Bruneau Elementary Newsletter
October
Upcoming Events
November 4th Daylight Savings Time Ends (Set your clock back 1hr)
November 12th Veterans Day Assembly 12:15
November 13th School Board Meeting at BES 1-4pm
November 15th BES Turkey Trot and Thanksgiving Dinner starting at 11:10
Nov.19th-23rd Thanksgiving Break
November 30th Teacher Inservice
December 4th BES PBL Night 5:30-7:00
December 13th BES Christmas Concert
A Note from The Principal
BES and GVE Families,
On my drive home last week, I heard a story on the radio. While traveling in South America, the narrator explained, he saw that everyone loved to eat chili peppers. In fact, everyone prefered chili peppers, choosing to put them in just about everything they eat. Watching more closely, he noticed that the young children, those two to five years old, didn’t like the chili peppers. They would cry and spit out the food. But somewhere around age five, the children magically begin to enjoy and even choose to put chili pepper in everything they eat. What occurs at this magical moment between two and five, he wondered. Why is it that doing something unpleasant, eating a hot pepper, becomes a preferred activity of nearly everyone in this culture? The answer, he found, was in the experiences these children have over and over again when they eat a meal with their family. At each meal, eating the hot peppers gave the children a sense of belonging. Doing what every adult and older child was doing made them a part of the family and culture. Also, eating the food with hot peppers gave them nourishment and energy. Because the good, belonging and nourishment, was consistently paired with the bad, hot peppers, children began to accept and eventually prefer to eat hot chili peppers.
When we talk about “grit” with students, we often want to say that they just need to try harder, or just not give up. But, like the story of hot peppers, we need to show our children every day that doing what is initially difficult will result in success. Just like the children in the story, the ‘magic’ will occur when we give students the tools and encouragement to persist through struggle and learn every day.
Thank you for encouraging your students to show grit when they struggle to learn. One way to help your child show grit this month is to make the positive benefits of persisting in learning obvious. Point out the times you see your student reach success after using grit.
Sincerely,
Josh Noteboom
Classroom News
K/1 Miss Wampler
In math, kindergarten has been working on making two groups from a number of objects. We have been making number bonds to show our groups and then we use the number bonds to write addition sentences.
First grade has been working to identify equal equations by using cube chains, dominoes, and our balance scale. We are working to be able to write 7+3=6+4. 1st grade is also starting to work on finding the unknown number in an equation ( 4+ ? = 5) and applying this to solving word problems.
2/3 Mrs. Graham
Hello everyone! Just like I always say, time goes by way too fast! I can’t believe we’re already
through October. We’ve been working so hard and learning so many things. I also want to say
thank you to all of you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to come and visit with me
during parent/teacher conferences. It was so nice to meet and visit with you guys!
Recently, our class took a trip to the Hyatt Hidden Lake Reserve as a part of our Project-Based Learning. On this trip, we learned about a wetland habitat and everything that goes into making a habitat. The fall colors were so vibrant and it was so cool to visit a little patch of wetland in the middle of the city!
These next couple of weeks we will continue to work hard on our PBL, focusing on pests around
our school and what we can do to solve that problem. We’ve been researching and
brainstorming ideas of what we can do and I am so excited for you all to see the final products!
These kiddos have some pretty great ideas. There will be more information sent out to you
about the upcoming PBL Night in a separate parent letter from me. As always, we will continue
to persevere in our learning and find new ways to help our brains grow!
4/5 Mr. Meyers
In 4th grade math we are working in rounding using a vertical number line and using that to give us estimates when adding or subtracting.
In 5th grade math we are converting decimals to fractions and learning how to multiply both fractions and decimals.
In 5th grade reading we are reading about ecosystems. We are learning about food chains, producers, and consumers.
We have started our PBL. We are focusing on driving unwanted pests from a section of the garden and attracting desirable animals and insects. Ask you child about their pest and how we can get rid of them.
BES Math Night
Fire Prevention Day
Students were excited to get a chance to put out their own fire and to learn about what firefighters do.
We would like to thank Mr. Buckingham and the Bruneau volunteer fire department for coming to our school!