Thank you everybody for a great year! Amongst our accomplishments: With the help of our teachers, Bishop Conley, Father Juan, Father Edmond and Mary Fisher we had a wonderful year of catechetical and liturgical emphasis highlighted by:
Students also read numerous books on saints and developed AR tests for them for the library. We were able to check in on Pope Benedict 16’s (B-16) trip to the U.S. and learn more about our precious Catholic faith through both the efforts in our classroom and the overall efforts of our parish (Parish Mission, Divine Mercy Sunday, Pro-life Novena, our Pastor’s selection as Auxiliary Bishop of Denver). 44 students received the sacrament of communion in our 2nd grade, spending countless hours on study of the communion catechism Our youth Choir (led by Jennifer Hickerson) had 40 participants; one of the highlights of the year was their beautiful performance of the pro-life song, “We Want To See The World”. As usual, we graduated a class of 8th graders we can be extremely proud of: One 8th grade homeroom did not have ANY principal’s detentions the whole year and the other, just a few! Our goals to improve grades for all students were successful as only 3% of all 8th grade grades were D’s or F’s (up significantly from last year’s 9%) 22 8th graders (over 50% served for 5 years as altar servers) We had 4 students move high up the ranks in Boy Scouts, 6 girls who completed 5 years of Challenge Club, 10-20 middle schoolers came regularly to our Thursday morning scripture study. We had overwhelming participation of our students in Football, Volleyball, Basketball (boys) and, especially, Track. All of our 8th grade students completed a month-long Theology of the Body for Teens course (over 80% (33) participated in the overnight Project Freedom retreat—based on JP II’s Theology of the Body Teachings) 1st place in the state (in class of 52 schools) for the Kansas state Scholarship contest our Scholar Bowl team came in 3rd in the Diocesan Finals and 1st in two out of the three regular season meets. Our Religion bowl team came in 2nd in the Diocesan competition we had participation by 8th graders in Science Olympiad (5), Math Counts (4). Our 8th grade representatives went far into the County Spelling Bees and State Geography Bee abundant participation in non-Blessed Sacrament sponsored events such as Dance, Gymnastics and soccer. On Standardized testing our 8th graders scored a whopping 625 Average on the Math portion of the Kapaun entrance exams --45 points higher than ever for us and on a test that measures OVERALL math advancement –as opposed to just the 8th grade standards of the Kansas Assessment (for which you can cram). This class will have achieved Standard of Excellence (with 65 % of its students exemplary) on every reading test they have ever taken. We had 5 students complete Geometry their 8th grade year (moving on to Junior level Math as Freshman) and 8 more qualified to take Geometry as Freshman (testing out of Honors Algebra 1). Overall, our 5th, 6th and 7th grade students scored at an average of 87, 92, and 88 composite class percentile rank on the Iowa Basic tests (I am sure the 92 translates to be in the famous 99% of schools that is talked about so much by schools who like to hang their hat on scores alone—and selective enrollment). We are certain that we moved forward on the Kansas Assessment test (3rd-8th). We will surely receive Standard of Excellence for all grades on the Reading portion and we are within reach of Standard of Excellence in all grades on the Math portion (where we only received one Standard of Excellence last year—4th grade). In the 7th grade, we had 3 students earn state recognition as Duke Scholars (scoring in the top 20% of students tested for the ACT or SAT). We certainly look forward to another year of 8th grade accomplishments (and all grades). Finally (last but not least), what a year we had in the following areas: Spanish: Thanks Mrs. Childress (what a 1st year and fun Fiesta) and Mrs. Cathey (for bringing back 8th grade Spanish) Music: Thanks Mrs. Menas for your great productions! 7th/8th DC trip: 53 participants Electives: Middle School: memorable drama, great strides forward in writing elective, Bal-A-Vis-X, and for the first time ever, Logic, Origami,and Fitness Intermediate: Although this pilot program (done partially because our Spanish teacher was not with us full-time yet) does not have the support to continue, students were able to be exposed to classical curriculum, art, drama, Accelerated math, sneak-peak ScienceOlympiad, environmental science, technology, Chess, andmanners! (all during the time they used to have Classical Curriculum: Continued K-2 participation on poetry club, classical book reading, and story writing! Thank you Mrs. Loyle for your tireless efforts to promote literacy and creative writing/oratorical skills! |