The Orca Update

Hello Oakland Families,

I want to say THANK YOU, again, to our wonderful PTO for spoiling all of us the week of February 12th. Each day of the week was filled with surprises. Our staff is so grateful for the support from our PTO and all of our partners, We know that when we work together and lift each other up then we are able to help everyone reach their full potential. February was a busy month! Thank you to all who attended our PTO/Black History Program. Our students and staff spent the month of February creating a variety of projects including Freedom Quilts, dolls, and cereal boxes (to name a few) in order to celebrate and highlight many brave and incredible African Americans. Our teachers and students have also been working hard in their classrooms aligning all content to grade level standards. Please help us by making sure your students do their homework nightly, get to school on time, are not signed out early, and are in uniform every day.

Elizabeth Kackley, Principal

Saturday, March 9 - Battle of the Books at Burke High School

March 11-15 - Read Across America- For the Love of Reading

Friday, March 15 - Early Release (1:05)/Freestyle Friday

Monday, March 18 - Online Book Fair Sales begin

Friday, March 22 - Kona Ice ($3)

Wednesday, March 27 - Spring pictures

Thursday, March 28 - PTO sponsored Bingo night

Friday, March 29 - PBIS (Giant Pixie stick treat) half day for students (11:05)

April 1-5 - Spring Break, NO School

Monday, April 8 - Teacher Workday, NO school for students

Save the Date!

Book Fair - Online sales begin March 18th! - In-Person fair April 15 -19

Tuesday, April 16 - Oakland Annual Math and Science night (6:00-7:30)

Read Across America Week is coming up soon! It's one of our favorite weeks at Oakland; there's so much to do and we get to celebrate our love of reading!

This year’s Read Across America Week theme is centered around our love of reading! Join us in celebrating with themed dress-up days all week long, in-school events, Beanstack challenges, class competitions, and prizes!

Each day will have a theme for dressing up, and we'll have activities planned throughout the day surrounding that theme. We'll also have activities throughout the week and plenty of prizes to go around. Take a look!

Overdue Book Drive: In an effort to get ahead and to make sure our books are available for all to enjoy, we'll be holding an overdue book drive. Get all of our your overdue library books in by Wednesday, 3/13! The class with the fewest overdue books by the end of the day on 3/13 will get a special sur-"pies" for Pi day on Thursday, 3/14. (**Please note, if a book is really lost, you still have time to look for it! Fines for lost books don't need to be paid until the end of the year!**)

Caught-You-Reading: Teachers and staff will have "caught-you-reading" tickets and will give them out to students the see engaged in reading activities. Students can turn these tickets in near the library for a chance to win a free book at the book fair. Caught-You-Reading extends all through March!

Beanstack Challenges: We need to ramp-up our reading, so we're going to be doing our CCSD Read Across America 2024 reading challenge, already loaded into Beanstack and ready to start on March 1st! We'll also have a bingo card challenge on Beanstack for the week that gives you points for completing activities throughout the week!

Special Guests: We are hoping to have several special guests and guest readers throughout the week, some in-person and some virtual. If you would like to visit during the week to talk about your super cool job, or to be a guest reader, please fill out the form linked HERE. I'd love to have you!

If you can't make it during the week of March 11-15, but you can swing in another time, I'd love to record you reading a book so we can play it for our students!

Congratulations to our Oakland Elementary School Teacher of the Year, Stephanie Johnson! Ms. Johnson teaches 1st grade and has two daughters who are also Oakland Orcas themselves! We are all so proud and so thankful to have Ms. Johnson as part of our pod!

Parents and guardians! Please be aware of our Attendance policy here at Oakland!

• Parents and guardians have the responsibility to ensure that all school-age children in their care are in school and on time every day.
• When a student is absent, please send in a note. You may use the template linked here and please include any doctor's excuse notes.
• Only ten days may be excused by parent notes, and parents notes only excuse a medical or illness absence.
• Vacation and travel are not excused absences.

Please visit our Oakland Website or contact Karen Harker about attendance and truancy.

Karen_harker@charleston.k12.sc.us

Encouraging students to act with kindness is a foundation of our expectations here at Oakland. Last month we completed a school-wide kindness project! Students decorated hearts and wrote encouraging messages on the back, which will be distributed with food from our local food banks. This month our PTO will be holding a kindness fundraiser! Information about this fundraiser will be coming home in Wednesday Folders. We look forward to celebrating how cool it is to be kind!

Check out our Math Mondays series on Facebook. Each week we're highlighting strategies encouraged by the Bridges math program. A lot of us as adults use these methods without even realizing it, or knowing the methods have names! By learning these methods with explicit practice, students are able to access multiple problem-solving techniques when working on math!

Oakland's Chorus is making beautiful music week in preparation for their upcoming performances. Mr. Otto, our Music Teacher, tells us that the chorus has learned all of their music and continues to fine-tune their sound together during practice. We hope to be able to bring you some samples soon! Stay tuned!

Check out this awesome clip from Singleton Sessions!

What Are the Signs & Symptoms of Seasonal Allergies?

If your child develops "cold" symptoms at the same time every year, seasonal allergies might be to blame. Your pharmacist or health care provider can help recommend treatment options to reduce these symptoms. Allergy symptoms, which usually come on suddenly and last for as long as a person is exposed to the allergen, can include:

• sneezing
• itchy nose and/or throat
• nasal congestion
• clear, runny nose
• postnasal drip

*Fever is not a symptom of allergies, however, uncontrolled allergies put children at risk for sinus infection, ear infection, and poor concentration at school. Please keep your child home if they have a fever above 100.

Head Lice Information

There tends to be a surge in lice cases during summer and fall. Now that social distancing restrictions have been lifted; we may see an uptick in cases. Lice are passed among children when they are at camp, playdates, and school. Your pharmacist or health care provider can help recommend a special shampoo to treat them.

Signs of Head Lice

• Frequent head scratching
• Complaints of itchy scalp/head
• Redness behind ears or on back of neck