Week 17 Classroom News

Hello Families,

It’s been a short week with MLK Jr. Day and inclement weather. Thanks for your understanding as we find the balance between safety and getting students to school!

Whole School:

• Road conditions and Hoodoo: We are all excited to start Ski and Ride program tomorrow. Unfortunately, the weather is not cooperating. We will wait and see how the roads look in the morning before making a final call but if it is too icy we may have to delay it again. Please have your students prepared and ready to go to Hoodoo; we will do our best to make it happen.
  • Safety is an important part of this program and we won’t take students up the pass if we don’t think it can be done safely. We will let you know if plans change and we aren’t able to get to Hoodoo, or if school will be delayed or canceled. Thank you for being flexible as we balance safety with the benefits of school. 
• Busing and Gear: Students will have an assigned place on the bus for their skis/snowboards and will receive this assignment tomorrow. Please help your child load their gear on the bus in the morning if they are unable to do it themselves. We want to minimize how much Gary gets off the bus.
  • Any student who filled out the rental form will get a season rental tomorrow paid for by BBS. You are welcome to keep these rentals for use on the weekends, but they need to be ready to go each Friday. We can also store the skis/snowboards here at school if you don’t want to manage them. We need to know where the gear is going at the end of each Ski and Ride day; please let us know if you want your child’s gear to stay at school or else we will default to sending it home. 
• Winter Performance Photos: NOW FREE ACCESS TO ALL DIGITAL IMAGES! Thanks to the PTO for purchasing the digital portfolio! Go to this link and click the download arrow for each image you’d like.
• Bottle Drop fundraising for PTO will continue. Thanks to those who have dropped off their bags already. When you need a new bag, contact Koli ptotreasurer@blackbutte.k12.or.us. Nearest drop off is at Ray’s in Sisters.
• Read these ODE Guidelines for when to keep your kids home with illness.

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

• Bebop (2nd/3rd) Math: Continuing to master that pesky multiplication, we focused this week on square numbers using graph paper.  Graph paper was helpful to really see what square numbers are.  We are making progress on getting these facts memorized.
• Hodag (4th-8th) Math: In the world of Hodag math we are all working on test taking.  The 4th/5th graders are working on a practice test today and Monday that focuses on equivalent fractions and simplifying fractions.  The 6th graders moved on to algebraic expressions after doing really well on last week’s test.  The 8th graders had a test today on solving multi-step equations.  
• Health Class: The upper graders just finished their unit on being a Lifelong Learner and will start focusing on body systems next week.  The younger students are still working on safety.  We specifically talked about safety concerning fire, swimming, burns, electricity and poisons.  We are starting to devote the last 20 minutes to movement in both classes.  The dance moves the younger students are putting together are great (see photo below). And the upper graders got some cardio in with low impact aerobics. 

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

• K/1 Math class: Kinder students have shown they can read, write and count with teen numbers, so now we are moving on to working with the whole hundreds chart. Help kindergarten students by saying a number 1-100 and then count on from there. If that is easy, practice counting backwards! 1st grade students are working on using their 10 friends to help them add by making a 10. For example: 6+8=6+4+4=10+4=14. Help students by quizzing them on their 10 friends. 
• K-3 Science: Last Friday in our Invisible Forces Unit we made bridges out of paper. Ask your students to show you how to make a good bridge out of some paper laying around. This helped us understand invisible forces and how an ice board works by thinking about the pushes and pulls to create balanced forces.

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

• Mr. B’s K/1 Literacy is hitting up high-frequency words and considering whether Squirrel Nutkin is naughty, foolish, bratty, likable and/or brave.
• Mr. B’s Literacy Beboppers are knee deep into two-syllable words with suffixes. Some are definable, like joyous and captive, but others are non-definable like theepous and snective. Next week, they will start reading Grandpa’s Corner Store.
• Mr. B’s Art Literacy class: Students are exploring sounds using line and shape to notate what they hear. Next week, students will convey the meanings of feeling words using various lines, shape, and color.

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

Please see important messages above regarding Ski & Ride preparations.

• Humanities class: The Hodags wrapped up our unit on the Lewis and Clark expedition Tuesday.
  • Next up is writing our second journalism article of the year. We spent class today learning about how authors write news stories and then reading a few news articles. It would really benefit the students to read some more news articles and current events. In class I asked them to read the Nugget or online news articles this coming week. This could lead to good family conversations about current events and what is going on in the world right now.