Students learn to spell words by writing them in shaving cream in this 1997.

100 Years Ago

Nov. 16, 1922 — Methodist ladies to stuff the public

Menu: Relish, cranberry jelly, stewed chicken, mashed potatoes, noodles, buttered carrots, peas, hot biscuits, gravy, cabbage salad, pumpkin pie and whipped cream, coffee.

The ladies of the Methodist Church are arranging for a regular, old fashioned get together to take place at the church Wednesday evening Nov. 22. The affair is to start off with a supper at 6:30 p.m. and there will be something along the entertainment line constantly running all the evening.

The object of the blowout is just to get everybody together and have a great big time, and anyone who fails to be on hand will certainly be the loser. If a feed like the one above won’t bring you out, you are a hopeless case.

75 Years Ago

Nov. 20, 1947 — Wellman’s Band plays for dance

A large crowd turned out for the Legion-VFW dance Saturday night with Bob Wellman’s Orchestra being featured as a stand in for Bob Summers’ band, which was originally scheduled.

Summers’ appearance here was canceled due to a scheduling error made by his booking agent, the sponsoring committee pointed out. Wellmann’s orchestra, however, provided a good variation of music and was well received by the dancers. Wellman is currently playing an extended engagement at a Portland night club.

50 Years Ago

Nov. 22, 1972 — Future of Oregon-California marketing order topic of poll

The Oregon-California Potato Marketing Order Committee is conducting an informal poll of growers in the production area to determine producers’ opinions on the effectiveness of the program, reports manager M.E. Knickerbocker.

The poll is being undertaken because committee members do not feel they have an adequate view of grower thinking due to the poor attendance at grower meetings during the past summer in each of the five districts comprising the production area.

A questionnaire is being mailed to each known grower with a request that it be returned to the committee office not later than Nov. 30, Knickerbocker stated. Shortly thereafter the committee will meet to consider the course of action suggested by the poll. In addition to those mailed, additional questionnaires will be available at each extension office for any grower which might not receive one in the mail. Returns from individual growers will be kept confidential and only the composite results will be made available for committee study.

25 Years Ago

Nov. 19, 1997 — Classroom games serious business for educators

Brooke Thomas, 10, doesn’t know much about writing conventions. What she does know is that writing spelling words in shaving cream, stomping, jiving and clapping those words and playing the spelling Concentration game all make practice more fun.

“It’s funner to get to move around,” Thomas said.

Desiree Margo, a fifth-grade teacher at Tumalo Elementary, works hard to make sure her students have fun with learning. But for Margo, a member of the school district’s new committee charged with implementing the state’s education reform, the games are serious business.

Writing conventions — spelling, capitalization and punctuation, for example — is one of the areas the Oregon Department of Education expects students to be skilled in before they receive the new Certificate of Initial Mastery, or CIM. The first CIMs will be awarded to this year’ ninth graders — at least the ones that achieve the new, higher standards.

Test scores from last spring indicate students in Redmond and across the state have their work cut out for them.

Last year, a respectable 81 percent of Redmond third graders met the CIM standards in reading and literature; 68 percent met the math standards. Seventy percent of fifth graders achieved the standard in reading while 64 percent passed the math standards.

In the eighth grade, the numbers slipped. Fifty-nine percent met the reading standard, with 58 percent scoring high enough to pass in math. In the 10th grade, less than half, 48 percent, met the reading standards, and a mere 24 percent were able to do the required math.

Those figures mirror results across the state, with Redmond students generally achieving slightly above the state averages.

Margo’s spelling centers are just one way teachers are making sure students — all students — have a shot at meeting those standards.

“My top students, they would get it anyway, even if it was boring,” she said.

But for students struggling with compound words and other complexities of the language, intense, hands-on practice is working.

“Before I started the centers, 30, 40 even 50 percent of my struggling students would fail their spelling tests,” Margo said. “Now, 85 to 100 percent pass.