Recognition from The Conflict Center

Last week, Annunciation Catholic School was honored with a special recognition from The Conflict Center. Annunciation was praised for the work the school has done to promote peaceful conflict resolution within its students. Currently, Annunciation students in grades 3-8 attend weekly group sessions with their peers, where they work with the school’s social worker to talk through emotions and conflicts. This program was started by Ms. Sheila Karpan many years ago, and has blossomed into the program it is today. Using training from The Conflict Center in Denver, and Second Step, an emotional skills curriculum, the students have learned non-violent ways to solve problems.

Don Ludwig and Mary Zinn from The Conflict Center were on hand following mass on November 1^st, to present the award to Annunciation. Information about our school and our group program is being featured in a statewide traveling exhibit sponsored by The Conflict Center. 

3rd Grade Dictionaries

For the past few years, our 3rd graders have been the fortunate recipients of new dictionaries. Venita Collier from the Lakewood Elks Lodge #17777, has represented the Lodge and come to the school to hand deliver the dictionaries to the students. 

During her visit, she also spent time reviewing the proper way to use a dictionary, and its extra resources. The students enjoyed finding the longest word in the dictionary. The word,  "Tryptophan synthetase A protein", is an enzyme that has 267 amino acids, and makes a record of 1,909 letters. It is the term for the formula C-1289 H-2051 N-343 O-375 S8.

Thank You Lakewood Elks Lodge!!

Community Partnerships

Annunciation Catholic School is blessed to have a number of community partnerships. It is always a joy to have guests in the building assisting with our students, or learning about our great school. This past month, we were lucky to have the Kids In Need of Dentistry (KIND) Program, and the Regis University Nursing students in our building to provide teeth cleaning and health check-ups.

Through KIND, our 2nd grade students were able to have their teeth checked and cleaned. Additionally, each 2nd grader was entered into a drawing to win a bike, congrats to Bryant who won the bike and the helmet!

Last week, the Regis University Nursing Students performed Health and Wellness checks for our Kindergarten and 1st grade students. We have partnered with Regis University for many years, and during the year have student nurses in the building assisting Mr. Steck and the classroom teachers with teaching the health curriculum.

We are very appreciative of these two organizations (and the many others) who support our students and their families!

8th Grade Egg Drop Challenge

For the past month, the 8th grade class has been working on innovative scientific thinking culminating in the Egg Drop Challenge with St. Rose of Lima. 

On September 19th, Annunciation 8th grade students took their egg drop vehicles to St. Rose of Lima to compete against 8th grade students from St. Rose working on the same challenge project. Separate brackets were created for designs that incorporated parachutes and those that did not. The vehicles had to safely carry an egg from an 18ft. window and hit a target on the pavement below. First and Second Place Honors went to teams from St. Rose, but many good designs were tested, and young scientists were able to see firsthand the fruits of the Scientific Problem-Solving Process. 

A Focus on Math in the First Grade Classroom.

One of our school's focuses this year is to work on improving math skills and fluency with our students. We will continue to benchmark our students using AimsWeb and teachers will use these scores to assist in developing lessons, and providing differentiated instruction to students who need additional assistance. This blog from first grade, shows how they use math manipulatives in the classroom. 

In First Grade we use manipulatives to help us learn new Math Skills.

 Today we were exploring the manipulatives to see how much fun math can be.

We really like the links, pattern blocks and dominoes.

But, our favorite manipulatives are the Teddy Bears.

School Clean-Up Days!

We have been very blessed this summer to have had two volunteer groups in the building to help us get ready for the new school year. On July 26th, members from Catholic Health Initiatives helped to clean classrooms, weed the front garden and playground, and paint the front step entryway. On July 28th, volunteers from Seeds of Hope helped with various painting projects around the building, and cleaned new desks for our 3rd and 4th grade classrooms.

Additionally, we have had parents help to clean the carpets and also paint the gymnasium. 

We would not be able to keep our school clean and updated without the support of these various organizations! Thank you to them and our summer parent volunteers for helping us get our building ready for August 20th!

Summer Happenings!

Summer vacation is upon us, but Annunciation is anything but quiet! This has been a busy summer for our school community, and continues to look jam packed as we head into August and another school year.

Here are some events that have been happening around the building the past month and a half.

