Robin Crotwell’s students created Christmas ornaments. Crotwell connected geometry to the ornaments because students used various shapes to create ornaments that resembled 3-dimentional geometric figures. The other connection to math was the symmetry in certain shapes as well as other geometric shape behaviors. The five different shapes were icosahedron, octahedron, tetrahedron, hexahedron, and dodecahedron.

Each student chose at least one difficult shape. These were harder to create because of their multiple facets. The second ornament could be simpler. Once they chose their shapes, they colored them and then incorporated their name into the shape. They cut out their shapes, careful to avoid cutting off the tabs they’d use to connect the shapes to each other. They assembled the ornaments and turned them in for a grade. Crotwell decorated a tree in her classroom with the students’ ornaments.

"My students learned about 3 dimensional shapes by making Christmas ornaments. Later, we can use these shapes to derive area and volume formulas. It was a fun activity and more meaningful than just seeing the shapes in a book," said Crotwell.

Allison Movitz’s Advanced Placement Language and Composition class read In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote and are
now having a conversation through a discussion board with students from Tupelo High School who have also read the book and posted their responses.

In Cold Blood is a nonfiction novel, the first of its kind about two men who murdered 4 members of the Clutter family. This was one of the first mass murders and no one knew who did it. Capote went to the town, Holcomb, Kansas, where the murders occurred and researched the family and the crime. He followed the investigation from the beginning until the arrest of two men who were found guilty and executed. Capote interviewed the murderers while they were in jail.

The AP students analyzed the nonfiction book and to learn about Capote’s craft and style and posted their insights and their responses to what others had written.

Tupelo High School AP English teacher Ellen Shelton also required her AP classes to post their comments about "In Cold Blood" on Blackboard. Because BHS and Movitz do not have their own Blackboard accounts, Shelton gave Movitz and her students access to the site.

"Through this assignment, not only were my students able to read the comments and opinions of other students, but they have a chance to interact with each other and discuss In Cold Blood. Students can see how others see and read a text. It gives them new insights," said Movitz.

"Blackboard is very convenient to use. It was as easy as logging into email. Through Blackboard, I was able to see what other students from Tupelo High School said about the book," said Clarrisa Title, AP English IV student. "While I was taking classes at Ole Miss last summer, the professors always mentioned Blackboard and what they had posted there. Blackboard is used by students at colleges and Universities, and I think it’s great that we are getting aquatinted with the web site that we will use next year in college."

By: Dustin Howell

Janet Jenkins’ Biology II classes dissected the parts of a flower in a lab to learn about botany. The students worked in groups to take apart the flower given to each group. The students observed the visible parts of the flower and drew what they saw without the aid of the microscope. After they finished taking the flower apart, they observed particular parts of the flower under the microscope to see and draw what they normally couldn’t see with their eyes.

"It was a good chance for the students to be able to observe the parts of a flower." Said Jenkins about the flower dissection lab.

It was October 31 and the Christmas lights were going up around town, the music in the stores featured "Jingle Bells" and before the Thanksgiving turkey was bought, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Is the Christmas season beginning earlier and earlier? SRR Pollster Shebante Welch asked BHS students,

By Kayla Howe

Did you know that most scholarships go un-awarded? According to Senior English teacher Allison Movitz, this is true. "If a student sees they have to write an essay for a scholarship, most students won’t take the time to fulfill the requirements," Movitz said. A new assignment for her seniors is designed to change that.

Movitz is requiring students to seek out and apply for a college and/or a scholarship. First, students must be sure they meet the requirements. Then, they need to gather all the parts necessary to complete the application. Movitz gets a copy of what the student is expected to mail by the application deadline. The deadline for this assignment is before the end of this semester.

"Seniors don’t realize that by the time they start to think about applications for college and scholarships in the spring, it’s usually too late," Movitz said. She hopes to hear that the majority of her seniors received scholarships on Award’s Night at the end of the year. Students created a resume to go with this assignment and to help them have the information most applications require at their fingertips.

New Stage Theatre, an acting troupe from Jackson, MS, performed "A Mid Summer Night’s Dream" for middle and high school students. This romantic comedy by William Shakespeare portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers. The play is one of Shakespeare’s most popular works for the stage and four New Stage Theatre interns performed it for schools in the county.

Earlier, the same troupe performed "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kippling for the elementary schools in the district. This performance was followed by "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" for middle and high school students. All students were expected to attend the free performance.

Superintendent Beth Hardin arranged the performances through New Stage Theatre’s Betty Wong who offered the performances to our school district. "I accepted the offer because the stories are literary classics and the performances would be free to all students so no one would be excluded," Hardin said.

By: Eli Morgan and Alaina Dorris

Thanksgiving started with the Pilgrims and Indians when together they held a feast to give thanks for a bountiful harvest in the Pilgrims’ "New World" and thus began the tradition of Thanksgiving in 1621. Thanksgiving was later declared a holiday by President George Washington in 1789.

The first Thanksgiving was formed by the Plymouth colony after a harsh winter. In that same year Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. The colonists then celebrated it as a traditional English feast and invited the Wampanoag Indians to join them. Their feast contained an assortment of crops and meat. From corn to deer and of course the turkey.

By the mid 1800’s, many states observed the Thanksgiving holiday, but poet Sarah J. Hale was wanting it to be a national holiday. During the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln was looking for ways to reunite the nation and decided to discuss the national holiday idea with Hale. In 1863 President Lincoln gave his Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring the last Thursday of November a day for Thanksgiving. Since then each year the present United States President gives a Thanksgiving Proclamation proclaiming Thanksgiving day a day of thanksgiving.

By: John Mark Busby

To raise money, the Bruce High School Student Council sold "turkey feathers" for ten cents a piece to place on teachers’ doors. The teacher with the most feathers on their door turkey got a $25 gift certificate to Piggly Wiggly. The deadline to buy "turkey feathers" was Thursday, November 11.

The last fundraiser undertaken by the Student Council involved the sale of "pumpkins" for teachers’ doors. Robin Crotwell, BHS math teacher, won the last gift certificate with 316 pumpkins on her door. Through the pumpkin fundraiser, the Student Council raised $128.