One of the personalities of our class is a love of scary stories! I've started reading Clockwork by Philip Pullman and students are drafting their own scary story, rough draft is due Monday! I highly recommend typing them because it makes the editing process so much easier for students to manage. We have a few students who I believe are destined to be novelists and are having a hard time envisioning writing something LESS than 20 pages! They are invited to write the first chapters of their scary story. The final will be due Mon 11/5, so the stories are supposed to be short.

I handed out progress reports on Friday with instructions for students to share with you what they are missing and their plan for making it up. Please sign their reports so I know they are being responsible and checking in with you. I had quite a few stay after on Friday and worked hard to catch up. Students are invited to stay afterschool on Wednesdays for Homework Help. Can you believe there is just 2 weeks before the end of quarter? This means that on Nov 5th I will be collecting Service Journals for the first quarter projects. Students should have completed: At least 1 school or community service project of 3 hours & a full page reflection, 2 garden hours, 2-3 pages on school/home waste.

I highly recommend taking a side trip to the Tillamook Forestry Center on your next trip out to the beach. We had a great day on Thursday learning about the Tillamook Burn, Forest management and firefighting. Students also identified and compared native trees. We will use all this information in our next field study to the Hopkins Tree Farm. We will have expert foresters by the end of this year! Already students can tell me the stage of succession any particular forest we happen to be in, layers of the forest, the function of a nurse log, how plants grow for success and much more. They amaze me!

I hope you are enjoying thi cozy rainy October afternoon after a very busy week. Was Outdoor School only 4 days ago??

Wow! What an amazing 3 days we had at Outdoor School! Sunnyside 6th graders rock! I saw students rise to the occasion during field studies, at rec and in the dining hall. We had a great time at campfire and meeting new friends. The one great thing that came out of our bus being late was we got our own mini campfire yesterday where we learned my new favorite song - Go Bananas!
The field studies we were involved in: Soil, Animals, Water, Plants will support us greatly in our exploration of forests.

I hope the 7th & 8th graders remember how much they loved Outdoor School and have fun remembering it with the 6th graders!

On another note, I am home grading many many Ecores and other assignenments. I'll give out porgress reports on Friday so please check in with your child to see what he/she is missing or needs to improve upon. 8th Grade will not receive off campus from me if they are missing assignments.

We are hoping to go to Tillamook Forest Center tomorrow - we desperately need chaperones, ones that can drive! If you can come, please call me 971.222.5512.

Also, next week's trip to Hopkins Farm (we all ride the bus together) needs a few more folks. Please sign up if you haven't already - your support goes a long way. One thing 6th graders said they loved was studying in small groups!

As always, thank you for sending amazing and creative young people to school every day!
Cori

I am headed to Outdoor School with our class and Jan's! We'll be back Tuesday at 7:30pm. While we are gone the 7th & 8th graders will be at school doing mini-classes on the election. I hope you will engage in some meaningful political conversations with them this week.

There is a bit of homework due on Wed. I told the 6th graders to do their best and if they needed an extra day that I would understand. I do hope that they can at least come prepared for their first Fantasy Book Group. My goal in this book group is to support students in having meaningful discussions on the books they are reading so they are to write 2-3 post it questions/comments/responses and one golden line for each section. They will use their post its to generate discussions in their groups. Post its should be clarifying, predicting and intuiting.

I hope you all had a great time at the harvest faire, our booth was rocking! Thanks everyone for your support and participation!

See you all mid week.