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Jackie Blackman, Music Teacher
Welcome to the 2008-2009 school year! My
name is Jackie Blackman and I am the new music teacher here at Oak Street
Elementary. This is my 3rd year teaching vocal music in the elementary
schools. I taught K-8 vocal music at a Wichita Catholic School from 2000-2002
and from there decided to stay home and raise a family. I am excited to
be back in the schools and ready for a great year of music making.
I am so excited to start the concert
season with these wonderful students. I have exciting music planned and
have discussed them with all of the grades and their response is energizing!
Here is the list of concerts that the students
will be performing throughout the year.
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3rd grade- October 23rd at 7pm. They
will be performing songs from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and
today. The concert is called Through the Decades! We have already begun
to practice our singing and dancing and can’t wait to perform this exciting
concert. I will be sending home a letter this week.
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2nd grade- December 4th at 7pm.
They will be performing a Christmas Musical called Elfis and the Sleigh
Riders! I will be holding auditions soon during regular class time. Look
forward to a letter about this coming home soon.
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1st grade- January 29th at 7pm. Their
concert is called Music Around the World. The students will sing
and dance from songs around the world.
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4th grade- February 19th at 7pm. Their
concert will be called Musical Nation. We will be singing songs from many
different musicals.
In addition to our concerts, we will be going
on fine arts field trips as well. Here is the list of field trips we will
be taking throughout the year.
3rd/4th- October 17th- Wichita
Children’s Theater- “School House Rock”
Half Day Kindergarten- December 4th Wichita
Children’s Theater “The Gingerbread Man”
All Day Kindergarten- December 12th Crown
Uptown “Santa’s Magical Christmas”
1st/2nd-May 8th- Crown Uptown “Aladdin”
Once again, I am thrilled to be back
in the schools teaching a subject that I feel is very important in your
child’s education. I look forward to meeting each and every one of you
throughout the year. Please don’t hesitate to email me at anytime jblackman@goddardusd.com
| Third Grade |
Thursday, October 23 rd - 7:00 pm |
| Second Grade |
Thursday, December 4th- 7:00 pm |
| First Grade |
Thursday, January 29th- 7:00 pm |
| Fourth Grade |
Thursday, February 19th- 7:00 pm |
Randy Smith, PE Teacher
Physical Education classes at Oak Street are off
to a great start, even though the weather has forced us inside for much
of the time. Kindergarten and first grade have focused on large muscle
activities ( tag, relay races, parachute, and climbing the rock wall),
and a basic orientation of physical education. In grades 2-4, we’ve
already completed lessons on volleyball and soccer and will begin a lesson
on flag football this week. As the semester unfolds, we’ll learn
the basic fundamentals of basketball and we’ll continue our lessons on
fitness. Hopefully, after being introduced to these sports and activities,
students will develop interests which will create a lifelong association
with sports and physical activity.
Dan Funke, Science Teacher
The students at all grade levels have been working
very hard in science. A special thank you to the Jackie Blackman
family for donating their 55 gallon aquarium to our school. With
some help from our wonderful Parent / Teacher Organization we have
25 fish in the tank and look forward each day to feeding time. It
is amazing how fast some of our fish swim!
Special thanks goes out to our Principal, Mrs.
Miller, for making the schedule work so that every kindergartner has science
twice a week. We have been learning what are living and non-living
things. Please review with your child that living things need air,
water, some place to live and food to survive. Students have also
learned that living things must have a way to reproduce if they are going
to survive.
In First Grade students are working on identifying
properties of different objects. They have investigated how different
seeds feel and look in identifying them. During our investigation
we have worked hard on predicting the number of different seeds and then
counting them to see how far our predictions are off.
Second graders are learning about vertebrate animals
(animals with backbones). Our first unit of study has been on Mammals.
What a surprise our students had when they learned that humans, dogs and
cats were all in the same mammal classification. A special
thanks again goes out to our PTO for providing our classroom with clickers
so that we can take all our tests on remote controls. By doing this
Mr. Funke can get all the test graded with the click of a button and students
immediately know if they got the question right or wrong. Parents
when you get the reports home it will say “Study Guide at the top of the
page, but it is really a test. Each report will also show what questions
were missed and what the correct answer was. Clickers will be used
in all grades to test science skills this year.
Third graders are leaning about the investigative
process. They are graphing information, learning about property words
and how to write observations that are accurate and don’t compare one object
to another. Students will soon be doing an investigation that includes
the whole scientific process. We will work in groups so that everyone
gets a chance to do a part of the experiment. Soon students will
also be taking a test on different tools that they will use to conduct
their investigations. Look for a study guide to come home soon.
Fourth grade students have just finished a review
of vertebrate animals and now are learning about invertebrate animals.
They have taken several tests on the Clickers on vocabulary words.
They are also learning how living things are grouped into Kingdoms.
One of the classroom rules that students in 4th grade are facing is retuning
to class with their workbooks. Students many times take their books
out of the room to finish assignments. They have to bring their books
back to class the next science day or they loose points for not being prepared
for class.
Students will soon be given passwords so they
can access our science books online as well as other great activities in
science. Please look for these papers to come home soon. If
you have problems getting on-line, please contact me by e-mail or phone. |
Mitzi Smith, Title I Reading Teacher
Paras - Karen Hibbs, Lyn Gregerson,
Jacqueline Robison, Diane Soza
Students in grades Kindergarten through
3rd Grade all took the DIBELS Test (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Literacy
Skills) during the first week of September. In kindergarten and first
grade this test helps to identify students that may need a little extra
help with phonemic awareness (pre-reading skills). In second and
third grades, students read nonsense words and are assessed on reading
fluency. From this test, some students are identified to receive
Title I Reading services at Oak Street. Our Title I department consists
of six people. I am a reading specialists and I have five outstanding
paraprofessionals that help the students on a daily basis. We go
into classrooms during their guided reading time and work with small groups
of students on pre-reading/reading skills. We all look forward to
working with the students each day. This method has been very successful
at Oak Street. If you have any questions, please feel free to call
me at school.
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