Week 18 Classroom News

Hello Families,

Read on for news and updates.

Whole School:

Stinky snow gear – time for laundry! The kids are getting A LOT of use out of their snow clothes and the classrooms are getting stinky! Please take time to wash ALL the gear this weekend. Thank you.
Ski and Ride: We had an awesome first day at Hoodoo on Friday. Big thanks to Gary for safely getting us there and back with some challenging road conditions. We have 6 groups this year: 3 ski groups and 3 snowboard groups. All the instructors reported having a great day and our students did a great job keeping track of gear and being responsible up there. We are excited about getting out for week 2. Make sure they have all their gear ready to go including their season rentals if they came home with them.

Bebop (2nd/3rd) Math: Bebop has been playing around with equivalent fractions. We have been using math tiles and dominoes to explore this confusing topic, and they are all doing really well. I was super surprised to see that some more of our multiplication facts are getting memorized. Whatever is happening at home to help with that, keep it up.
Hodag (4th-8th) Math: Everyone continues to work on their grade level math. 8th graders are learning about recursive routines, start values and rate of change. They are gearing up to start linear equations. 4th/5th graders started working with decimals this week. Decimals are surprisingly confusing for this group, so talk about decimals at home please. 6th graders are starting to solve simple equations.
Health Class:
- The younger group has been continuing to talk about safety and we saw some great skits on Tuesday to show how to be safe around dogs, swimming, electricity, traffic, bikes, fire etc.
- The older group started a new unit this week. We will be studying the human body systems (holding off on the reproductive system for later — you will see a permission letter coming home in February).

K/1 Math class: Kinder students are working on knowing numbers 0-100. We are counting and counting and counting. Our work is now on our writing of these numbers. First grade students have shown they can make a 10 to add, so now we are working on making a 10 to subtract.
K-3 Science: In our Invisible Forces unit we wrapped up learning about bridges. Did they tell you about the bridge made of grass? Learn more here. Today we were thinking about motion and patterns by exploring trapeze artists. Students made model trapeze swings and experimented with the length of the trapeze to find patterns in the motion. Ask students about how length changes the swinging motion.

Mr. B’s K/1 Literacy: Students have begun unpacking the word ‘strange’ as it drives much of the plot in our spotlight story Kanga and Baby Roo Come to The Forest. Students are also building up their high frequency tool bag with plenty of three and four letter words. We’re building readers!
Mr. B’s Bebop Literacy: Students created an ad in conjunction with Grandpa’s Corner Store (see examples below). They are also getting quite skilled with prefixes and suffixes!
Mr. B’s Art Literacy class: All students are building on their work with lines. This week, students are showing what kind of lines help convey a feeling’s meaning. Check out the examples below!

Humanities class: This week in Humanities class we started working on our second journalism article. All the students have selected a topic and are working through the writing process: brainstorming, creating an outline, writing a rough draft, and then editing. We are hoping to finish our articles by the end of next week.
We are also continuing to learn about early Oregon history. We have been studying maps and reading about the growth of the United States during the 19th century. This is a complex story but the students seem to be doing well with the discussions and class work.
Yearbook: Ms. Sharp taught yearbook class today and students are working on design layouts.