Due to hazardous weather conditions, all Olympia after school activities have been cancelled and there will be no shuttle. Please be safe!
Elementary families, join us fo Spartan @ the Movies. We will be showing Inside Out at 6:00 in the high school auditorium. This event is free! Bring the whole family. Concession provided by West PTO.
The last Spartan @ the Movies will be this Friday, March 3rd. We will be showing the movie Inside Out. The event is free! Concessions provided by Oly West PTO.
Our brains are great at using past experiences to make quick decisions on the fly, but these shortcuts can also lead to bias. "Confirmation bias" is our brain's tendency to seek out information that confirms things we already think we know. Help your kids learn to recognize this when they encounter news online, as a way to examine competing opinions and ideas and to avoid drawing questionable conclusions.
Elementary Families, are you looking for a fun, free, family event on Sunday? Look no further, showing of the Lego movie at the High School starts at 4:00 PM.
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
We had a BLAST tonight at Family Reading Night at Oly North! Thanks to all of the families that came and enjoyed the event! Special thanks to the Peoria Riverfront Museum and Planetarium for bringing the Skylab and to the U of I Extension Office for the great STEM activity!
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!
Tonight! Please join us tonight as we Blast Off into Reading!
5-6:30pm at Olympia North
Enter through Mission Control at the front doors! See you there!
Who's coming to Spartans at the Movies this Sunday? Free to all elementary families! Let Mrs. Maris know if your child is bring a Lego creation. michelle.maris@olympia.org
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!
In observance of Presidents' Day, Olympia will not have school on Monday, February 20, 2023.
Tip #4: Discuss fact vs. opinion
Play around with ideas, deciding which are facts and which are opinions. Ask: How tall are you? What's the best food in the world? Do you like dogs? Point out that both facts and opinions show up in the news, but opinion is usually labeled.
If you want to know if someone is trying to trick you with a headline, think through a few of these five questions each time you read a shocking story. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes Spartans!
Students in Mrs. Loyer's 2nd grade celebrated Valentine's Day with a fun writing activity. Each student gave a food idea before the activity began. Then they passed a bucket around and drew out one of the foods. After that, they drew out either a full heart or a broken heart.
Students then were told they would be writing either a love letter (full heart) or a break-up letter (broken heart) to the food they drew out.
We've been working on letter writing as well as stating your thoughts and backing it up with evidence! While the evidence was silly, it was a great way to practice!
It's safe to say the students loved this silly activity!
Video: bit.ly/OlyNMV1
Family Activity: bit.ly/OlyNMFR1
Kids find and read news in lots of different ways. But studies show they're not very good at interpreting what they see. How can we help them get better? Teaching your children about the structure of online news articles is an important place to start.
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 has been around for a long time. Track its history from 63 B.C. through present day in this infographic. Where do you see Fake News today? How does it impact your life? Does it impact the type of media you consume, or where you consume it?
https://youtu.be/mh1dLvGe06Y - BBC
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. Check out these ways to escape the filter bubble and make sure your ideas about the world are being challenged.
