I had a fascinating trip last week to visit some other tiny rural school districts in eastern Oregon. As you are probably aware there are very few schools left in the state that are around our size of 30 students. I toured 5 of the most similar size districts and met with their leaders. It was a great experience to connect with them and see what their schools look like in action. I have been able to bring back some lessons learned to the board and staff here and hopefully I have made some connections that will help us moving forward.

The big focus upon my return has been working with Jane to finalize our budget for next year. We presented the budget on May 12th to the budget committee and it was approved. No major changes for next year but we are always making small adjustments to try to get better. 

No upper grade Field Studies classes the last couple weeks but we are gearing up for our farm field trip on Monday. 

We have been playing lacrosse in P.E. class. We are starting to be able to pass and catch more consistently and the older kids even got in a basic game yesterday. We are hoping to still sample several more sports this spring including fishing and frisbee.

Blue Bay students are getting back into our school routines after a great end of year trip last week. Highlights from Outdoor School included shelter making, fire building, star gazing, hikes, light hearted pranks, and learning about the local paleontology and geology of the John Day Fossil Beds. OMSI Camp Hancock was a 10/10, would recommend. 

This week our upper graders are starting the day off with State Testing, and then an abridged version of math and humanities follows. In Math, students are picking up where they left off on their grade specific goals. In Humanities, there is a spelling test coming up tomorrow and a map quiz on the major rivers of the world. Help your child be successful tonight by helping them study their vocabulary list #19 and their rivers maps, which they made this week. 

The repetitious nature of this quiz game has also been shown to produce good results: https://www.geoguessr.com/vgp/3133

In Buddy Time this week, younger buddies got to ask the upper graders about their trip and get some candid student responses and details so they can get an idea of the type of trip they may be going on someday with BBS. Mentor pairs also got the chance to do a “walk and talk,” checking in on how their mentor/mentee is doing and asking for any advice if they want it. 

Thank you all for making the time and putting in the extra effort for students’ show and tell! It has been such a pleasure to have students share a bit more about themselves through what they show off! 

Math– We are wrapping up our geometry unit and starting with telling time. If you have analog clocks at home, try seeing if the kids can tell time!

Literacy– We have learned our last heart words for the year and are learning about suffix -ed. We will do a bit more writing based on our unit topic of what makes us special. Start sharing ways you think you are unique and special at home! 

In Science we are working on putting together how nature and food systems work together. We will be going on a farm field trip on Monday to solidify some of these connections. Ask students about where water comes from.

Green Ridge Literacy & Math: