Thursday, December 17, 2015

Battle of the Brains

Battle of the Brains
QUEST students from Heritage, Green Springs, and Westview placed in the top 20 out of 520 entries in the Burns and McDonnell Battle of the Brains competition.  The competition gave students in the greater Kansas City area to compete to design the next great exhibit for Science City at Union Station. The QUEST team received an honorable mention and $2,500 in grant support for their entry, Mission to Saturn. Mission to Saturn was designed to take visitors on a mission deep into space to compare Saturn and Earth, observe Saturn’s place in our solar system and discover all about Saturn’s composition, rings and moons.
The fifth graders from Heritage were the project managers for the exhibit design project. They mapped out the parts, the timeline to do it, and how everyone would participate. All of the QUEST students from Heritage, Green Springs, and Westview worked together to brainstorm, research, design, sketch, and model the exhibit design. They also wrote a description of the design and created a video. In this project, QUEST students were designers, engineers, builders, researchers, writers, graphic artists, sculptors, astronomers, video producers, and project managers.


The QUEST students from all three schools had a chance to get together with each other for Skype call with an exhibit designer, a visit with our Battle of the Brains mentor from Burns and McDonnell, a field trip to Science City, and the Battle of the Brains ceremony at Union Station. 







Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Mr. McFarland News


Heritage will be piloting a new assessment in January called the MAP test.  MAP stands for Measure of Academic Progress.  Students in grades K-5 will be taking this test.  Kindergarten and First Grade students will take the assessment on laptops and the rest of our students will take it on the iPads.  Here is a link for the testing schedule.

The MAP test will give teachers immediate feedback on how their students are doing compared to the rest of the country.  It will provide information as to where each student is at instructionally and where each student should be going academically.   Parents will receive a report with a score along with the national average and district average.  We will most likely hand these out during February parent-teacher conferences.  This computer based test adjusts to the student knowledge base.  If a student answers a question correctly, the test questions will get harder.  If a student answers incorrectly, the test questions get easier until they find a middle ground of what the student knows.

If the district decides to adopt this assessment, students will be tested each year, once in the fall and once in the spring.  Parents will receive an update after each testing session with their child’s score along with all of their previous scores.  Your child’s teacher will be providing more information after winter break.

This has been a wonderful first semester of the 2015-2016 school year.  I hope all our families are able to take some time over the next few weeks to be with family and enjoy the holiday season.  I look forward to seeing our students return in 2016!

Scott McFarland
Principal

Heritage Spelling Bee

Heritage Spelling Bee

Last Monday sixteen of our third, fourth and fifth graders competed in the Spelling Bee in front of all of their 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classmates. 
Congratulations to Meryn in Mrs. Mulligan's class for winning and to Caroline in Mrs. Hannon's class for being runner up!  All the spellers did a wonderful job.
Thank you to Mrs. Moss, Mrs. Miller and Ms. Kerr for being our caller and judges.
Meryn and Caroline will attend the District Spelling Bee February 11th at Frontier Trail Middle School.
Good luck!




Special Chorus at Crown Center

Special Chorus at Crown Center

The Special Chorus, made up of 4th and 5th graders, went to Crown Center and sang in the beautiful Crown Center lobby.  The students were energetic and so entertaining.  

After the performance, many students and their families went ice skating.  It was a beautiful night and a lot of fun.

Thank you to Mrs. Owen and all of the parents who came to watch and ice skate!