AVID Newsletter

Each week, we will feature a collection of staff members from each school at random!

When you see these amazing people, make sure to tell them THANK YOU for making our district the best place to be!

Focus: Inquiry

Secondary @ BHS - 7:30-9:30

Elementary @ Slater - 10:00-12:00

District-Level AVID Leadership Team Meeting @ DO - 1:00-2:00

Mission: Empower all students through high expectations to embrace learning and achieve personal success.

Vision: Embraced – Educated - Empowered

The AVID Ambassadors got to help out at their very first assembly!

The AVID Ambassadors also read some Halloween books to younger classrooms!

Ms. Hildebrand’s kindergartners read their decodable books to each other.

Mrs. Davis's kindergartners mark the text while highlighting words that begin with the letter /S/ in their story.

Mrs. Crawford's 1st graders took a "nature walk" to collect leaves for a Fall craft. The students had so much fun collecting the leaves and designing them into animal shapes. Here is a picture of 1st graders, Sahallie Dick and Patrick Bossout working together to gather leaves on the playground!

Remi from Mrs. Burns’s class is listening to her kinder buddy, Maximus, from Miss Ellibee’s class present the life cycle of a pumpkin!

Miss Weil's class has been working on setting goals in math and reading to put in their Avid Portfolio Binders.

They also were putting a cap on drugs to show they're Drug Free!

Ms. Murphy's second grade class spent some time organizing their AVID binders for student led conferences. Inside they wrote goals using data from their reading fluency and math scores. They are now excited to beat those goals this winter and move up in the grade levels. We talked about why you need to read and write better for their chosen career. They were surprised to know that even the police need to read and write reports everyday!

Students in Mrs. Fenton's 3rd grade were able to highlight sentences different colors to show their different functions. They also practiced writing each form of the sentences. They will use these skills to build informational essays on an animal later in the year.

Mrs. Davis's 3rd grade has been learning all about adaptations that animals use to help them survive. Using the information from our text, we are working in groups to create a poster about our assigned animal covering. This group was studying fur coats!

Mr. Weible's Walk to Read practicing fluent reading with readers theater. Each student has a role and they practice it and will present to the class the skit.

Go STEM came to Slater and Mrs. Bertrand's class loved learning about fossils and robots!

5th grade students spent 3 weeks learning about Corn. They learned about the structure of corn and its history in how it has become developed in the US. To celebrate our learning, we had a 5th grade “Corn Fest” where we ate different corn products, including the “Three-Sisters Soup”.

Students in Mrs. Marshall's 5th-grade class participated in the Robotics STEM class. They had a blast learning how to program their robot and send it to the "dig" site. Thank you to the Eastern Oregon University STEM program for visiting Slater.

Photo of the Month!

Through meaningful peer interviews, third graders in Miss Henshaw's SEL class are growing as confident communicators, active listeners, and thoughtful collaborators, connecting Wayfinder’s relationship-building skills with AVID’s WICOR strategies of Inquiry and Collaboration.

Tayleigh, Journey, Joe, Deacon on the Creepy Spider Climb!

Mission: Our mission is to provide staff and students with a Safe, Respectful, Responsible, and Professional Environment to learn.

Vision: Hines Middle School empowers students to grow into Honest, Mature, Scholarly leaders.

Mr. Moss's AVID 8 students enjoyed a presentation from OTEC.

👻 6th Grade ELA: Spooky Stories!

Photo of the Month!

Mrs. Moss's 8th grade health class visited the Paiute tribe on a sovereign food tour. Students were able to learn how to make chokecherry pudding (and taste it!), learned how tribes lived off the first foods of our region, and were given a tour of the gardens and how the food is respectfully harvested. BIG thank you to Rhonda Holtby for such an informative and fun field trip.

Mrs Cate's STEM class used inquiry and collaboration in the Balloon Rocket Lab. Working in groups, they tested if the circumference of the balloon affects how fast it travels down a string.

Students in Mrs. Sorenson's science class selected work for their AVID portfolios using a modified Quality Work Protocol. Groups discussed what writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading looked like in class, chose a piece of work they were proud of, and worked together to decide how WICOR strategies helped them produce work they were proud of. This process helped them reflect on their work and realize that, even though they chose different pieces, their reasons were very similar.

Miss Komperda's sorticulture students were painting and customizing their plant pots!

Rueben’s worked very hard on his marvelous embroidered pillow!

In Mrs. Ayling's math class, students reviewed for a test by working through problems with a single whiteboard and marker that were rotated with each new problem.

7th-grade students in Miss Doty's social studies class engaged in an inquiry-based research project by selecting an Egyptian god, researching its significance and characteristics, and creating an informative poster to showcase their learning. Through this activity, students practiced WICOR strategies by developing research skills, organizing information, and communicating their findings visually and effectively.

Mr. Tiernan's students in Graphic Design learned about book cover design and created their own book covers.

Mission: Empowering students to learn, grow, and lead.

Vision: To foster a community of learners where curiosity, critical thinking, and academic excellence equip students for success through an AVID framework.

Mrs. Banks's English 11 completed a unit on Native American origin stories. Some origin stories explained how people came from the Sky World, others discussed how people came from the Malheur Cave (Paiute creation). The pictures shown derive from the Kiowa creation story where the people came into the world through a hollow log. Students were to pick a specific quote from the short story, "The Way to Rainy Mountain" and focus on the imagery that that particular quote evoked.

Photo of the Month!

Miss Toney's AP ENG 12 Students were required to read and analyze an article using quantifiable evidence. The day before, students learned the types of evidence that is used in writing. Students annotated the article as well as created three question for a student led discussion. The picture is students completing a student-led discussion using their notes. Once the discussion was complete, students wrote a reflection paragraph answering, "When considering the evidence and commentary, how effective is this article in achieving its purpose?" Students are learning to include effective evidence in their own writing. They have written a first draft of an essay. After the evidence lessons, they will improve evidence in their essays.

Mrs. Wassom-Paul's AP US History students put the Articles of Confederation on trial, investigating the weaknesses of America's first national government and building their cases for why a stronger federal system was necessary. In preparation for an argumentative essay, students dissected the constitutional "crime scene," examining historical evidence to determine which failures of the Articles most urgently demanded change. Armed with their findings, students developed written arguments and creative physical representations to defend their conclusions.

Seniors in U.S. Gov. engaged in a debate over the Electoral College. Here is the debate sequence which the students followed.

Art 1 students learned about collage techniques and bookbinding to create their own personalized sketchbooks. During warm-ups daily, students practice Feldman's Four Steps of Art Criticism by sketching famous works of art and responding in writing through description, analysis, interpretation, and judgement.

Ms. Smith's students solved a murder mystery in biology by testing crime scene evidence for macromolecules and comparing results to meal samples. Students collaborated, analyzed data, and used scientific evidence to identify the most likely suspect and support their conclusions, incorporating AVID WICOR strategies.