School Supply Lists

The district has posted this year's school supply list. It can be found here:

http://www.msd.k12.or.us/district/school-supplies

It's time to get our children ready for the 2011 school year!

Growth of Wascher

Call me a little odd but I am a person who likes to look at numbers.  I typically find that numbers give me the best representation of a given situation.  Over the past couple of months I have been looking at some of the numbers for Wascher Elementary and two simple numbers came to the top: How many Students attend Wascher and How many Teachers provide instruction for those students.

I decided to look back through the state report cards and ODE reports to gather the following information for the past 10 years.  (Unfortunately I have not gathered the information for the current school year yet).

What I see in these numbers is that number of students has increased by 37.5%, growing from 277 in 99/00 to 381 in 08/09.  However, the number of full time teachers has nearly doubled!  In 99/00 there were 13.1 Teachers (FTE) by 08/09 this number increased to 27.5, that is an increase of 96.2%. 

What does that mean for our students?  As you can see the Student per Teacher ratio has dropped from 21.2 down to 14.8.  Lower Student/Teacher ratio translates to more individual instruction and an overall better learning environment for our children.

I have not given you a graph for it but if you go back and read the report cards you will see that student performance has increased at Wascher.  I would make a bet that the lower class size plays a big part in that.
 

Weekly Events - May 16 - 22

As the school year starts wrapping up and the sunshine starts getting brighter life always seems to get a little bit busier.  To help keep ourselves on track it is always a good idea to take a quick look into the future.  Below you will find a list of events that are scheduled for next week along with a little bit of information about each one.

May 17 - Author Visit
Wascher PTA has arranged for authors to come to our school!  This year it will be sister/brother team of Laura and Rob Sams better known as Sisbro. They will be doing 3 presentations in the gym....one for grades K-1, one for grades 2-3, and one for grades 4-5.

May 18,  6:30 PM - Family Literacy Night

May 20 - 5th Grade Field Trip to Portland

May 21 - 4th Grade Field Trip to the Yamhill Historical Museum

May 21 - Last Day of KOB/PH
The Kids on the Block and Power Hour programs for the year are coming to an end on Friday. Please be sure to make arrangements for your student’s after school care during this time.  For additional information on the KOB/PH program check out this link from the Oregon Department of Education.

PTA Meeting

Just a quick reminder to everyone that the last PTA meeting for this school year will be tomorrow March 5th at 7PM.  Final plans for this years carnival will be made along with selections for next years PTA officers.  I encourage every parent of a Wascher student to attend and get involved in the PTA.  The students are our children and their education is our responsibility, take the time to get involved.

I hope to see you all there!

Appreciation for our Teachers

Today marks the beginning of the National Teacher Appreciation Week with Tuesday May 4th designated as Teacher Appreciation Day!  I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to let the teachers in your life know how much they mean to you.  There are many ways to show your appreciation.  You can send a simple e-mail or hand-written note, bake some of their favorite cookies, give a gift-card for the coffee shop they frequent,  the list could go on and on.  The simple bottom line is give the teachers a big THANK YOU for all that they do.  We are blessed with amazing teachers at Wascher and we need to let them know.

Tux4Kids - Free Educational Software

How many parents are looking for good educational computer games for our children?  There happens to be a group of developers creating such games and best of all they give them away free for anyone to download!  Tux4Kids has been around for quite a few years and have produced three great games for children:

Tux, of Math Command, AKA TuxMath, lets kids hone their arithmetic skills while they defend penguins from incoming comets, or offers them a chance to explore the asteroid belt with only their factoring abilities to bring them through safely!

TuxTyping - Tux the penguin is hungry, and loves to eat fish. But Tux can only catch the fish if you type the right letters in time! Can you help Tux?

Tux Paint. - New Breed Software and Tux4Kids bring you Tux Paint. This remarkable drawing program empowers kids to be creative in an environment complete with magic tools and sound effects.

All of these program can be fun and challenging for children of all ages.  My 3 year old can match up simple letter and numbers on the keyboard to falling comets or fish, our 6 year old can do the same by typing in words or solving simple adding and subtraction problems that fall from the sky. Keep in mind that these games are not only great for our kids but also for us.  I usually consider myself pretty good at math, however, after working through 30-40 levels of TuxMath I just couldn't keep up.

I would highly recommend checking out Tux4Kids, there are versions for Windows, Mac OS X and many flavors of Linux.  So no matter what kind of computer you have you can have a great time.  

Congratulations to Wascher Readers!!!

As you may have been hearing for a while there has been a Battle of the Books team from Wascher that has been doing quite well.  Last Saturday the team of Ashton Walters, Abe Thornburg, Will Schnepps, Nathan Leid, and alternate Kyle Hampton represented Wascher at the State Battle of the Books Championship.  This group of fifth graders came prepared and were rewarded by walking away with 3rd place!

If you are like me then you may have never heard of the Oregon Battle of the Books, so here is a little bit about the program...

It was created in 2006 and is run completely by volunteers in cooperation with the Oregon Association of School Libraries.  The first competition was during the 2007-2008 school year and 168 schools participated.  This year (2009-2010) the numbers have almost doubled to 334 schools!  You can read more about the history, get the latest book lists or find more resource for helping get involved with the program at their official web site: http://oboblsta.pbworks.com/

Check out the Battle of the Books and get ready for next year!!!

Great Job Wildcats!!!