24-25: Week 7 Classroom News

Hello Families,

Here’s one of the group photos from picture day! Check your student’s backpack for portrait order forms sent home on Tuesday. Read on for news & updates.

Whole School:

Portrait Order Forms were sent home with students yesterday. Please return forms & payment no later than Oct. 30th. Checks can be made to BBS PTO. Thank you!
Conferences: Make sure you are signed up and on the calendar (teachers sent emails last week). Conferences are 30 minutes and include students.
Fri Oct. 25 – Field Trip on Metolius: We could use chaperones for this one – please contact Delaney if you’d like come!
Thurs Oct. 31st – BBS Halloween Party 1:30-3pm AND Camp Sherman Trick or Treat 6pm. See 10/21 email from Koli with all the details.
Halloween costume guidelines: Please no weapons or blood/gore! If costumes will restrict or distract from learning during the day, kids can change into them before the party.
Wreath Sale is now live: www.bbswreaths.com See today’s email from Koli with all the details!
Treering Yearbook Sale – 10% off till the end of the month.

From Ms. Steele: ssteele@blackbutte.k12.or.us

Administrators (5th-7th): The Administrators are doing incredibly well in class. Not only do they all get along with each other, they all have a positive attitude and growth mindset about learning. They are exhibiting maturity around their homework assignments and take personal responsibility to check in with me when they are confused. They just finished their first journalism article and are all making progress in their math concepts during independent math time. They have recently wrapped up a unit on the United States government and citizenship and now are exploring what it means to be a global citizen. All in all, they are having a great time in class.

From Ms. Kassie: kdemarsh@blackbutte.k12.or.us

K-1 Literacy: In kindergarten we have been working on so many starting sounds including /g/, /d/, /t/ and /k/. There are animals with names to go along with each sound. Ask students about the sound animals. We are also working on blending sound and breaking them apart. First grade has been learning heart words, ones we know by heart without having to think about them. Some of them we need to memorize parts and some we can use our phonics skills to sound out. They have also worked on spelling nonsense words with short vowels.
K-1 Math: In math we have started our portfolios which is a way for students to show what they know about a topic. We have also been doing a weekly estimation jar and starting to understand number lines.

⇒ Work and Play to try at home:

Have first grade students try spelling nonsense words with short vowels.
- Examples: feb, riz, teb, pum, mag…
Have kindergarten students work on combining three sound words that you provide for words like bath (/b/ /a/ /th/), heat (/h/ /e/ /t/) bun…
For both kinder and 1st students, practice estimating numbers around you.

K-2 Science: We have been working on adding pages to our scientific notebooks. We will add a handful of pages for each unit we learn about. These will come home at the end of year, but see picture below of the opening page for the plant powers unit we are in. On Monday students brought home model umbrellas. This was part of a lesson to understand how inventors look to nature to solve design problems. See pictures of students acting like trees to see how they bend (but don’t break) in the wind and of students sharing ideas on how inventors work.

From Mr. B: ebarrons@blackbutte.k12.or.us

Huzzah!

Bebop (2nd-4th) Math: Bebop is working at an impressive clip in math! This past week included: completing our pattern block masks, connections around factoring and prime numbers with arrays, using the word congruent and adding detail into our story problems. We are currently working on a classification activity that will help shape a better understanding of Venn diagrams.
Bebop (2nd-4th) Literacy: In literacy, Bebop is carefully reviewing the expectations around our new curriculum, Really Great Reading. They have entered Unit 2 with a ferocious appetite for MORE!
Our morning snack time (which leads into literacy) have been filled with wonderful discussions, vocabulary-building, informational text, parts of speech practice and incredible descriptions. Here’s our weekly schedule:

– Mad Lib Mondays

– Tape Talk Tuesdays

– Wisdom Tales Wednesdays

– Time for Kids Thursdays

– Free Style Fridays (haven’t had many of these…Mr. B usually reads a story)

Ask your student about their favorite snack time day!

From Mr. Sharp: dsharp@blackbutte.k12.or.us

Field Studies: We are wrapping up our unit on birds in the coming week. We got out for a little bird walk on Friday afternoon and then learned about migration on Monday this week. We are now doing a unit review and will have our bird quiz on Monday, 10/28. This Friday the whole school is heading out for our final field studies trip of the fall as we hike the Metolius with our friends from Trout Unlimited. After that we are starting a unit on forestry for November/December.
PE: In P.E. class I have been teaching the students to juggle. We got some new colorful juggling scarves and the students have enjoyed practicing with them. We will see if anyone can master the circus arts. We also are learning soccer to build off the SPRD soccer season that many of our students wrapped up this past week.

From Ms. Sharp: jsharp@blackbutte.k12.or.us

Performing Arts: This week we focused on putting together all of the lessons we’ve done so far on movement, emotions, and voice to create characters. Students created fun characters wearing hats, putting on imaginary shoes, and taking silly family portraits. The 3rd-7th group took it a step further and explored the idea of subtext, or the meaning and emotions behind the words of a dialogue. They played with the idea of subtext in a few games including an improv game where given a situation, each partner pair started their line with “it wasn’t my fault…” (A special thanks to Mr. B who filled in on Tuesday when I called in sick.)

Tomorrow we’ll be reading through our scripts (FINALLY!) and students and families will know what parts their students will be playing by Tuesday Oct 29th. I’m hoping to have costume suggestions out to families next week. And lucky for us, we get a performing arts day on halloween because I have a ton of fun theater activities for that special class.