OLE NEWS
APRIL 2014
FROM THE DESK OF MR. DERAAD
I am amazed that we are
at Spring time and down
to a dozen weeks left of
school. Our students
have worked hard and
there is still much to do.
The month of April
brings MCA testing so
that our third, fourth, and fifth grade students
can show what they know through our state
testing. The month of May will bring our MAP
testing for all of our Gr. 1– 5 students so that
we can see the annual growth of our students.
Spring also brings fun things like the PTA Carnival. Students will also be going to their
Spring Tamarack activities to continue to
learn what natures teaches us. We are thankful for our PTA support and all of the
volunteers that assist us with these fun and
community building activities.
April 4 is a Student Day: April 4th is now a
student day. Due to the weather this Winter
and the cancellation of school during that
time, April 4th is now been changed to a student day. Also, conferences will be held April
3rd, 7th and 10th. This is a change due to
weather issues this Winter as well.
April is Safety Awareness Month at Otter
Lake: During the month of April, our students
and staff will be practicing and refining several of our emergency safety procedures and
drills. For your information, schools need to
conduct five fire drills and five lockdown drills
each year. We have completed some of them,
be we will be doing two more this month.
Practice allows us to “fine tune” our emergency efforts in providing the safest procedures
and environment for our students and staff.
The official Statewide Tornado drill will take
place on Thursday April 17th. at 1:45pm
Issue # 7
April 2014
651-653-2843 – PRINCIPAL
651-653-2831 - OFFICE
651-653-2833 - FAX
651-407-7540 - SCHOOL CLOSING
651-653-2846 - HEALTH OFFICE
651-653-2834 - EXTENDED DAY
PTA Book Fair: The Book Fair will be held
during the April conferences. Many thanks
to all of you for your consistent support of
this marvelous fund raising effort and also a
huge thanks to those volunteers who dedicated their time and talents to organizing,
decorating and setting up the Fair. All proceeds raised through the Book Fair are used
to enhance our Media Center and classroom
libraries.
Kindergarten Gathering: Thursday, April
24th, 2014 is our Kindergarten Gathering for
next year’s Kindergarten students. Next
year we will again be offering an All Day
Every Day No Fee Kindergarten. If you know
someone that has not registered for Kindergarten next year, please invite them and
have them contact the office at
651-653-2831.
651-407-7538 -
TRANSPORTATION
651-653-2832 - ATTENDANCE
651-653-2839 - KITCHEN
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OTTER LAKE ELEMENTARY
1401 COUNTY RD. H2
WHITE BEAR LAKE, MN 55110
GO BEARS!
FROM THE DESK OF MR. DERAAD
“HOME FROM HOME”
Otter Lake School hours are
from 9:15a.m. to 3:40p.m.
Students who walk are not
to arrive at school before 9:00a.m.
Otter Lake Teacher Request
Information:
There are forms in the elementary
office explaining the process for parent
input in the classroom placement of
their children for the 2014-15 school
year. Parents may come to the office
to complete the written form. You will
be asked to provide information
stating educational reasons for placement considerations. We have an excellent staff at Otter Lake and we
strongly discourage parents from requesting specific homeroom teachers.
The request form is due by Friday,
April 25th, 2014. No requests will be
taken by phone. We will consider
requests, but it must be done in conjunction with other criteria for creating
“balanced” student sections. We work
hard to provide the very best educational program for all students. Your
support and understanding during this
difficult process is appreciated.
MCA Testing: All White Bear Lake
third, fourth and fifth graders will be
taking the Minnesota Comprehensive
Assessments (MCA’s) during the month
of April. It’s important to have all students from these three grade levels
present during the testing. Both Math
and Reading MCA will be computerized
this year which means that each grade
level will have a different schedule for
this assessment. Please schedule any
doctor, dentist, vacations, etc. around
the dates that your student’s grade
level is testing.
Early Arrivals: Now that Spring is here,
please be aware that there is no supervision for students until 9a.m. Students
that walk should time there arrival so
that they arrive after 9a.m.
PTA Carnival: The annual PTA carnival
will be held on Friday, April 25th from
6:00 - 8:30p.m. Mark your calendars to
attend. Your help is needed and
appreciated ! It should be a great time
and I look forward to seeing you there!
Reminder: Do not leave your car unattended in the one lane parking area on
the west side of the building. It backs up
traffic for those that are just dropping off
in the morning. Also, please do not drop
off your child(ren) in the parking lot and
allow them to walk unattended through
the crosswalk. This is a very dangerous
area and we want to make sure our students get to school safely.
FROM THE DESK OF MR. DERAAD
Speed Limit: This is just a reminder
that the speed limit around the
school is 20 MPH. This extends east
of the school on County Road H2 for
five blocks. For the safety of students, staff, and others, please observe this law.
MUSIC NOTES
Information about activities in music class
will be posted on the grade level music
schoology courses your children are enrolled in. Please look there for information on activities, curriculum, concerts
and class projects.
Concert Dates:
1st Grade - May 1, 2:30pm
4th grade - May 28, 6:0pm
PLEASE CHECK OUT THE
LOST AND FOUND.
ITEMS WILL BE DONATED
PRETTY SOON.
