Week 19 Classroom News

Hello Families,

Read on for news and updates.

Whole School:

• From Ms. Kassie: To prepare for Valentine’s Day students are once again sewing felted hearts for their buddies. The idea of the hearts is based off a quote “the softer your heart, the more beautiful your life will be” by Guruji Gede Prama. This allows us to celebrate Valentine’s day as a time to celebrate loving the people around us. (See pics above and below).

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

• Bebop (2nd/3rd) Math: Bebop just finished taking the mid-year district math assessment.  I was really pleased at how hard they worked and how seriously they approached the test.  They have also been working really hard at division.  Today they did the problem 2295 divided by 5.  They absolutely rocked it!!
• Hodag (4th-8th) Math: There isn’t much new going on in Hodag math this week because the students are taking the mid-year district math assessments.  Although the Hodag group did help me out a lot by writing division word problems that I can use with the Bebop group. They discovered that writing math problems is hard.
• Health Class: In health class we continue to explore the human body systems.  We are learning about how they work together and how something can affect our mental, physical, emotional and social health all at once.  Upper grade students will be doing a presentation about one of the systems next Thursday.  The younger students did a dive into the brain on Tuesday and on Thursday we will talk about the heart.  We are also continuing to dance up a storm in health.  Yeah, movement!

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

• K/1 Math class: Kinder students have moved into a measurement and shapes unit. We have been exploring comparing lengths and heights. We will move into learning about solid (3-D) shapes. First grade students are showing they can jump back to 10 and then subtract more to use the important number of 10 to work towards strong mental math skills. 
• K-3 Science: In the Invisible Forces unit we worked to understand how gravity and friction affect motion through our model trapeze and the ice board phenomenon. Today we started to play with the invisible force of magnets. Ask students what they learned while experimenting with magnets today.

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

• Mr. B’s K/1 Literacy: Students are hard at work decoding (nonsense words – ruv, vep, zuz, ij, sug and ‘bigtime’ story words – my, like, me, when, chicken, see, fox) and ramping up a new writing feature tentatively called K-1 News. More to follow next week.
• Mr. B’s Bebop Literacy: Students are writing a compare and contrast essay about the community stories read in class and how their own neighborhoods and communities are linked. They’ve also made generous gains with their sound practice (phoneme-grapheme mapping) and suffix work.
• Mr. B’s Art Literacy class: The K-3 students are exploring feeling words with line and shape while the Hodags are ‘recording’ sound using a variety of line, shape and color.

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

We have been watching our beautiful snow slowly melt away here at BBS. But at least the roads are clear and we are charging ahead to February. The rain and warm breeze have also made our climate change studies a little more relevant.

• Humanities class: We have been mostly working on our second journalism articles this past week. The student’s put some great effort into these pieces of writing and I am excited to read the final versions, which are due by the end of this week. Writing is a difficult task for most kids but the focus and perseverance they are showing is noteworthy. We have also spent time this week exploring the growth of the United States in the 1800s and will begin focusing on the Oregon Trail next. 
• Field Studies: In Field Study class we held a lively role play on Monday about the impacts of Climate Change. Students played roles of different folks from around the world who are being impacted. They had to move around and talk to each other in character. This was a fun way to dive deeper into this complex topic. Next week we will wrap up this unit by exploring ways we as humans can address the climate crisis.