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.

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.