October Cougar News

Throughout the school year, students focus on various themes and character traits. To kick off each theme, students participate in family group lessons. There are five family groups this year. Family groups come up with their own name and cheer. Family groups consist of at least two staff members and a mix of students from every grade level. Students engage in literacy, art, and STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) activities tied to the monthly theme. These groups help build a positive and healthy school culture, build leadership skills in our older students, and provide mentoring and relationship building as well. Students get to know additional staff members to support their learning and growth. September focused on "creativity & possibility." Students teamed up to focus on a cup tower building challenge and a catapult building challenge!

Fluency is a key aspect of learning to read. Fluency is the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and expression. It is NOT reading to see how fast you can read. Children who do not read with fluency sound choppy, read slowly, and struggle with decoding. This impacts their understanding of what they read. In the upper elementary fluency is extremely important. One instructional strategy for improving fluency is the use of choral reading and reader's theater. In the October assembly, fourth grade students shared several reader's theater projects, such as "The Stinky Cheese Man," and "I Gave Myself a Haircut." The entire school loved their stories and much laughter ensued!

In last week's family group lesson, students talked about the new theme: gratitude and giving! They read from the book, Thanks a Million" and enjoyed literacy activities. The book contained poems and they learned about writing a haiku (line one is five syllables, line two is seven syllables, and line three is five syllables). In small groups they wrote haikus about gratitude. Students wrote their haikus on leaves and added their leaves to the tree bulletin board in the hallway.

In our Pride Assemblies, we focus on celebrating our month. We draw for Cougar Cash prizes and lunch with Dr. Jones. We also compete for class spirit awards, welcome new students to our school family, wish students and staff happy birthday, sing together, and give out awards to students. We are happy to see parents joining our celebration!. Check out this month's award winners!

Call our office at 541-886-2061 for more information. This position comes with benefits and the hourly rate is based upon experience!

We have coaching positions open! If you are interested in either serving as an assistant high school boys basketball coach or a junior high boys coach, please contact our office!