• Summit Swirl Fundraiser: October 27
• Community Meeting: October 30
• Bear Walk: October 31
• Veterans Day (no school): November 10
• All School Assembly: November 13
• Gratitude Evening: November 16
• Thanksgiving Break: November 20-24

Summit Swirl Fundraiser

Head over to Summit Swirl this Friday, October 27! They are donating 20% of sales to the PTC that day. Find them in the Save Mart shopping center. 

Bear Walk

We're excited about this year's Bear Walk on October 31! This event can't happen without our parent volunteers. If you can help, please sign up here. 

PTC Meeting

Mark your calendars for our next meeting on November 8 at 5:30pm. Location will be announced soon! We LOVE when parents join us. We provide the food.

Volunteer Opportunities 

Find a list of ways you can help with upcoming events like Gratitude Night, Family Dance, Staff Appreciation, and more. Even if the list is full, the committee might still need help. Find their email, and reach out! All information is here.  

Grocery Outlet Fundraiser 

This is an ongoing fundraiser—just tell the checker at Grocery Outlet that you're with Sierra Expeditionary Learning School, and they will donate a percentage of your check's total to the SELS PTC. 

Together We Are Crew, Not Passengers



-The SELS PTC

October has been busy in the Minczeski Crew! Students are learning to embody the SIERRA norms, and demonstrate their use during academic times and playtime. Although we are wrapping up our first case study of Building our Community, we will continue to practice and identify good crew behavior and the SIERRA norms every day, and throughout their time at SELS.

Our next case study is “On the Job!” and we kicked it off by getting a tour of tools from our friends at Mountain Hardware. The kids all received their own pair of work gloves as well, as we are gearing up to learn and try out the building process at our own school to create something special for our SELS community.

The Telfer Crew has wrapped up our Case Study #1: Trailblazing, with a record six hikes! We used the SIERRA norms to overcome challenges and empathy to support our crewmates! We created hiking expectations, goals, and wrote poetry on each hike. We used our strong voices to lead a successful and fun Summit Day. We will continue to work on this expedition by creating final poetry projects and continue to work on connecting to nature and ourselves with our stone meditation. What a busy fall we have had!

In the classroom, we have started working on fall writing and continue to focus on reading and math. We have enjoyed every minute of this gorgeous season and are looking forward to seeing some snow fly! 

Gallagher Crew News

This month, students welcomed Ms. Gallagher as their new Crew Leader! They have been having a great time rebuilding their crew, establishing some new routines and getting to know one another even better. This month also brought many adventures. Students hosted teachers from around the country for the Site Seminar, dazzling them with their expertise on the Transcontinental Railroad. They hiked Castle Peak for Summit Day, enjoyed a beautiful moment of peace at the top of the mountain, and they visited the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento where they were able to see the Golden Spike and learn about the many types of trains that have travelled our local railroads!

Students were also treated to some amazing new books in their classroom library thanks to grants from Excellence in Education and our own SELS PTC! We are so grateful for their generosity!

Welch Crew News

October was a busy month for the Welch Crew! We finished up our fall fieldwork schedule and learned a lot about the Transcontinental Railroad from our local historical experts and visited historical sites in our own backyard. When we say, "We're so lucky, we're from Truckee!" we're not joking around.

The learning continued into the classroom as we prepared for our Site Seminar visitors and continued our learning for this expedition. Some of the great protocols used in our classroom included Chalk Talk, Interactive Word Wall, and Tea Party. These types of activities and protocols are what bring EL Education to life inside the classroom and deepen the learning for all students. We look forward to continuing our understanding of the construction, people, and economics of the railroad in Truckee.

The Hansen Crew has been busy learning about the Gold Rush! We had an amazing overnight where we explored Malakoff Diggins and Empire Mine State Parks. We also explored Marshall Gold State Park, where we learned what it was like to have traveled by wagon. We made poke bags and we even found gold. EUREKA! 

The Brisbin Crew went on their final fall fieldwork to Marshall Gold State Park to see where the first actual gold nugget was found! Crew members made poke bags, loaded a wagon in a simulation, and panned for gold. Students have finished their final case study projects on the three routes by making two separate maps that indicate routes and locations prospectors experienced during the California Gold Rush. Students have also finalized drafts of their first formal piece of writing; an opinion piece on which route they thought was the most effective. Next up? Learning about how people "mined the miners" during this time in our next case study, titled "The Outliers."

Categorizing artifacts and legacies of the ancient Egyptian and Indian civilizations can get intense. Using evidence and facts collected from presentations, students persuaded one another to place their legacy in the best fitting trait of civilization. "I think that the statue of Ganesha fits under philosophy because he symbolizes the Indian values of intellect and wisdom in their culture," said one student.

"I agree with that, however, I would put him under art because this statue of him has a lot of details and has a lot of colors which is like a lot of art in ancient India," replied another.

The Santos Crew has been digging deep into their Cartographers and Commanders Expedition. They were put to the test at Grouse Ridge, where they had to map out a lake they had never been to before. They also used their compass skills to Triangulation the position of geocaches hidden in the forest. 

In class, we started our case study, "The World Connects," where students started learning about the Middle Ages in different regions of the world. We got to go on a trip to San Francisco where they worked together to navigate a public transportation system, take a ride on a schooner, and view artifacts from around the world. 

Our highlight of October included four days of adventure throughout Lassen National Park: we learned about geothermal features, explored lava tube caves, hiked to the top (and into!) a cinder cone volcano, and discovered the extreme wind near the top of Mount Lassen. We also improved our argumentative writing skills through analyzing the evidence for plate tectonics as well as a zombie apocalypse.

We've worked hard as mathematicians to use various strategies to generate equivalent expressions by factoring and expanding expressions. We brought our "Mountain Makers, Earth Shakers" case study to a close with some wonderfully created board games, interactive models, and by learning some basic coding to show what we learned about plate tectonics.