Field Trip Time

Hey guys,

It is field trip time.  We will be taking 3 field trips and the end of May and the beginning of June.  The first one is scheduled for May 22nd.    It’s a Friday and it is an all day trip.  If it is ok with everyone I would like to leave the school at 8:30 and then come back to school at 3:30.  It is an amazing trip and all are welcome to come.  But full disclosure, it is ALOT of walking.  We also take the Max, Street car and Tram.  We are taking photos for our newspaper (more on that below) and we try and hustle to as many places as possible.  It is a tough trip but in this teachers humble opinion it is the best field trip around.

The second trip will be June 9th.  It is a science field trip to Sauvie Island Farm.  We will be taking a school bus and we need grown ups to go on the trip to help out in groups.  PSU students run 4 different groups about seeds, nutrition, animals and pollination.  They just need some assistance wrangling everyone, passing out supplies and encouraging participation.  We leave school at 8:45 and then we will return around 2:00 so pretty much full day.  This trip cannot accommodate younger siblings.

The third trip is a hike to the top of Mt. Tabor.  It is a celebration of our Portland Storyline and we hike up there, have a picnic and hopefully have a great view of the city.  It is the 2nd to last day of school and we just spend the day playing and enjoying our city.  Matt’s class will be coming with us.  We do need some parents for the hike but also last year we had parents volunteer to drive up and bring lunches and balls and water bottles and that seemed to work out really well.  Also some parents just joined us for lunch up there and then went back to work.  So this is a trip with a lot of flexibility.  All are welcome.

So… That does mean that we have back to back trips that week.  Not ideal but our farm trip scheduling kind of got messed up and this day was the only one left.  It may not be ideal for parent volunteers, I am sorry about that, but it will be great for us because we will have wrapped up most of our stuff by the time that we go.  Also on the plus side No drivers needed!

Our New Storyline

We have started our new Storyline the Newspaper.  It is a great one that Matt and I have been doing for four years now.  Students have created their journalist characters and they have begun thinking about what could be reported on in Portland.  They got a video message from their editor, Murphy Brown, and he gave them some homework this week. He let them off the hook for their journals this week and they only need to complete the sheet by Wednesday.  It is an interview so that they can glean some information from you guys.  We only have about 6 weeks to get it to the printer so we will be working so hard.  Stay tuned for the culmination date.

I will be sending home their Arrival books this week.  I haven’t had a chance to grade them yet.  I will get on that and send them home ASAP.

Thank you

Thank you so much to the volunteers we had in the classroom last week.  It made our testing experience so much more smooth.  I really appreciate the help.

Allison