Moo! Mrs. Olsen was the winner of the strange phrase contest in the last school news letter.
Mrs. Olsen won a free ticket to any one of the Hawks events.
Look for the strange phrase in the next news letter!
No school on Fridays! There is no longer school on Fridays at Hay Springs for money saving reasons.
This affects everyone from students to staff to the community. Students and staff can sleep in on Fridays but parents have to find day care for their children on Fridays. Students can also work in the community on Fridays without missing school.
The school days are longer. They are forty five minutes longer then they have been in the past.
The school year is still basically the same length but there is just a few more minutes than in earlier years.
Zoe quotes, “I’m not sure if I like it yet, I’m still getting used to it.”
Skyler quotes, “I love waking up on Friday and knowing that I still have two more days before Monday.”
Play, laugh, learn. There are nine students between the ages of three and four in Hay Springs preschool and Head Start this year. The teachers are Diane Avery, Holly Scherbarth and Linda Besana.
This week they were learning the color blue and the letter S. They experimented making blue water and freezing it into cubes to see what would happen. Then they made their own class rules and they all had to sign the document.
They have been enjoying sitting around the table, eating breakfasts and lunches as a family. They are full of questions and energy and they are almost constantly singing.
Returning “senior,” JP Janes said, “I like being Mrs. Avery’s helper.”
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Greetings from the news desk; this is Mr. Janes. I’m a second-year teacher at Hay Springs High School but this is my first year teaching journalism here. I previously taught journalism in South Dakota, Wyoming and Kansas. Before becoming a teacher, I wrote for the Joliet Herald Newspaper in Joliet, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and my home town. My degree is in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Needless to say, I love teaching journalism.
I have spent the first three weeks of school teaching the new journalism students about the basics of journalism. The “Ws and H” questions to ask are: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? These are critical when reporting so as to get all the facts and get them straight. Then there is the “Inverted Pyramid” of writing – it is the ordering of the important details in the article. Writing headlines and story “hooks” draw in a reader but if the story isn’t well written itself, the reader can easily be lost. So we have worked hard and hope the results will be in our words.
Speaking of which, the Journalism class students are the writers for the articles reported by the Video Production students in the weekly HSTV Newscast. Have you seen the inaugural video? Check it out right here on HSHawks.com or bookmark and return to our HSTV Channel at www.vimeo.com/hstv1 for all the newscasts this year.
In addition to regular “newsy” stuff, the Journalism class is currently deciding how to proceed with the new yearbook. With a school photographer on the horizon, we are sure to up our game visually, not to mention capitalize on our excellent writing skills to publish a great yearbook. There are some soon-to-come updates regarding the yearbook, but our goals always will be creating a high-quality product while learning skills valuable for a lifetime in the progress.
We are not done yet, but we don’t yet want to play our entire hand so… stay tuned for exciting changes!
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