Sixth grade students are using the Lift-a-Line Strategy today to complete a skill check by finding prepositional phrases in their own books. This is a fantastic strategy to help students cite evidence from a text and make connections! #ReadersAreLeaders
Middle School Cheer tryouts will be on Monday Jan. 25th and Wednesday Jan. 27th in the high school cafeteria after school. Remember to register on 8to18, turn in a current physical and a signed Covid release form.
MS Dance – will resume practice on Jan. 27th after school in the middle school cafeteria.
MS Boys Basketball – can start practice right away. 8th will practice/tryout after school on Jan. 20th, 7th on Jan. 21st and 6th on Jan. 22nd all at Oly West. Make sure you are registered on 8to18, have a current physical turned in and COVID release form.
Phone service has been restored to OHS, OMS, and the district office. Thank you!
Phones are currently down at OHS, OMS, and the District Office. We will update you when things are back up and running. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Wikipedia.org is where millions of people stop first for information. Tools like it are what make the internet so valuable. But they also teach an important lesson, one you can start teaching your kids now: don’t believe everything you read.
Family Tip Sheet: bit.ly/OlyNMFR2
Website Update: The sites are now up and running! If you experience a warning page when navigating to your building's site, you can safely proceed past it. That issue will also be resolved soon. Thank you for your patience and we hope you find the new site beneficial!
Website down @ 12:00 PM.
We are doing a visual refresh of our website at noon today. There will be some downtime, but we should be up and running before long! If you would like a sneak peak and a tour of the new layout, checkout this video:
https://youtu.be/FTG2kREb3Cw
Fearless Fact Finding!
Check out this list of trustworthy resources to help you learn what's true (and what is not!) on the web. You can even use one of them to look back in time and what was on a website in the past!
Happy Holidays from the OHMS Band Department. You will find a link below that takes you to a short virtual concert of some Christmas carols to get us into the holiday season.
Wishing you a happy, and safe, Christmas!
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLavxSqyAqH8fKLJstnIv_oJfpRzb7PaRo
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #5: Choose a Variety of Sources.
Show your children how you get news and information from different places, and explain how you make your choices. Use words like "credible," "trustworthy," "respected," and "fair." Ask them where they get their information, and if they think about those same words when choosing. As kids get older, introduce the ideas of bias, satire, and clickbait.
If a picture's worth a thousand words, do the words always tell a true story? One way to find out is through a reverse image search. Search with an image instead of a keyword and see what you discover!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #4: Play "Should You Share?"
Talk through the kind of content you and your tween or teen pass along to friends online. What types of things do you like to share? Do you always check to make sure something is true before you share it? How do emotions factor into your decisions to share things? Have you ever shared something and later found out it wasn't true?
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #3: Explore Different Sides of a Story!
Use real-life examples to help kids understand how people can view the same situation with totally different perspectives. One child might experience a game on the playground as fun, while another might feel like the rules are unfair. Sibling conflict can be a great example of how two people can have wildly different opinions about the same event. With older children, talk through controversial subjects and take turns arguing for different sides to help kids understand various viewpoints.
Fake news is nothing new. Check out this timeline to learn about some ways it has been utilized throughout history to influence society. Ask your family about other examples that you know of and why they were used!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #2: Play "Spot The Ad"
When you see advertising on TV or on a billboard, ask your children to figure out what the ad is selling. Sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes it's not. Help them explore why certain pictures, sounds, or words are used to sell certain products.
Filter Bubble Trouble!
When we get news from our social media feeds, it often only tells us part of the story. Our friends -- and the website's algorithms -- tend to feed us perspectives we already agree with. Show students ways to escape the filter bubble and make sure their ideas about the world are being challenged.
https://youtu.be/mh1dLvGe06Y - BBC
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #1: Encourage Healthy Skepticism
Help your children analyze the messages around them -- from toy packaging to Instagram posts to news headlines -- and question the purpose of the words and images they see. Teach kids how to use fact-checking tools like Snopes and FactCheck.org.
Video: bit.ly/OlyNMV2
All media comes with an author and an agenda. Help kids think critically about any media they view with critical questions that dig below the surface. And to really empower kids, have them create their own media with these same questions in mind.
