Our students are excited about being healthy!

On Friday January 20^th, our traditional American Heart Association kick – off assembly was full of surprises for our students and teachers.  We had a visit from Rory the Lion, The American Heart Mascot, and Ms. Kendra Meiklejohn.

Students from each grade level shared their heart healthy messages: “Keep Moving,"  “Eat Smart,"  “Drink More Water,"  “Chop out Sodium," and “Say No to Tobacco!"

Homeroom representatives competed on stage to hold a perfect plank for 3 or 5 minutes, with several of our teachers joining in.  We think our neighbors at Hollymead could hear our cheers! 

Ms. Meiklejohn explained the importance of keeping our hearts healthy.  She shared the story of her daughter’s heart condition, and thanked our students for their fundraising efforts. 

Demonstrations of Speed Stack skills, jump rope, and basketball skills were the biggest attraction of our event.  Students kept score as our annual shootout between Dr. Saunders and his team tried to outscore Mr. Johnson and his team!

Students love the American Heart mascot

We heard a personal story about the importance of heart research

Ms. Meiklejohn sharing their personal story.

Students and teachers competing in the plank challenge

What an exciting afternoon we shared with emphasis on community and heart health.  We look forward to our Jump Rope for Heart, and Hoops for Heart events to be held during regular PE times on February 9^th and 10^th, 2017.

What a great first week back at Baker-Butler!

We've had a great first week back of school! Our students have had a wonderful transition back to school. Here are just a few pictures of some of the exciting things that students have been doing this week:

We've been active inside during PE this week, as students have been playing games such as a version of capture the flag.

This student created a Tesla Coil over break as he's learning about electricity. This device will transmit electricity through the air to light this bulb without any wires or connections.

These students are working on our Maker Tubs in the library, where they get to build, create, design, and experiment with a number of hands on science and engineering challenges.

Second grade students are studying Native Americans, and they are building and creating structures and artwork as a part of their lessons.

Here are students sewing together grass mats to make a Native American house:

 These students are creating pottery that they'll paint with Native American symbols and designs.

 Here are buffalo skin weavings in the background and the representation of Pueblo housing.

Finally, these third grade students are finding examples of text features such as titles, bold print, and photographs.

It's been a great first week back, and we look forward to sharing more of the great things that are happening here soon.

Thanks to our SCA for the great Food Drive!

The Baker-Butler SCA is comprised of representatives from the fourth and fifth grade homeroom classes.  These students meet once a month to plan Spirit Days and Service projects for the student body and school community.  During the month of October, SCA members coordinated the collection of food items to be donated to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.  Through the generous participation of the Baker-Butler community, fourteen boxes were filled with canned food, cereal and dried pasta.  $110 was also collected for the Food Bank.  Many families in our community will benefit from the success of the food drive.

Performing dogs, stacking cups, and collecting food drives at Baker-Butler!

It's been a great two weeks. Check out these videos and pictures of just a few of the events at our school since the beginning of November. 

Our students loved having the Olate dogs perform on November 8th. This act won America's Got Talent in 2012. Check out these videos to see these dogs perform!

In class our students have been learning to Sport Stack. Check out these pictures and videos of the competitions in PE class today:

Finally thanks to our amazing school and fantastic SCA officers, we had lots of food items collected in our food drive. Here are some of our SCA officers as well as the Albemarle County Police Department who transported the food to the area food bank.

Pictures from the past few days

There's been a lot of great things happening over the past few days. Check out these pictures below to see what's been happening in our school!

In PE our students have been assembling skeletons to learn about the body and the names of their bones.

Students worked together to assemble their skeletons.

Spotted outside a 1st grade classroom: What should my teacher be for Halloween?

BBES teachers rocked the Trunk or Treat!

Our BBES bus drivers decorated a haunted school bus for our Trunk or Treat!

Harry Potter!

It's a Railroad trunk.

Finding Nemo & Finding Dory!

A creative and spooky way to learn synonyms.

Our first annual K-1st grade book character parade was a big hit!

It's been a great few days here at school. We hope that you've enjoyed seeing just a few of the great events that are happening at Baker-Butler!

Quick look into a Tuesday morning at Baker-Butler

There are lots of great things that go on everyday at Baker-Butler. Here's just a quick snapshot of what is happening around 8:30am on a Tuesday morning.

First, there was a fantastic interdisciplinary lesson going on with two 5th grade classrooms and our PE teacher, who was participating in their Morning Meeting. These two classes are partnering for our Bear Tracks unit this year, which is connecting physical activity, geography, Virginia Studies, and math. The students are wearing pedometers and they're tracking their steps as they walk the Commonwealth of Virginia through the lens of the history they're learning in class. As an example, if they start at the settlement of Jamestown, they then keep track of their steps until they reach Williamsburg or Richmond, which they're also learning about in class.You can learn more about this project and track their steps at their wesbite, Bear Tracks.

 One of our 3rd grade classes has a praying mantis that they found, and they're using their questions to learn more about this insect and its characteristics. Here's a picture of some of their questions below. You also see the word YET, which is a focus of our school as we help students understand that they have the potential to change their success by their thinking and their effort. We encourage students not to say "I'm not good at this (Math, Reading, etc)" but rather "I'm not good at this YET," which implies that they can get better. This is called adapting a growth mindset and it has been a focus of our school the past two years.

Our Music, Art, and 3rd grade homeroom classes (especially Science) are working on an interdisciplinary unit on Autumn. Here are 3rd graders learning how to play a song about autumn that they will be performing at the end of the unit.

 In Art, our 3rd grade students are making leaf prints on their shirts to wear during the performance. They paint leaves and then roll them onto the shirts.

  

Here's another example of a Morning Meeting in a 2nd grade classroom. In this activity students are greeting each other by name by passing a ball to each other until everyone has had a turn. They will time themselves and keep repeating the pattern (student A to B, B to C, etc) until they beat their record. This was a great way for one of our new students who started today to learn his new friends' names quickly. 

 Lastly, some of our 5th grade Reading students were working together in the lobby on a word study sort. They were exploring the differences and similarities of synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and homographs.

We hope that this quick glance into just 30 minutes across the school gives you a snapshot of what goes on every day at Baker-Butler.