Around our Schools: September 2026

 

Bierbaum Elementary School fourth-grade students dissected owl pellets. Before beginning, they made predictions about what they thought they would find inside. They made observations while working with a partner to dissect the pellet and identify different things found. Afterward, they reflected on the experience by comparing and contrasting what they discovered with their original prediction.

 

 

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Buerkle Middle School

Academy Science

Students in Renee Ganley’s Academy science class at Buerkle Middle School completed a unit about living and nonliving things. They started by journaling about what attributes something needed to be considered alive. They defended their claim using evidence and reasoning. Then students listened to a fictional story about a character named “Substitute Sammy.” In the story, Sammy undergoes a series of unfortunate mishaps that cause him to have different limbs and body systems replaced with artificial ones. After each incident, students determined if they still considered Sammy "alive" using their original claim at the start of the lesson.

 

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Blades Elementary School

9/11 First Responders Ceremony

Blades Elementary School hosted a ceremony for first responders, members of the military and veterans on 9/11. Students and staff welcomed their loved ones who have served our community or the country, performed a song for them, and gave them a card to thank them for their service.

 

 

 

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Washington Middle School

Sixth-Grade Math

Sixth-grade students at Washington Middle School created mosaics in remembrance of 9/11 using skills learned in Lindsay Evans’ math class. Students learned to calculate the area of different shapes. They started the activity by sketching a design in a 6-inch square that incorporated parallelograms and triangles. Then they used broken, colorful lasagna tiles to form the mosaic. Next, students identified the different shapes of tiles they used and explained the geometric attributes of their shapes. After counting the total number of tiles and the number of tiles of each color, they also calculated the percentage of tiles used of each color.

 

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Forder Elementary School

Start with Hello Week

Forder Elementary School celebrated Start with Hello Week! Our friends from Lemay Fire Protection District were on campus to welcome students with signs saying "Hello" in all of the languages spoken by Forder families. The goal of the Start with Hello campaign is to combat social isolation and to make sure students know they are an important member of the school community. Students are also challenged to do an act of kindness for each day of the week.

 

 

 

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Oakville High School

Fashion Construction I

Fashion Construction I students at Oakville High School completed an unconventional items design challenge. Working with a team, they designed a garment using unconventional materials, like wrapping paper and tissue. The project required them to analyze garment construction and fit and correctly use industry terms to describe apparel features, textile patterns and assembly tools.

 

 

 

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Oakville Elementary School

Second-Grade Social Studies

Second graders in Bridget Reitz’s class at Oakville Elementary School learned about communities in Social Studies. After discussing their knowledge that communities are places where people live, work and play, students worked with their classmates to construct a community that included homes, businesses, parks and more.

 

 

 

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Forder Elementary School

International Dot Day

Students celebrated International Dot Day in the library at Forder Elementary School. International Dot Day was inspired by the book “The Dot,” written and illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds. The story encourages students to be creative and to think of ways that they can use their energy, talents and time to make the world a better place. After listening to Rebecca Morfeld, the school librarian, read the story aloud, students created their own dots that they added to a mural featuring dots from every student in the school.

 

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Oakville High School and Mehlville High School

Girls Golf

The Oakville High School and Mehlville High School girls golf teams competed in a tri-meet at The Club at Castle Bluff on Wednesday, September 17.

 

 

 

 

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Mehlville High School

Advanced College Literature and Composition

Rachele Hollingsworth’s Advanced College Literature and Composition students at Mehlville High School learned about rhetoric and the role it has in our understanding and empathy in different situations. They also learned how to conduct a rhetorical analysis and worked with a partner to analyze the rhetoric in a Disney song of their choosing. They displayed their analysis in a movie-style poster for the song that was shared with the class.

 

 

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Oakville High School and Mehlville High School

Girls Volleyball

The Mehlville High School and Oakville High School volleyball teams battled on the court in the Pink Out game in support of breast cancer awareness. It was an absolutely electric atmosphere with the Tigers earning the victory 25-17, 25-19, 25-17.

Before the game, OHS student-athlete Evelyn Haarmann was recognized for becoming the first volleyball player in school history (for both the boys and girls teams) to earn 1,000 career kills. 

 

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Beasley Elementary School

Kindergarten and First-Grade Music

In Music class at Beasley Elementary School, first-grade students warmed up by singing the song “A Wise Old Owl.' Afterward, learned different ways to move to keep a steady beat, like by clapping or by stomping their feet.

 

 

 

 

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Mehlville Parents as Teachers

Things That Go!

Mehlville Parents as Teachers families explored construction vehicles, big trucks, buses, ambulances and even a helicopter during Things That Go.

 

 

 

 

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MOSAIC Elementary School

Fourth-Grade English, Math and Social Studies

Fourth graders at MOSAIC Elementary School are working on a unit that asks, “How do plants and animals use their structures to survive where they live?” On Monday, they attempted to answer this question by studying hellbenders in a series of activities that spanned different subjects. In English, students are learning how to pull key information from a text. They read a non-fiction article about hellbenders in Missouri Conservationist magazine, pulling out important details as they read. In math, students learned how to correctly take measurements. They flipped over a series of rocks to reveal paper hellbenders of different sizes. They measured each hellbender to the nearest centimeter and charted the data. In social studies, students used the knowledge they’ve learned about hellbenders to correctly map the locations where different hellbender species are found in the United States.

