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From The Grade School Physical Education Department

By Mr. Phil Skamser

      Playing tag, kicking, throwing, playing volleyball, and cage ball, the elementary has had a fun start to the physical education year. The kids are playing hard, sweating, and having fun. During October, we will be playing several new games, mixed in with some traditional favorites. The younger grades will be reviewing skipping, galloping, and practicing other footwork skills. The older grades will be playing some team sports, mixed in with some footwork drills that will make them better athletes.

      During these warm days of fall, many kids will come to school dressed in flip-flops or sandals. This makes playing games in gym and outside very difficult, as sliding, tripping, and falling become issues. Removing the sandals and trying to go bare foot or in socks only is not a safer or healthier option.

      I would like to encourage all physical education students to bring gym appropriate shoes on the two days a week they have physical education. If they are wearing footwear that is not appropriate to the games and activities we are playing, they will have to sit out. Thank you for your cooperation.

Middle School Math Happenings

By Mr. Bruce Held

The current school year is off and running. It will fly by fast. Just this morning, the middle school teachers met and discussed parent-teacher conferences, which are scheduled for October 4 and 5. We have already had one grade eligibility period for our athletes, and have played several contests in volleyball, cross country, and football.

Our middle school math students have hit the ground running, too. The eighth graders are studying positive and negative integers, learning the rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. These first weeks of school are so important because we lay the foundation of all learning for the rest of the school year, and managing negative numbers is a big part of what we do all year long. We also are concentrating on the order of operations, to insure that we remember to do math in a sequential order, and if we fail to do so, we will not produce an accurate answer.

In seventh grade, we have learned how we use estimation in our everyday lives, and how we can use it to help us get the right answer to a math problem. We call it “checking an answer for reasonableness.” We also try to make math relate to the real world, in everything we learn. If a student can see the real world application, they can relate to it better, and it makes more sense. It gives us a reason to learn the material. We are currently multiplying and dividing decimals up to 3 or 4 decimal places. This is a skill that we will spend a good deal of time on; to make sure we all master it. There is a lot to learn, but we are well on our way!

Buddy Time

By Mr. Gary Dehoff and Mrs. Susie Leary

This year, every other Tuesday, the second grade students will buddy up with the students in Mr. Dehoff’s fourth grade class. We will be doing activities such as partner reading, art projects, practice spelling words, and work on math facts. This is a great opportunity for the students to get to know each other in cross grade levels. We hope the students find this to be an enjoyable and profitable experience!