Bruneau Elementary Newsletter
October 3, 2017 Issue 4
Upcoming Events
Tuesday, October 10th School Board Meeting @ Rimrock 7pm
Thursday, October 12th BES Fire Prevention Assembly 2:50
Thursday, October 12th End of 1st Quarter
Friday, October 13th Teacher Inservice
Oct. 17th & 18th Parent Teacher Conferences 4-8pm
October 23rd-26th Red Ribbon Week
Classroom News
K/1 Miss Wampler
2/3 Mrs. Graham
We have started getting books from our library so that we can have the chance to read a book from start to finish on our own! I am not letting them take their books home yet as they have not been put into our check-out system but it’s something that I am working on. We are also working on reminding ourselves to have GRIT in the classroom. GRIT is something we have when we continue to work on something even though it is difficult for us or we’ve made a lot of mistakes. It is important for us, as learners, to not give up on ourselves and push through the tough times. We also have an update on our seed progress! A couple of seeds have grown long roots and are now starting to grow leaves! We have also talked about how plants use their leaves to make their own food and the vocabulary that goes along with it (glucose, carbon dioxide, stomata, oxygen, and photosynthesis). We will be keeping our seeds for a couple more weeks to see how much more they can grow!
4/5 Mrs. Hanes
4th and 5th Grade is Beginning Word Study
Starting this month, we are using word study as our primary spelling/vocabulary practice.
What is word study?
Word study provides students with opportunities to investigate and understand the patterns in words. Knowledge of these patterns means that students needn't learn to spell one word at a time. Word study is also designed to build word knowledge that can be applied to both reading and spelling. Because it is closely tied to reading instruction, it also develops students' abilities in phonics, word recognition, and vocabulary.
from http://www.ldonline.org/article/80/ 9/30/17
In our classroom students have completed a placement test and have been given a learning group. We are presently practicing the new routines, which we call “sorts”, to learn word patterns, and beginning this week your student will receive a word sort that reflects her/his spelling level. Please check in your child’s home/school folder and make sure that she/he completes at least three sorts a week at home. Research has found that working with the words to discover their meaning and spelling similarities/differences/ and understand the spelling patterns builds student’s abilities in reading, science, and math. Concept Sorts encourage students to think deeply about word meanings, creating connections that help them use their ever increasing vocabulary more effectively. Have fun discovering word sorts with your child!
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at khanes@sd365.us or call me at the Bruneau Elementary School or at home after 6:30 pm each evening 208-845-2126.
Music Ms Volk
The first month of school has gone by fast in the music room! Bruneau Elementary students are fully immersed in Creating, Performing and Responding, as per the national standards they are expected to master for music. Creating includes improvising and notating melodies. Students have experimented in creating their own rhythms based on “building blocks” they learned last year, and will soon be writing down their own compositions. Mrs. Graham’s class is using the rhythms they learned last year, while Mrs. Kangas-Hanes’ class will soon be adding new and advanced rhythms. Bruneau students are responding by listening and discussing or dancing to music. Often they discuss an emotion felt by a song, or images conjured by it. Sometimes Ms. Wampler’s class listens to a song and dances to it as they see fit based on the music. Performing is the most exciting standard for Ms. Volk’s students, because it means they get to sing and play instruments! Ms. Wampler’s class is enjoying learning all the unpitched percussion instruments in their farm unit, and will begin soon to explore high and low on mallet instruments. Mrs. Graham’s class has moved right on to playing patterns and notes on all the different mallet instruments and they are really excited to play actual melodies! The fourth and fifth graders began learning the recorder at the end of September, after weeks of anticipation. They will master one note at a time, and are learning to read the actual notes on the staff!
Art Mrs. Pearson
Miss Wampler's class finished painting and assembling their color wheel turtles last week. They really impressed me with their scissor skills and can-do attitude as they were given free rein to create the feet, head, and tail on their own.
Mrs. Graham’s class also finished a project this week! During the past month we looked at space books and pictures from NASA to learn about our solar system, space stations, dwarf planets and asteroids. The students used oil pastels, tempera paint and markers in the making of their space scenes.
The students in Mrs. Hanes class can be proud of the hard work and effort they put into learning to draw accurately using the grid system. They persevered and were willing to try again and again until they liked the results.
Kid Questions
Miss Wampler was born in Caldwell, Id where she grew up on a farm. Miss Wampler had dogs, cats, chickens, cows, and a horse named Marie. She went to Lincoln Elementary, Washington Elementary, Wilson Middle School, Jefferson Jr. High, and Caldwell High School. Her favorite subjects were science, math and music.
Miss Wampler's favorite color is blue. Her favorite sport is basketball and her favorite fruit is peaches. When she was in fourth and fifth grade she liked to read Goosebumps by R.L. Stine and other mysteries.
Miss Wampler started working at Bruneau Elementary School in 2001 as the 2nd & 3rd grade teacher when she was 24yrs old. Over the past 16 years, Miss Wampler has taught around 320 students in all of her classes. She has taught 2/3, 3/4, 2/3/4, K/1/2 and is the K/1 teacher at our school right now.
September Students of The Month
Cruz Colyer K/1
Liam Aquiso 2nd Grade
Estrella Alamilla 3rd Grade
Community Groups
“Jackson was eating and three older boys started picking on him. They were saying he looked like a monster and kept calling him names,” Bezzant told EastIdahoNews.com.
Jackson Bezzant, who will turn 8 years old on Sept. 28, was born with a rare condition called Treacher Collins syndrome. It affects the development of bones and facial tissues and an estimated 1 in 50,000 people have the condition.
Students at BES wrote letters to Jackson telling him about what we have learned about bullying and that we hope he will have a better time at school.