HEALTH OFFICE HINTS
SEE ARTICLE ON HEAD LICE
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PHY. ED. FACTS FROM MR.O’CONNELL
position, quick thinking, and working
together.
Spring is here and it’s great to have all the extra sunlight in the evenings, hopefully it will
speed up the melting process!
Back in March we finished out the month testing our brains and our footwork. Students
worked to solve, as a group, physical challenges in our Team Challenges unit. The students
faced the challenges of crossing a raging river,
navigate a mine field or climb a rock. All these
physical challenges tested the group’s team
work and cooperation as well as testing their
physical fitness. We finished out March with
our Pickelball unit. Pickelball is a fun indoor
racquet game that brings together skills used
in Tennis, Racquetball, Ping Pong, and Badminton. The students hit a whiffle ball over a tennis height net, all while using a plastic racquet
similar to a racquetball racquet with no string.
The students enjoyed the story of how the
game came upon its goofy name. Ask your
child to tell you the story.
Then Otter students will use Frisbee’s
for Frisbee Golf and Ultimate Frisbee.
Each student will get the chance to
play 9 or 18 holes of Frisbee golf. Otter
Lake students will also be introduced
to some basic golf terminology.
Ultimate Frisbee is a game that requires
students to work as a team and is great
for fitness.
Our first unit in April will be our finishing up
our Kickball unit. In our Kickball unit we’ll follow baseball/softball/t-ball rules to preview
our final unit of the year. After Kickball we’ll
move into some Recreation Games units. Otter’s first Rec game is Four Square - a big recess
game that we play to work on good
Our next couple of units work on our
throwing skills. The first two are
classic rec games in Bocce ball, and
Horseshoes units. Finally we finish out
the month with two new rec. games
Baggo - the popular bean bag tossing
game and Ladder Golf - a great game
you can play in the backyard or at a
picnic.
Looking ahead to PE in May Otter students will take seven Fitness Tests and
then throw, jump, sprint, hand off, and
hurdle into our Track and Field unit. Finishing up the year Otter students will
play Baseball/Softball/T-ball. Outside we
are going to work on throwing, fielding,
hitting, and rules playing a game each
class period.
Nutritional Tip:
You fatten cattle by feeding them lots
and lots of low– fat grain. How do you
fatten humans? Same way: they tend to
eat lots of low - fat grain. So following
this advice– pasta and bread (both made
from grain) should not be staples in a
healthy diet. They can be eaten, just less
frequently and by adding more Fruits
and Vegetables you can lower your carbohydrate intake and fill up on healthier
carbs.
This information was taken from the
book “The Zone” by Barry
Sears, PH.D.
Have an Active Spring!
Go Bears
A note from Senorita Olsrud.
¡Feliz primavera! Happy Spring!
STUDENT COUNCIL NEWS
2013 –14 Student Council Meetings:
October 11th @8:30am.
November 15th @ 8:30am
December 13th @ 8:30am
January 17th @ 8:30am
February 21st @ 8:30am
March 21st @ 8:30am
April 11th @ 8:30am
May 16th @ 8:30am
Primary students have been busy practicing correct usage of
“Buenos dias” (Good morning), “Buenas tardes” ( good afternoon), and “Buenas noches” (Goodnight). They have also
been working hard to learn the days of the week in Spanish.
Ask your student how the Spanish calendar and the English
calendar differ. The differences just might surprise you. Try
incorporating the calendar days into your calendar at home.
Intermediate students are also becoming more confident in
their days of the week. They are expanding their vocabulary
in regards to how they are feeling. Students are able to ask
one another “¿De dónde eres?”( Where are you from?) and
answer with a variety of correct responses.
Coming In April: Kindergarten - 2nd grade will continue to
focus on conversational skills, our goal is to have brief yet
complete conversations with other students by the end of
the year.
3rd graders will begin to explore different Spanish - speaking
countries in small groups.
4th grade students will work with a
group to research a chosen Spanishspeaking country and create a travel
brochure to present to their classmates.
5th graders will choose a famous
Hispanic - American to study. They will
collaborate with another student to conduct research and
create a final project using a Google Presentation.
¡Saludos!
Senorita Olsrud.
Thank you for making the Pennies for Patients the BEST YEAR
EVER! We passed our goal of $4,250 with $4,640 . The TOP
class who earned a PIZZA party was Mrs. Petersen’s class, Mr.
Barnes, Mr. Gravley and Mrs. Schmidt’s classes.
Well Done Otter Lake students!
UT/April 2014
News from the Media
Center
Many third, fourth and fifth
grade students took on the
challenge last fall to participate in a statewide reading incentive program called the Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award.
Twelve great books are nominated each year. Students need to read at
least three of the nominated titles in order to vote for their favorite,
along with other students across the state of Minnesota. Our students
have voted and we will find out the top three winners in the state on
April 25.
We do have the results for Otter’s favorites now. They are as follows:
First Place at Otter Lake is Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper. This book
won by a landslide 44 votes!
Second Place at Otter Lake is Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea
whose book won with 19 votes.
Third Place at Otter Lake is Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze by Alan
Silberberg whose book won with a total of 13 votes.
We are looking forward to see the results of the statewide vote on April
25. The winners will be announced on the Maud Hart Lovelace website
(www.maudhartlovelace.org) so look for the exciting news that
day!
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