Coming Up:

Oct. 18	-   Field Trip to Oxbow Park
Oct. 19	-   Field Trip to Bonneville Dam
Oct. 31	-   Overnight Informational Meeting - 7:40 a.m. LS Library
Nov. 2 & 3	-   LS Conferences
Nov. 21	-   Grandparents Day

Last Friday the fourth grade teachers spent the day visiting the site for our December 5, 6 & 7 overnight at Mazama Lodge. We met with the Site Supervisor and the Mazama Youth Program Coordinator to discuss the program and logistics. The whole Mazama crew are tremendously organized and helpful as they oriented us to their program. One of them, Amanda, knows many of our 4th graders as she worked at the Pioneer Camp program that they attended in 3rd grade at another facility 12 miles down the road.

The Mazama Lodge site director will be coming to OES on October 31 from 7:40 a.m. - 8:20 a.m.  for a Parent Information Meeting in the Lower School Library. They will show some slides, discuss the program, and talk about packing and preparation. We hope many of you are able to attend. If you cannot be there, rest assured we will also be providing the information presented via handouts and email.

If you have never been to Mazama Lodge, you have likely passed right by it without knowing. It is a short 10 minute walk from the town of Government Camp, but nestled in the forest and very peaceful. The lodge facility is spacious, yet cozy, with a large fireplace, dining room and sleeping bunks in the upstairs space.

The program is an excellent match for our 4th grade curriculum, both from a curriculum content and an approach to teaching and learning standpoint. In addition to lessons about the ecology and geology of the area from Mazama staff, our kids will be working in groups of 6 to form science inquiry questions and seek to answer those questions during our stay through the scientific method.

The safety procedures regarding bus transportation and emergency response are quite robust and will be covered at the parent information session. Additionally, we will be bringing along our own Tom Handel (Outdoor Program Coordinator and First Responder Trained) and Nicole Gaines, a nurse who will handle all medication and first aid needs. In the meantime you might enjoy viewing a short video of the site and program here. Plus a sample of a typical schedule here.

Please remember that this Wednesday and Thursday (October 18 and 19) we are doing back to back day trips to support our studies of salmon and the Columbia River watershed. On Wednesday we are going to Oxbow Park along the Sandy River and on Thursday we are going to the Bonneville Dam and hatchery. The purpose of these trips are to compare and contrast a free flowing salmon stream with a dammed river and an adjacent fish hatchery. Please know that we will be outdoors rain or shine and all students are required to bring raingear and sturdy footwear those days. Oxbow Park especially can be cold in the morning.  Please provide your child with a warm layer, hat and gloves in addition to rain gear.  This is good preparation/practice for our Mazama Lodge trip!  We are excited about our upcoming field trip and thanks to Alex Young and Ashley Bingham for going with us.

Reading:

Last week we continued reading Tiger Rising and focused on how to draw inferences from the text based on what is stated both explicitly and implicitly. We tried using explicit information from the text to support our inferences and identify implicit information.
After our discussion, the children concluded that:

• inferences are drawn from evidence or reasoning - reading between lines.  
• if you can point to information in the text that is clearly and directly stated, leaving no question about the meaning and you don’t need to look for clues it is explicit information.
• Implicit  is not directly stated, but understood in what is expressed and the clues in the text lead us to believe something.  

Writing:

Your children love to write! Students worked to identify particular small moments in their lives that stood out for them and chose one to write about. Some are finishing up first drafts of their small moment story and some are ready to begin revising.  

Math:

Students continue to build multiplicative reasoning as they work with multi-digit multiplication and early division. Students use base ten area pieces to investigate place value patterns, as well as model and solve single- and double-digit multiplication problems. To start, students build the Great Wall of Base Ten to examine relationships among place values and to make generalizations about what happens when a number is multiplied by 10, 100, or 1,000. From there, students use base ten area pieces to model and solve 1-by-2 and 2-by-2 digit multiplication combinations. Their work with the 1-square-centimeter pieces reinforces the connection between multiplication and area.

Social Studies:

We are preparing for our trips to Bonneville and Oxbow Park by becoming experts in the biology of the Pacific Salmon. We focused on the salmon life cycle and its crucial part in local food webs. We will compare and contrast "natural" salmon habitat with salmon enhancement programs like hatcheries and fish ladders. This will help us experience these field trips analytically.

Writing Mechanics/Spelling

We focused on the use of Apostrophes and Quotation Marks.

Acolytes:

Here is our last group of awesome acolytes!

Art:
Last week children enjoyed working with Kara Sisk, the weaver.