November Newsletter

Can you believe how quickly the school year is flying by?! It feels like we were just welcoming students back, and here we are already gearing up for student-led conferences! At Schoolcraft, we believe students should take ownership of their learning, and student-led conferences are a perfect opportunity to do just that! Rather than traditional parent-teacher conferences, students take the lead in sharing their growth, celebrating accomplishments, reflecting on challenges, and setting goals for what's next. This is their chance to show off their hard work, practice their leadership skills, and take pride in their learning journey!

Families, your role is to listen, ask questions, celebrate growth, and cheer your student on! We can't wait for you to see all the amazing things our Schoolcraft students have been up to!

October has come and gone and brought with it a beautiful fall. It was so much fun to see everyone out at Fall Fest and I want to extend a huge thanks to PAC and other volunteers that helped to make that event happen.

Next week is election day. I would encourage you to get out and vote (if you haven't already voted early). Our elected officials can have a great effect on our schools and it is important to get out and make your voice heard. As a public school official I can not encourage you to vote one way or another, but I can provide factual information and encourage you to get out and vote how you see fit. Specifically, I want to draw your attention to the constitutional amendment on the ballot as this directly impacts funding to public schools, including Schoolcraft. There are a few important things that I want to clarify as there seems to be a lot of misinformation getting repeated on every social media post out there about his ballot measure:

• The proposed amendment modernizes the already existing distribution of funds to public schools from an already existing revenue source.
• If passed this would not affect any taxes.
• Placing the amendment on the ballot passed with bi-partisan support.
• The amendment is based on recommendations from a multi-year review of the existing fund structure.
• If you leave it blank it counts as a "NO" vote.

If you have questions on the proposed amendment, please reach out. I would love to provide you with any information that I can.

We need your help, families.

Our lost and found is overwhelmed with hoodies. It's going to be winter soon and our lost and found will quickly fill with hats, gloves, coats, and snow pants.

During conferences will be the final opportunity to claim these items before they are gone forever.

The temperature fluctuates a lot this time of year. Please help students come prepared for all types of weather. Here is our cold weather flow chart to help students dress for outdoor temps!

Schoolcraft Learning Community is taking on the Ice Bucket Challenge to support our school programs and school community! As a Unified Champion School, one of our pillars is Whole School Engagement, which brings our entire school community together to promote inclusion, participation, and school spirit.

From October 19 through November 19, students can bring coins and bills to breakfast and place them in the jar of their favorite participating staff member. The goal? Raise the most money and see which staff member takes on the ultimate challenge!

The staff member who raises the most money will have ICE-COLD WATER dumped on them at a special event at the end of November!

Join us in making this fundraiser a fun way to bring our Crew together. Every contribution helps support our students and the programs that make Schoolcraft special.

Popsicle Stick Challenge is a fun way for your student to stay active in PE while being able to chat with Crewmates, work on cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, and muscular strength without the pressure of being timed or compared to others. This is also a fun way to incorporate competition among Crews.

KinderCrew: 21 miles

1st Grade: 56.5 miles

Jonni's 2/3: 63.5 miles

Ann’s 2/3: 58 miles

Kendra’s 4/5: 41 2/6 miles

Jessica’s 4/5: 42 4/6 miles

6th: 89 miles

7th: 24 4/6 miles

8 Green: 29 miles

8 Blue: 12 2/6 miles

K/1: Popsicle Stick Challenge, Expedition Activities

2/3: Popsicle Stick Challenge, Flag Tag, Throwing and Catching, Expedition Activities

4-8: Popsicle Stick Challenge, Flag Football

6 Health: 8 Dimensions of Wellness

7-8 Health: Continue learning about nutrients and ingredients that are in our food, drinks, skin care products, and how the ingredients affect us. Food Label activities.

Our school is participating in the annual World Record STACK UP! event! The World Record attempt is for the “Most People Sport Stacking at Multiple Locations”. The goal is to beat the current record of 784,036 people Sport Stacking! Your child will be counted in this RECORD BREAKING ATTEMPT!

LEARN MORE

Please remind your student that PE may take place outside depending on the temperature and weather. Students should come dressed appropriately for the day, including for rain and cooler temperatures.

For safety, sandals, slides, flip-flops, and slippers are not allowed for PE. These types of footwear can be a safety hazard, especially if a student falls or has their foot stepped on. Thank you for helping us keep our students safe, comfortable, and ready to enjoy PE!

October flew by in our very busy art room! Here's what we've got going on:

KinderCrew and first grade used markers and water to create colorful sun-catchers for the art room windows. Ask your students about how the colors changed and blended together to create their designs! After drying, pressing, and laminating, I wrote out their names with glue and salt, so they were able to add watercolor and watch their names change colors too!

