrs. Howard's class received the honor of throwing pies at Ms. Keffeler. The four students who "took aim" at Ms. Keffeler were: Nadia Fesenmaier, Bryce Anderson, Priscilla Huber and Will Kirven. The pie throwing event took place "Live" on the 2/10/12, TNN Broadcast. If you have not gotten a chance to check out the video of the TNN Broadcast, you can find it on the on the

Sunset Hill Webpage, under the "About UsNews&Information-Video Gallery" pull down menu. It is laugh-out-loud funny to watch Mrs. Keffeler read student birthdays and trojan pride winners with whipped cream dripping off of her nose! Also, if you see Mrs. Keffeler in the hallways around school, please take the time to say thank you to her for all that she does for our school. She is such a trooper to agree to have pies thrown in her face as a reward for the One For Books Classroom Competition Winner!

Thanks Mrs. Keffeler!!

Further Highlights of the Book Fair:



The winner of "Guess How Many Gummy Worms" Contest was Belle Brown, in Mrs. Baker’s 5th grade class, with a guess of 267. This was just 6 away from the correct number of 273 worms. Belle won a book, a poster and the jar of gummy worms.  The winners of the free poster drawing were: Katherine Graham, Sharlyn Neri Bailon, Joshua Petrie, Chloe Ramstrom, Tessa Ramos, Alex Okpoyo, Ryan Walsh-Stanek, Blake Bergmann, Zack Magnuson, Anders Malmquist, Joel Ostapeic, Luke Bodine, Kyle Noble, Zaibaa Khan, Max Hoffman, Siri Gururaj, Kashia Xiong, Anvita Garikapati, Clara Tevogt, Dani Giron, Tony Diep, Arul Belhe, Mary Marsh, Jack Aderson, Sam Harris, and Brody Bjork.



The Classroom Book Fair Bingo Winners were: Mr. Worth, Mrs. Tietema and Mr. vanKoeverden. Each classroom received a book as a prize.

I am happy to announce that the Book Fair ran much more smoothly this year during the Family Breakfast, with the combination of having four cash registers available and families staggering their arrival times to the Book Fair.

Book Fair Volunteers

A huge thank you goes out to all of our Book Fair Volunteers, many of whom came back multiple times to help us out on shifts where we were short volunteers!

We could not have had such a successful Book Fair without the following people: Nicole Mareck, Sarah Bocaner, Diane Hayden, Connie Helppi, Kristen Wolf, Renee Shakerin, Carolyn Arnebeck, Rebecca McGrath, Kate Dando, Shanna Krider, Teresa Weum, Dawn Zouber, Chris Commerford, Nancy Stillman, Tammy Hausken, Stacy Shamblott, Jody Kleyman, Amy Buckley, Molly Skoro, Robin Vanoss, Karen Keffeler and Lynn Soderberg.

Thanks for a great Book Fair!

Angi Marquette, Leslie Sell and Heather VanKrevelan 2012 Book Fair Co-Chairs

for their enthusiasm and commitment to creating a community of readers. Read on!

Laurie Lindquist Sunset Hill media specialist Laurie.lindquist@wayzata.k12.mn.us

Newsnotes from the Naturalist February, 2012

VOLUNTEERS First of all I would like to thank all the parents who have volunteered at the school so far this year! You all have been a huge help to our classrooms and PTSA events.

One of the biggest PTSA fund raising events of the year is the Carnival happening March 23rd and as always we are in NEED of volunteers. This is a huge event and we are in need of at least 75 parent volunteers to help with set up, run games, sell tickets, etc.. If you are interested in signing up for a 1 1/2 hour shift that night please do so on the PTSA Volunteer Sign Up Form on the website. The volunteer sign up form is located under the quick links section of the school website.

Again thank you for all your help this year and please feel free to contact with me any volunteer needs or questions at npmareck@comcast.net or 763-545-8090.

Thanks, Nicole Mareck

Sunset Hill Elementary

„s “I Love to Read Month”

Throughout the month of February, students and staff at Sunset Hill Elementary celebrated “I Love to Read Month” and it was a busy and fun filled month! Many activities were planned with the highlight being the PTSA sponsored annual illustrator visit by Minneapolis illustrator, Mike Wohnoutka. Mike shared his personal stories of illustrating and even created original illustrations with the help of our students. Come into the media center to see these works of art! Our PTSA also hosted a book fair which was the most successful to date. With many thanks to the generosity of our Sunset Hill community, the media center added over 150 book fair books to our collection plus received more book funds to be used at a later date. THANK YOU! New this year: All SH students were invited to participate in our first annual bookmark making contest. With the sales of the bookmarks, we raised $195.30 for Sunset Hill Against Hunger! The bookmarks turned out beautifully and visit our SH webpage for pictures of the winning bookmarks. As always, thank you to our great staff at Sunset Hill, the PTSA, and the I Love to Read Month committee

February is sometimes called the “Baby Bear Moon” which tells us what is happening across the northern part of our state in the dens of hibernating black bears. It’s an amazing piece of nature that bear cubs often in sets of twins are born to hibernating moms even while they don’t feed, drink or go to the bathroom. It may be our shortest month of the year but it is action packed.

This winter has been extremely mild. Only three days so far with below zero temperatures. We have had more days in the mid-30’s, 40’s and even a few 50 degree days. The snow we received on Monday evening was the best for making a snowman that we had received all winter.

Here are a few other February observations:  By February 1st we have gained one hour of daylight since the winter solstice  Wintering bald eagles are leaving the Mississippi River and heading back to their nesting areas  Our bird feeding stations in the nature center are busy with chickadees, nuthatches, bluejays, gold finches and several woodpecker species  Great-horned owl moms are sitting on eggs  Crows are pairing up and very active  Squirrels are nest building getting ready for the first litters to arrive in March  Woodpeckers drumming to attract mates  A saw-whet owl was roosting in the duck box in the marsh area. It sure surprised me when I opened the box for a peek.

Went back the next day and found an owl pellet  One of the 3rd grade classes had a chance to see for several minutes 5 deer in the marsh area.  The red-osier dogwood shrubs are bright red  The sun is higher in the sky and concentrating its rays making the interior of our vehicles feel like greenhouses All of these observations and many more are a sure sign that Spring is just around the corner. It’s fun to notice the subtle changes like oak leaves on snow or bluebirds checking out the boxes in the prairie. Migration has begun and each day brings the opportunity to see something new.

See you all in the Maple Sugar Moon!

Marleane Callaghan, Naturalist