• June 9th was a successful parish carnival. This event was held outside and included food booths, children's games, a wrestling ring, live music, dunk tank, and pony rides. We are blessed to have such a vibrant and parish, led by our dynamic Father Francisco. 
• Throughout the month of June, we had 1st-5th graders in the building for summer school. This 3 week program through Title 1, focused on reading fluency and reading comprehension. It was a joy to have students in the building receiving extra attention to learn essential reading skills. 
• For two weeks in June and two weeks in July, we have middle school students in the building for summer enrichment. This program focuses on Language Arts and Math and has the students doing daily activities to improve their reading and math fluency. The students have also taken a fieldtrip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and this week they will be going to the Denver Art Museum. 
• Saturday, July 14th was the Eloy Mares Memorial Golf Tournament. We had 148 golfers out at City Park playing 18-holes to benefit Annunciation. At the BBQ following the tournament, we dedicated our gym as the 'Eloy Mares Gymnasium" and presented Roger Murrieta with the first ever Cardinal Award, for his dedication to the Annunciation Community. The Cardinal Award will be given each year to individuals whose lives have centered on faith, service and being a humanitarian. 
• At the beginning of August, our middle school girls who are part of the soccer club team, will be traveling to New Mexico to participate in a soccer tournament. We wish them well and look forward to hearing about their experience. 

A visit from St. Vincent de Paul students

 Annunciation is fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with many local elementary schools, high schools, and universities. We would like to thank the 7th Grade from St. Vincent de Paul for coming and spending the morning with the Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade.  We had so much fun getting to know them and our students love doing an activity together. We would also like to thank St. Vincent de Paul for giving items to our Cardinal Store.

7th & 8th Grade Soccer Fundraiser

Friday evening saw a great turnout of support for the 7th & 8th grade Club Soccer Team. The players, along with their coaches Mr. Bernardin & Mr. Lytle, hosted a spaghetti fundraiser to help raise money for the team.

The delicious dinner consisting of spaghetti, garlic bread, fruit, salad, corn, and dessert, was prepared by the soccer players and Mr. Ron, the school chef. 

The girls also sold raffle tickets and gave away $250.00 to one winner. Congratulations to the Lara family for winning the $250, and an additional thank you to all the supporters who came to the dinner and bought raffle tickets. 

This is the second season for the club soccer team, and the girls are playing tremendously. Last season the team went 8-0 and they remain undefeated halfway through this season. 

We wish the team luck as they continue with their season!

Peace Day

We recently celebrated "Peace Day" at Annunciation. This annual tradition is a favorite among students and staff, as it gives the school community a chance to reflect on peacemakers around the world, and ways that we ourselves can promote peace.

This year's theme is "Be An Instrument Of Peace". On Peace Day, students learned about a peacemaker, and created presentations to show that peacemaker to the school. Each class also read the book "Sadako and the Paper Cranes", and created paper cranes to send to Japan as a symbol of peace around the world. 

We are thankful for Ms. Sheila Karpan and the Peace Day committee for all the work they did to make Peace Day a success. We are proud of our "peaceful" community and are blessed to have students who know what it means to be a peacemaker in the world. 

Academic Decathlon

This past Saturday, 3 members of our 8th grade and 1 member of our 7th grade represented Annunciation Catholic School in the Diocesan Academic Decathlon.

Annunciation and St. Rose paired together to make a team. We faced off against 15 other teams in the Archdiocese. Overall, our students did well, and had fun in the process.

This is the 2nd year of the Academic Decathlon here in Denver. Students spend weeks learning material that will be covered on the individual and team tests. We are very proud of the work our team did to prepare for the Decathlon, and are proud that they have learned the true value of hard work and academic achievement.

Special thanks to Mr. Bernardin for coaching this year's team. We look forward to competing again next year!

Side by Side Nutrition Classes

Through programming sponsored by Ms. Sheila Karpan, members of our community recently completed the 'Side by Side Nutrition Class" sponsored by Colorado Matters. This winter, we had 10 adults, and 8 students participate in the course.

As stated on its website: "With the help of volunteer culinary and nutrition experts, Cooking Matters course participants learn how to select nutritious and low-cost ingredients and prepare them in ways that provide the best nourishment possible to their families. Cooking Matters is nationally sponsored by the ConAgra Foods® Foundation and Walmart." http://cookingmatters.org/

Congratulations to all of our families that took time to participate in this wonderful program!

Celebrating 100 Days of School

SOME OF OUR COLLECTIONS

 MAKING A NECKLACE OUT OF 100 BEADS

Today was the 100th Day of School!  Every day during calendar time, the first graders have been counting the days of school.  Some of the fun activities the students did included making a necklace out of 100 beads, and coloring a 100 hundreds chart with a pattern of their choice.  They also brought in their collections of 100 items.  Some of the collections included shells, stickers, marshmallows, cereal, and Popsicle sticks. Now we are counting down the days until we are ready for second grade.