We had our first full 5 day week in the classroom last week as the calendar turned to November. We are staying busy with lots of learning before we get to Thanksgiving break this month. Here are a few items I have been involved with this week:

• The Lions Club volunteers came out and did the vision screening last Friday. Everyone passed! What a great group of eyes we have.
• In P.E. class we have been playing badminton, running on the trails, and getting some exercise with jump ropes and balance balls.
• In Health class we have switched our focus this month to Mental Health. Rachel and I will be popping into classrooms this month to teach lessons with each class on this theme.
• The salmon have all hatched out of their eggs and we are watching them grow bigger and stronger each day.
• We are hosting the leaders of Pinehurst SD in southern Oregon for a visit this week. Pinehurst is a very similar size district to ours and we are excited to learn from each other in person and share successes and struggles.
• We had a visit from our Literacy coach this week, Lindsley Gherig. She comes out to our school on occasion to provide support to our teachers in their literacy instruction. 
• We are getting ready for lots of action with wreath sales, holiday bazaar, and the winter performance right around the corner.

In performing arts this week with the K-3 group we painted rocks for our play “Sally the Stone.” We’ll use the rocks as props during the show. 

In both classes we started blocking the plays. We have a staged taped out on the floor in the commons where kids practice learning where they need to be on stage and when. 

Thanks to Mr. Sump who covered our Friday class last week, when kids set goals for performing arts, as well as practiced the songs. 

Please make sure you have read this letter and the accompanying documents related to our performance. Please take a look at the costume requirements and reply to this form. 

Our next OBOB meeting is Thursday Nov 19th, 3:15-4:15pm

Helpful resources:

• September meeting slideshow
• author name pronunciation guide
• book/author list
• slideshow with book descriptions
• OBOB website
• OBOB Dog (practice questions)
• OBOB official rules

This week, Blue Bay students completed an art assignment that was to create a mosaic! Not only that, but a self portrait as if they were royalty from Byzantine history, like Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora! There will be a test on Early Christianity/Byzantine Empire next Wednesday and everyone has a review sheet to study. The students have a spelling test this Friday on the 51-100 fry words. Students are expected to be reading their OBOB books nightly and/or Charlotte’s Web one chapter per night if they are in 6th grade to finish the book by next Wednesday.

In Math, 5th and 6th graders are both beginning a new ‘mission’ in math this week after separate unit tests. In Science, Blue Bay students finished up the fall ecology unit last week by taking an exam. They had to apply what they had learned in the field and in the classroom this fall by making assertions in writing and answering challenging real world questions. We started our next unit this week with some hands-on chemistry experiments. Who’s excited to explore the properties of matter and the scientific method?

Students got to check out books from the BBS library Tuesday. These books are ones students can bring home. They can be checked out for 2 weeks at a time. Please keep track of the books and enjoy reading them together.  

Literacy

• k/1- heart words, smooth reading
• 1/2- Fluency in passages, vowel consonant e (magic e) with multiple syllables 

Math

• K- flat shapes (circles, squares, hexagons)
• 1st- adding 3 numbers
• 2nd – double digit addition  

Science

• Wrapping up the tree unit and working on our final project. 

We’ve started to ‘dig’ into our potato study courtesy of OAITC, currently unpacking main idea from details via, “How Ballpoint Pens Work”, flexing ways to solve division equations using multiplication, practicing latin chucks (-sion, -tion, -ture), and wrapping up The Iron Giant. 

Word of the week – ‘senescence’ (connected to our spud study)