PANTHER PRESS

Jan. — Feb. 2016-17

West Milwaukee Intermediate School, 5104 W. Greenfield Ave., West Milwaukee, WI 53214 414-604-3300

Mr. Jeff Taylor, Principal Mr. Ryan Hammernik, Assistant Principal Mrs. Holly Bodish, Academic Dean

Jan 16 Martin Luther King Day Jr—No school Jan 19 PTSA Meeting—5:00 pm. at West Jan 20 End of 2nd quarter Jan 23 No school for students Jan 24 Parent Night—Dangers of the Internet Feb 13 No School for students Feb 16 PTSA Meeting—5:00 p.m. at West Feb 28 Black History Event—7:00pm—8:00pm Mar 13 No School for students Mar 15 Teacher Conferences- 4:30pm—8:00pm

Community Relationships

Upcoming Events

Important Dates

From the Administration Team -

West Milwaukee Intermediate School – Strong relationships & great learning happens!

Dear West Milwaukee Intermediate Families, We would like to thank everyone for a great 1st semester of the 2016-17 school year! Happy New Year to each of you & your families. In the 2017 new year, we will continue our work as a school to build the strongest culture for learning possible! We take great pride in providing the best school experience for all our students & we are not able to do this without the tremendous support of all of our families of West! We are proud of our offerings for all students & we encourage each of you to get involved as best as you can in your child’s school experience. You are the most important teacher of your child! Our work to-gether will be the biggest indicator of our children’s future successes! We look forward to our continued partnership with you each of you this new year & are committed to your children’s successes! We encourage you to call with any questions or concerns as we work together to make our great school even better! Finally, your feedback is im-portant to us. please take the time to let us know how we are doing.? Please go to www.greatschools.org & provide us with feedback. Sincerely, Jeff Taylor Ryan Hammernik Holly Bodish Principal Assistant Principal Academic Dean

Special thanks to all of the families that attended Par-ent-Teacher Conferences, Parent night(s), Girls’ Night Out, Career Cafe , Student Council Bake-off, etc. We are thankful for our partnership & excited about our future together! Here are some pictures from our Parent night, where we learned together how to be more involved in homework and practiced Mindfulness strategies to im-prove our personal health!

Black History Event February 28, 2017 7:00 PM in the Liberace Auditorium Students can audition to participate in this annual event & auditions will be held in mid January. If interested in audi-tioning, it is time to get an appropriate act ready & talk to your teachers asap!

Come one, Come all!

Parent/Teacher Conferences—Date Change Wednesday, March 15, 2017—4:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Our next Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held in March, please note the change in date. We encourage you to bring your son/daughter to the conference to share ideas and concerns about grades. Progress reports will be handed out at your conference. Anyone not in attendance will have their progress report mailed home. We are looking forward to meeting with you and your child.

PTSA Meeting—New members needed! Meetings are January 19, 2017 & February 16, 2017

The meetings are held once a month & begin at 5:00 PM in the West Milwaukee IMC. Parents, staff & students are all welcome to attend! We are in need of new members!

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Follow us on Facebook and Twitter! @WMISPanthers

At West, school safety is a our top priority! We pride

ourselves in keeping our school safe for everyone, & ap-

preciate your support. Here are some areas we can use

your help:

School Building Hours—Our building is open from

7:15 am—3:30 pm. Please bring your daughter/son to

school no earlier than 7:15 a.m., as we do not have per-

sonnel to supervise them until 7:15 a.m. After school, we

have been noticing students waiting for rides outside in

front of school until 4:00 pm or even 4:30 pm. With the

cold weather & lack of personnel to supervise those

hours, it is unsafe for students to be waiting for rides that

long. Students are dismissed at 3:00 pm & should be

picked up no later than 3:15 pm. If you need for your

child to stay after school for a longer period of time, we

encourage you to sign-up for sports, clubs and/or our Ac-

tion 300 after school program. Your help in this matter

would be greatly appreciated.

Pedestrian Crossing—-Please slow down in the

School Zone Area. Signs are posted one block from

school in all directions.

Please obey the Cross-

walk Laws & yield to

pedestrians in the cross-

walk. School is in ses-

sion...please slow down

& yield to our students!

We have more than 15 after school clubs that all students are eligible to participate in! A full list of our club offer-ings on our website & the advisors contact information is included. This information is also posted in the main hall-way—just outside of the main office. Please encourage your child to get involved as much as possible. If you have further questions, please call the main office—welcome window at 414-604-3301.

All absences must be reported to the attendance office.

You can call 604-3300 ex 5027 and leave a message 24 hours a day. If the Attendance Office does not receive a call, the absence will be recorded as a truancy. As a parent/guardian, it is important that you are always call the school when your child needs to miss school. It is the school’s responsibility to always know that you child is in school, safe and accounted for.

Daily attendance in school is extremely important to achieve the best! During the 2015-2016 school, the fol-lowing students had Perfect Attendance! Their commit-ment to school and being in school every day will lead to more success in their futures. Congratulations go to:

2015-2016

Kitsada Edmonds

Noah Grzegorski

Sean Hanvelt

Pengfei Zhang

Alivia Bautista

Perfect Attendance Recognition

Athletics/Clubs

Attendance Reminder

Winter Weather is here!

School Safety

West Milwaukee Intermediate School – Strong relationships & great learning happens!

Each morning, students are expected to wait out-side the building until 7:35 a.m. unless it is raining &/or below 10 degrees. Please encourage your son/daughter to dress appropriately. Hats, coats, and scarves are strongly suggested. In the event that school is closed due to severe weather - our local radio (WTMJ AM 620, WISN AM 1130, etc.) and TV stations (WISN TV 12, TMJ 4, WITI FOX 6, etc.) will provide early announcements about the possible closing of school. The announcements will be made periodically starting around 6:00 a.m. in the morning.

Strong Shout Out! 6th & 7th grade students have recently finished MAP testing for Reading. Students showed tremendous pro-gress since last year & were wonderful during testing. We are proud of the readers we are creating at West!

Great Learning!

In 6th grade writing, students are working on the Ar-gumentation Unit. Overall, we’ve continued to see an im-provement in Achieve Lexile scores. Students complete articles weekly in Reading, Social Studies & Science.

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West Milwaukee Intermediate School – Strong relationships & great learning happens!

Grade 6 & 7

Grade 8

Strong Shout Out! Thank you to all 8th grade students for their fantastic job at leading by example for are younger students. This year is the best year at West & this is large in part be-cause of each of you, keep up the great work 8th grade!

Great Learning! In History, we are reading/analyzing the pros & cons of Andrew Jackson’s Presidency as it truly impacted our country both socially & economically. Through January, we are reading a variety of articles & primary documents & formulate their thoughts based on the findings of their evidence. In Balanced Literacy, we are reading “The Giv-er”, analyzing the text & thinking about the importance of freedom of choice. We will use our notes from the quote analysis to write a literary essay. In math, we are gearing up to start our functions chapter in which the students learn how to write and evaluate functions from real-world problems. They also get to explore the exciting world of quadratic functions! Parabolas here we come! In Science, students have been putting their problem solving and critical thinking skills to the test competing in an egg drop challenge! With a limited supply list, stu-dents had to make a lightweight and protective package to keep their raw egg from breaking when dropped from 10 feet in the air. There is more problem solving on the horizon, our classroom was awarded the WAWM Educa-tion Foundation grant to purchase materials to practice hands on problem solving tasks. In the upcoming months we’ll be attempting to create earthquake proof buildings and engineering prosthetic tails for fish!

Specialists

Strong Shout Out! UWM’s College of Health Sciences recently awarded the prestigious 2016 Community Partnership Award to West Allis-West Milwaukee School District’s speech-language pathology department. This award specifically recognizes the extraordinary contributions of three speech-language pathologists in the district, Lindsay Lauters, M.S., CCC-SLP (Franklin School), Jill Vanderhoef, M.S., CCC-SLP (West Milwaukee Inter-mediate School and Franklin School), and Sa-rah Zapien, M.S., CCC-SLP (Wilson School). By imple-menting the most current, engaging, evidence-based therapies, these speech-language pathologists have achieved exceptional results with the students on their caseloads, and they have gone above & beyond to share their remarkable skills and knowledge with future speech-language pathologists at UWM. Lindsay, Jill & Sarah volunteer countless hours each year supervising graduate student clinicians, providing observation expe-riences for undergraduate students & sharing their ex-pertise through various lectures & presentations at UWM. UWM’s College of Health Sciences is committed to improving the health & well-being of the community & this work is only possible through collaboration with exceptional partners in the community like Lindsay Lau-ters, Jill Vanderhoef & Sarah Zapien.

Great Learning! READING TIPS—How can you encourage your child to read on a regular basis? Here are 5 ideas that may help! Stay tuned for the next newsletter for even more reading tips! 1) Have your child read to you; You can take turns

reading chapters in a chapter book, for example. 2) Get a library card with your child. Go to the library

every week and take out several books. 3) Be aware of your child’s interests & direct your child

to related books. 4) Try to find a series that he or she really likes & will

want to continue reading. 5) Discuss books with your child.

Panther Pride! - Be Ready, Be Respectful, Be Responsible!

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West Milwaukee Intermediate School – Strong relationships & great learning happens!

PBIS Career Café

Student Services

PBIS is also in need of a parent to be on our team. It requires attendance at one morning meeting per month. We value feedback from our families and this role is very important! Please contact Ms. Argyres at

604-3300 x5048 if you are interested. Here are a cou-ple pictures from our PBIS school-wide incentive. Stu-dents redeemed Panther Perk cards to earn team relay participation against the staff!

Please go to www.greatschools.org & provide us with feedback!

12/15/16—Career Café-Mayor Dan Divine More than 70 students participated!

We are committed to preparing every 8th grade student for a successful transition to high school. Our Counselors will hold Individual Planning Conferences with all 8th graders & their parent/guardian, between January & February 2017. Guardians can expect a call from either Mr. Korb (last names A-K) or Mr. Higgins (last names L-Z) to schedule the conference Each con-ference will be 100% positive & take 45 minutes & will cover topics such as high school course offerings, extracurricular activ-ities, academic achievement, information about career plan-ning, and a review of your child’s Academic & Career Plan for High School Graduation.

The following are ways to prepare with your 8th grader for the Planning Conference: Check out the 2017-2018 course catalog on the school district website: www.wawm.k12.wi.us Then, Click on “Student's” icon - Click on 2017-18 Course Catalog (Details will be discuss at the conference). Thank you to all par-ents in helping to make the transition to high school a positive experience for your child!

12/7/16—Career Café-West Allis Firefighter Special thanks to Mrs. Wagner for coordinating the

Career Cafe presentation events!