Our Closing Ceremonies

 This past Friday was a special day at Baker-Butler.

We had our Closing Ceremonies of the school-wide Olympics our students have been doing since the first week of school. Students were assigned to be a member of one of 12 different countries, and they then competed to earn Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals through different PE activities. One of the great features of this plan was that every country then had K-5th grade students in it, and students got excited about being an Olympic athlete representing "their" country.

At our Closing Ceremonies we brought everyone back together and then announced which countries had won.

First, all of the students lined up outside by their countries, and then they marched in together under their flag.

 
They then sat together by countries; as example, the country of Ireland had Kindergarten to 5th graders in it. They all stood up and said good afternoon in their country's language.

Then we watched a video highlight of the Paralympic Games to show the best differently-abled athletes in the world.

It was a fantastic experience and another example of the wonderful things going on here in our Baker-Butler community.

 

Students from China stand up and say good afternoon in Chinese

Teachers growing professionally

One of the many great things about our staff at Baker-Butler is that our teachers continue to grow professionally. At our recent faculty meeting our teachers began our year-long discussion of how to increase our effectiveness in supporting all students to learn how to read.

During this time together there were several activities for professional development for our staff. As one example, teachers shared the "look fors" (what we would expect to see during a visit in a classroom) of effective reading instruction as well as why they thought that look for was important. For instance, one look for was small group instruction, and the why was because it allowed teachers to teach  students on their individual academic level. To make these two ideas stand out, the look fors were written on blue Post Its and the whys were written on pink Post Its, and they were placed together on 4 large sheets of paper throughout the library.

After teachers shared their thoughts, they then did a "gallery walk," where they examined other teachers' thoughts and then we analyzed the responses for patterns and common themes.

Gallery walking for patterns and themes

This is just a small example of the many ways that Baker-Butler teachers continue to grow professionally all the time.

5th grade historians uncovering the past

Fifth grade students have been investigating primary and secondary sources in order to understand how historians figure out the culture and events of the past. Mrs. Whitenack is leading the classes in a hands-on exploration of actual 19^th century artifacts found during site preparation for the construction of Agnor-Hurt Elementary School twenty-five years ago. Students are challenged to try to figure out what each object might have been used for, and what the whole collection can tell them about the everyday life of the owners. This activity not only gives students an opportunity to interact directly with primary source material, but gives our predominantly urban/suburban students a tangible connection to our agricultural past. Check out these pictures below!