2/3 worked hard this month drawing their own license plate designs for a Minnesota DNR contest using the Lake Superior North Shore as inspiration, and these students had the choice to enter this contest for real for a chance to have their design made into a Minnesota State Park License plate! I'm so proud of the work they did, especially when asked to revise or adapt their ideas to work for this application. I will also be sharing their art through the Bemidji Pioneer in November.

4/5 finished up their pointillism paintings of autumn trees and started learning about artistic careers and opportunities in theater! They will be working in assigned groups to design and create the props, sets, graphics, and costumes for their class musical: Rats! Look out for more details on this performance closer to their winter concert in January.

6th grade finished up their fine line sun and moon designs, made butter squishy forms from scratch, and are beginning a new section on crop art! 7th is putting the final touches on their "optical illusion" designs, and starting a project along with 8th to identify and recreate the graphic design elements used on bags of chips.

Phewf!

KinderCrew has been working on patterns and following a conductor. We have also been using some instruments such as egg shakers and rhythm sticks to help us learn how to keep a steady beat.

First grade has been working hard at learning quarter notes and eighth note pairs, as well as learning how to play a xylophone bordun (accompaniment) and the triangle along to a beat passing game called “Pass the Pumpkin”!

Second and Third grade is reviewing quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests. We’ve been learning an Orff arrangement while seeing how it is written to “Pass the Pumpkin" and they are playing triangles, shakers, and xylophones!

Fourth and Fifth grade is learning how to dissect songs by listening for the tempo, dynamics, and instrumentation, as well as lyrics to songs! We’ve started transitioning from “Ta” and “Ta-Ti” to counting rhythms with numbers. They’ve also started learning an agility ring jumping movement to help us feel a steady beat and move our bodies to music. We’ve begun learning the music to The musical RATS! The Story of the Pied Piper and they will be getting their cast parts soon!

Middle School has been listening, dissecting, and classifying music to the Geneva Emotional Music Scale, the psychological framework that measures 9 dimensions of musical emotion (sadness, wonder/awe, nostalgia, tenderness, joy, tranquility, power, transcendence, and tension). They have also begun learning about the history of parody music and have begun writing their own parodies!

First grade has been discovering how tools help us and how we can use our own skills to solve problems. Second and Third grade has been exploring how water connects us all and how people, plants, and animals depend on it.

Fourth and Fifth grade has been learning about money, needs and wants, and what makes something valuable.

Middle School has been exploring conflict, practicing ways to work through disagreements, and looking for solutions that work for everyone.

1st Grade: We read the "Little Red Pen" and had a listen along, we worked on a companion sheet where they got to be creative and tell us their favorite part of the book and draw that part of the book. In Art they have been water coloring and using cool techniques to get designs with the paint. I also tagged along in Forest where we were building log structures / habitats to better understand our animal friends!

2/3rd Grade: This group has been doing incredible! We've been reading 3rd Grade transitional books like "Martha Speaks" and "Happiest Animals in the World" since they love our furry friends so much. We've been practicing sight reading, individual word parts, and how all of them work together. Seeing this group's confidence grow over this month has been really cool; they are up for the challenge!

4/5th Grade: I've been helping with Expedition work. This group got to choose their own careers, get paychecks, understand taxes and what comes out of their checks, savings accounts, budgeting, and there's still more to come!

6/7/8th Grade: I've been helping the Specials with 1:1's, getting to know our Middle School students better, and being a tutor and friend. We've been staying caught up on our homework, learning how to play chess, card games, and sneaking in some math games as well!

Your student's upcoming student-led conference will include Specialist Portfolio Reflections. These provide a snapshot of how your child is performing right now in their specialist class (such as PE, Art, Music, and Forest).

These reflections are not your child’s official grade. Instead, they show current progress, strengths, and areas of growth at this point in time.

Because learning is ongoing, this reflection may change as your child continues to develop skills throughout the semester.

Please reach out if you have any questions about your child’s progress!

Please pay attention to the Family Calendar for no club dates. Clubs will not be held on early release days, conference weeks, or three day weeks. Students must be picked up after clubs by 4:00. Please email our Activities Coordinator, Theora with any inquiries.

There is still room in the following clubs, although they have already started.

4-8 Young Author’s Society with Myrissa, K-8 Ski Club with Caige, 6-8 Yearbook Club with Lauren, 6-8 Rock Band with NikkiLee, 4-8 Chess Club with Jonni

This year, our school community has set a goal to walk 7,500 miles together! If we reach our goal, the whole school will celebrate with an ice cream reward! 🍦

As of October 28, we’ve logged 1,269 miles—keep moving, Schoolcrafters! We have reached our first ice cream social goal!

🌎 From the Earth to the Moon

We’re also continuing our “From the Earth to the Moon” challenge! We’re tracking our school’s total miles to see how many years it will take us to reach the moon. We’re now in Year 6, and together we’ve traveled an incredible 36,460.84 miles so far! 🌙