• Family Photo Shoots: Oct. 1, 2, 29
• PTC Meeting: Oct. 12
• Minimum Day Week + Conferences: Oct. 24-28
• Bear Walk: Oct. 31
• Coffee Cart: Oct. 31

This fall, SELS received $7,684 in grant funding from the Excellence in Education Foundation. 

Excellence in Education inspires future generations at schools within TTUSD by investing in ideas, teachers, and classrooms to enhance the educational experience for all students.

Learn more about the grants we received here. 

Check out their website to become a "Friend of Education" and help support their efforts. Donate today here. 

Our fall expedition, I Love the Mountains!, is well underway and we have some happy hikers in the Bell Crew. This expedition focuses on using the SIERRA norms to overcome challenges as well as use mindfulness to care for ourselves and other living things. We kicked off our studies with a hike up to Lake Angela in the midst of the early-September heat wave. The first graders used strength and adventure to manage the challenge, and their efforts were rewarded with their first-ever “lolli-tops” (a first grade lollipop tradition). Experts from TINS (Tahoe Institute for Natural Sciences) taught us the 7 Principles of Leave No Trace (LNT) to help us be mindful of how we hike in the mountains.

More recently, the Bell Crew hiked Donner Peak and learned a bit more about LNT Principle #1—Plan ahead and be prepared. Due to our careful planning and our good teamwork, our crew was able to reach the summit and enjoy the beautiful view just before our “turn-around time.” Three cheers for being prepared in the wilderness... and three cheers for the Bell Crew! Our first case study will wrap up next week as the first graders prepare to share some of their learning with the greater school community on SELS Summit Day!

The Seaborg Crew is off and running in their Fire and Ice Expedition. In this expedition, students will not only learn about local historical buildings of early Truckee, but also the personal stories of those involved. The crew has taken their learning outside the classroom walls, including completing a photo scavenger hunt in Historic Downtown Truckee.

Already, the students have impressed their teachers with their plentiful knowledge of our hometown. We’re looking forward to diving even deeper in the next couple of weeks when the crew will meet with experts to learn more about Truckee’s historic fires and ice harvesting at Boca Reservoir. 

The Welch Crew kicked off their Fire and Ice Expedition with fieldwork to Historic Downtown Truckee. Students scoured the streets, completing a photo scavenger hunt of historic buildings. As students checked off their boxes, they learned about some of the buildings we will be studying during this expedition.

Did you know?

The Old Jail was still used up until 1964 (some of our crew even got locked up in its original jail cells).

There is a tea cup on the sidewalk on Donner Pass Road.

Gray's Cabin was the first building in Truckee, but its current location was not its original location. Do you know where it was originally located? 

These are just a few of the historic facts students learned during their time downtown. 

The Akers Crew had a great kickoff to our Bills and Gills Expedition with field work in Santa Cruz and Monterey. The students explored the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Seymour Marine Discovery Center. Our solitude and reflection time at Asilomar Beach ended with some beach time, playing, and kite flying. They had a scavenger hunt to find different species and learn about adaptations of the birds and fish of Northern California. We started and ended our days on Sunset Beach. Having our morning meeting and closing debrief circled up on the beach was an amazing way to start and end our days.

The Brisbin Crew kicked off fieldwork season with an amazing trip to Monterey and Santa Cruz to explore marine ecosystems and marine biology! Students jumped right back into learning in the field. They held morning meetings, participated in crew activities and classes, took tours of Monterey Bay Aquarium and Seymour Marine Science Center, and held debrief meetings. Our crew practiced strong character-building norms and grew better together over the course of our expedition's fieldwork. As always, our team of fantastic chaperones made our trip amazing! We are so grateful for our entire SELS 4th and 5th Grade Crew. 💙🤍

As we start our "Who Am I: As an Individual?" character expedition in the Worster Crew, we take a look back at our heritage. Students are interviewing their family members to learn about their roots are and what makes their heritage unique. They are then tasked with creating a symbol that they can make out of clay to represent a connection they made in their research. Once it's finished and fired, chia seeds will be selectively added to portions of the symbols and the crew will grow a communal garden of heritage, which ties in with our class read of Seedfolks by Paul Fleichman. 

The Santos Crew has had a great start to the year. The students successfully found the geocaches on our first overnight fieldwork of the season. We went to Tilden Park in Berkeley and the students used maps and compasses to triangulate the positions of the boxes. The also built shelters and mapped out the campground. Students were able to showcase their navigation skills they had been working on since this first day of school. 

The Masur Crew has hit the ground running for their last year at SELS! We went on our first fieldwork at the Sierra Buttes, where students showed strength and adventure in our challenge-by-choice hike and in adapting to unexpected situations. We also reflected on our strengths as leaders, and brought those skills to the whole school by leading the first community meeting of the year.

At school, we've been working on our first expedition case study, It's Nebulous. Students have explored our universe, learning about everything from the Big Bang to our own solar system. In language arts, we brought our school-wide norm focus of respect into academics by giving book talks on how characters show respect.

We've also been working on our Who Am I? expedition by redoing our true colors and introvert/extrovert activities and exploring our connections to the raven through narrative writing.