Extra-Curricular Activities at GKMS

We are so fortunate at GKMS to offer a variety of extra-curricular activities for our students.  We consider these activities to be an extension of the school day and we hope to promote character building skills during this time.  A list of activities, when they occur and who can participate is below, please contact me if you have any questions regarding this information.  Please keep in mind that any student participating in any sport at GKMS will have to have a current physical on file before trying out for a team.

Clubs:

Technology Club                         All Grades/All year

Chess Club                                 All Grades/All year

Fishing Club                               All Grades/All year

Art Club                                    All Grades/All year

Community Impact Club             All Grades/All year

Sports:

Girls Volleyball                          7th & 8th Grade/Aug-Oct

Football                                     7th & 8th Grade/Aug-Oct

Cheer                                        7th & 8th Grade/Aug-Dec

Boys Basketball                         7th & 8th Grade/Oct-Dec

Girls Basketball                          7th & 8th Grade/Jan-Feb

Wrestling                                    6th-8th grade/Jan-Feb

Track (Boys and Girls)               7th & 8th Grade/Mar-May

TPO

Throughout the classrooms of Genoa-Kingston schools, students and parents will find "TPO" posters.  If we're doing our jobs well, our parents may have even heard their student discussing a TPO.  One of the most basic instructional practices going back decades is to begin each class with an objective.  In GK schools, this objective is often referred to a TPO, which stands for a Three Part Objective.  Our approach towards our objectives begins with "We Will" and has 3 parts:

1. A cognitive verb that matches the level of the task (Infer, Generate, Determine, Classify, Explain, List)
2. 6-12 words of descriptive content with connections to standards.
3. A specific product created by student

Some examples:

Parents and students can find these posters in each of our classrooms at GKMS. Students often read these out loud and they refer to them during the lesson   If you want to get really crazy, ask your kids about their TPO from a particular class, it's a great conversation starter!

Progress Reports and ISAT Scores

At the end of this week, our students will be bringing home Progress Reports.  Please look over the Progress Report with your student.  This is about the half-way point for the 1st quarter; the Progress Report is a great opportunity to discuss progress at school with your student.

Also included in the Progress Report will be your student's ISAT scores from the spring of 2012.  All of our students are tested in Math and Reading during ISATs.  Our 7th graders are also tested in Science.  Students are placed in 3 categories for ISAT: Below Standards, Meets Standards & Exceeds Standards. Our hope is that all our students are in the Meets or Exceeds categories.  Below are a few pictures with helpful hints on how to read the ISAT report.  If you click on each picture, you can get a bigger version. As always, if you have any questions, please contact Mr. McPherson at 815-784-5222, ext. 15.

Also, thanks to everyone who came to our Open House.  Please be sure to fill out our Open House Survey!

GKMS Facebook!

As we try to create new ways for GKMS to communicate with it's parents and students, we have stepped into the social media outlets to do so.  GKMS is now on Twitter (@gkmscogs) and Facebook.  Please follow us on Twitter and "like" our Facebook page to receive updates.  We will be conducting an Open House Survey on Facebook this coming week.  

Open House is Coming!

On September 17th, GKMS will host our Open House from 6:30-7:45.  This is a great opportunity for parents and community members to come check out our school and meet staff.  A very important reminder about Open House; please keep in mind that our teachers have 120 students in which they see on a daily basis.  Our Open House is not a time for conferences; if you have specific questions regarding your student, we can set up a separate time for that.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Also, please remember to follow us on Twitter, @gkmscogs.  This is a great way to keep current on events and happenings at GKMS.  For a quick tutorial on how to use Twitter, please click here.

Pizza's and Twitter

The 6h graders at GKMS are currently participating in a fundraiser to help raise money for Lorado Taft. Students are selling pizza's, all of the money earned for this fundraiser will go to the Lorado Taft outdoor learning experience. Lorado Taft is a community staple; the money raised from the fundraiser helps us provide this experience for our students. Please support our sudents if you can, the support we receive from the community has always been outstanding!

 GKMS works hard to communicate with parents and community members. One new tool we have been using regularly is Twitter. Parents and community members an sign up for free to follow us on twitter, @gkmscogs. Through this free website, parents can have these updates sent to their phone for instant updates on school functions, announcements etc. For a tutorial on how to get signed up, please watch this brief tutorial. We have had a great start to the school year; we are so very lucky to work with the students and parents of this great community!

Great Things at GKMS!

We are extremely excited for this new school year at GKMS!  We hope to form a great partnership with our students, parents and faculty.  To help parents stay current on happenings at GKMS, we offer the following communication tools:

Powerschool.  Log in and keep up to date on your students grades.

Assignment Connection:  View daily assignments through this tab on our website.

Twitter:  Follow us on Twitter @gkmscogs for updates.

Blog:  Follow this blog for bi-weekly updates.

School website:  Our website offers a variety of tools such as sports schedules, newsletters, lunch menu's and a school calendar. gkschools.org.

Please contact me at 815-784-5222 with any questions!