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Rogers Elementary School

Kindergarten English

On Tuesday at Rogers Elementary School, kindergarteners worked on foundational literacy skills. First, students produced letter sounds and wrote the letter creating the sound correctly in lowercase. They also listened to different words and wrote the letter that produced the first sound in the word. Then students focused on the letter “m.” They listened to words that contain the letter “m” and practiced making the “m” sound. Afterward, they practiced writing the letter “m” and viewed a series of pictures, determining if the animal or object pictured contained the letter “m” or not.

 

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MOSAIC Elementary School

Second-Grade Math and English 

Second graders at MOSAIC Elementary School completed a Cardboard Arcade project that required them to use knowledge from different subject areas. Students practiced their collaboration skills while working with a group of their classmates to follow the design process to develop their cardboard arcade game. They asked questions, sketched models, built a prototype and made adjustments based on testing and peer feedback. The project also required students to use math concepts like spatial reasoning, 2-D and 3-D geometry and measurements to construct their structures. They also gathered data by tracking gameplay scores. After the arcade games were constructed, other MOSAIC students were invited to the classroom to play the games. Second graders had to write clear, instructional game rules for the players. After writing the instructions, they practiced reading them from a potential player’s perspective and revised the rules based on any questions they anticipated.

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Rogers Elementary School

Fourth-Grade PE

Rogers Elementary School students jumped, climbed, ran and balanced in PE at Olympic stations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mehlville High School

Girls Softball

The Mehlville High School softball team took on Hazelwood West High School on Tuesday, September 22.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Point Elementary School

Fifth-Grade Math

Fifth-grade students at Point Elementary School have been learning to compare 3D figures and calculate the volume of rectangular prisms. They were shown a 3D figure and asked to calculate the volume. However, they were missing key information, like the length, width and height of each side. Working with a group of classmates, they deciphered a set of clues that helped them to determine the values they needed to solve the problem.

 

 

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MOSAIC Elementary School

Third-Grade Math

Third-grade students at MOSAIC Elementary School have been learning about different ways to collect and display data. They collected responses from their classmates answering the question: What type of character would you choose to be in a book: a hero, villain, sidekick or mentor? After collecting and analyzing the data, they created a pictograph to display their results.

 

 

 

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Oakville Middle School

Theater Arts

Theater Arts students at Oakville Middle School have been learning about the elements of set design. To demonstrate their knowledge, they used the design process to create a set model from an existing scene in a show or movie. They presented their set to their classmates, as well as students from other classes, who voted on their favorite designs.

 

 

 

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Oakville High School and Mehlville High School

Girls Tennis

The Mehlville High School and Oakville High School girls tennis teams battled on the court, with the Tigers earning the victory 7-2.

 

 

 

 

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Bierbaum Elementary School

Fifth-Grade English

Fifth-grade students at Bierbaum Elementary School are learning to use evidence to find the author’s point of view.
They began their lesson on Friday by playing the emotion guessing game. A student acted out an emotion, and the rest of the group had to determine what emotion they were showing. Afterward, students read a description of how characters were feeling in a given scenario. They brainstormed different ways an author could describe that emotion without directly stating it, such as by describing the character’s body language.

 

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Oakville High School

Madrigal Choir

The Oakville High School Madrigal Choir performed at the 2026 St. Louis Renaissance Festival.

 

 

 

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John Cary Early Childhood Center

Mehlville Early Childhood

Mehlville Early Childhood students at John Cary Early Childhood Center listened to a read-aloud of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr. Afterward, they painted all of the animals mentioned in the story the correct color.

 

 

 

 

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Oakville High School

Girls Softball

The Oakville High School softball team had the opportunity to play on their new, turfed field for the first time on Monday, September 28, taking on Kirkwood High School.

 

 

 

 

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Hagemann Elementary School

Second-Grade English

Second graders at Hagemann Elementary School began the year learning about words with short vowel sounds. Then, they shifted their focus to words with the long vowel sound. Students began their lesson by viewing a sentence containing grammatical mistakes. They identified the mistakes and correctly rewrote the sentence. Then, they discussed the difference between short vowel sounds and long vowel sounds. Students reviewed how adding the “magic -e” to the end of words alters the sound made by the first vowel in the word. First, they wrote words like rod and slid. Then, they added -e to the end of the words, creating the long vowel sound found in rode and slide. Second graders finished the lesson by playing the Magic E in a Row Game. Students were given a word with the long vowel sound, like snake, and identified words on the board that rhymed with that word, like bake, shake and make.

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Wohlwend Elementary School

Second-Grade Counseling

Second graders at Wohlwend Elementary School were nature detectives during a lesson with counselor Karen Hoover. First, students discussed how your mood can be impacted by your environment. Then, students explored the school’s outdoor classroom in search of things that made them feel different emotions.

 

 

 

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Blades Elementary School

Fifth-Grade Math

Fifth-grade students at Blades Elementary School learned how to calculate volume. They demonstrated their knowledge at the conclusion of the unit by constructing a volume zoo. Working in teams, students built zoo animals out of cardboard boxes. Then, they calculated the volume by taking accurate measurements of each box used to create their animal. Students then began their next math unit, which focuses on fractions. To kick things off, students were given a scenario requiring them to determine how to share a certain amount of sandwiches equally among a given number of people attending a party. During the unit, they will also learn to multiply a whole number by a fraction and to multiply fractions and mixed numbers to find area.