It has been a heavy week both at BBS and for all school staff who work in our region. Many of us have strong connections to the Bend-La Pine School District and the events at Silver Rail Elementary School last week have hit close to home. I want to send a big thank you to everyone for your support and trust this week.

We know that keeping kids safe is our most important job. As we debrief with each other we are having conversations about our own school safety practices. Although we feel great about all the improvements we have made at BBS the past few years, we know that there is always room for improvement. Please know that we will do everything in our power to protect BBS and create a learning environment where every kid can feel respected and a sense of belonging. The scars from this past week will take time to heal but as long as we stay connected as a school community we will get through this together. 

Field Trip this week:

• We will wrap up our fall field trip season with Oregon Badlands on Friday. We have been learning about forests and this trip will allow us to contrast our local and west side forests with a dry old growth juniper dominated forest.
• The weather looks cold but dry Friday so please send your child with lots of layers to stay comfortable.
• We will be dropping off students in Sisters on the way home (East Side Bus Schedule).

Conferences: You should have received an email from either a teacher or myself about parent teacher conferences next week. We are finalizing the schedule currently. Let us know if you didn’t get confirmation on your time yet. Please make sure your child attends the conference as their voice will be an important part of the conversation about their growth and goals for the year. See you all next week.

Basin Today 10/21:

We had a visit from Zac Kendall of ODFW who presented about bears to the students (photos below).  This has been a big topic of conversation in Camp Sherman this fall as we have seen more bear activity than usual. The kids were very excited to learn from Zac and had lots of questions and stories to share! Ask them about what they learned.

Bull Trout Basin next week 10/28:

• Students can bring costumes to school & change before Bull Trout Basin after lunch. Tammy and I will lead fun games & activites with the kids during the Basin Block.
• 1:25pm – We will take a group photo at the end of the day, before kids get on the bus, and parents are welcome to join to see the costumes at this time!
• Please send kids to school in their normal clothes so we can maintain the morning academic block with minimal distractions. (Please no face paint; all costumes & accessories will be saved for the afternoon).

Over the last week, Blue Bay students reached some major milestones. The first was their completion of their first big project of the year, their Ecosystem Job Fair Posters. The event went really well and I think the whole school, both the presenters and the participants, had a great time and learned lots as well. Another big milestone was finishing reading their first novel of the school year, Scat by Carl Hiaasen, and the students took a comprehension test on it this week. 

5th graders will now focus on their OBOB books, and 6th graders will be receiving a new school book tomorrow. On the subject of homework, work to do tonight includes studying for the spelling test #7 (tomorrow) and completing the reading and comprehension questions for “Section 3: Byzantine Empire”.

In Math, students are still working through the first unit of their grade-level curriculum, with 5th graders doing place-value/decimal work, and 6th graders are working on solving for the area of triangles and parallelograms, and finding the surface area of 3 dimensional prisms. Quizzes for both grade groups will come next week. 

Literacy

• VCV spelling and reading, digraph spelling and reading, 2 or more closed syllable spelling and reading
• Ask students about the sound animal from today. It is one of our last!

Math

• Comparing with data
• Ask 2nd grade students to make a graph. Ask Kinders and 1st graders to compare some numbers with the greater or less than signs. 

Science

• Labeling pictures and giving details or examples about particular trees.
• Ask them about a type of tree they have learned about. 

Literacy:

• continuing to read/spell/split words with chunks
• another entry in our writer’s notebook
• comprehension work in our visualizing and verbalizing booklet 
• finding examples of appositives

Math:

• exploring division through ‘same and different’ problems
• identifying whether a division problem is asking for the ‘size of the share’ or the ‘number of shares’

Science / Social Studies:

• Identifying and reading about Oregon’s 8 Agricultural Regions
• Oregon Map work
• A look into the commodity of dairy in Oregon

Books we’re reading:

• Hey Batta Batta Swing! The Wild Old Days of Baseball
• Sad Underwear and other complications: More Poems for Children and their Parents

• Bunnicula