Nansemond News

We have a TON of important information in our newsletter. Please read the newsletter in its entirety to see all the amazing things we are doing at Parkway this month!

Upcoming Dates:

• October 2nd: School Custodian Appreciation Day
• October 5th: Progress Reports available in HAC
• October 6th: Teacher Clerical Day: Early Release for students
• October 6th: Heavenly Hat Parade 9:45
• October 11th: Grandparents Day: grandparents are invited to come each lunch with their students
• October 13th: Parents of Parkway Chuck E Cheese Fundraiser 3:00-9:00 (Western Branch Location)
• October 13th: Wear pink for Breast Cancer
• October 17th: Family Engagement Night- Learning Isn't Scary 5:46-6:45
• October 18th: Unity Day-wear orange
• October 20th: Wear purple for Domestic Violence Awareness
• October 23rd: Charleston Wrap Fundraiser ends
• October 24th: Parent Teacher Conference: Early Release for students
• October 25th: All District Reads begins (more information to come)
• October 27th: Trunk or Treat (more information to come)
• October 31st: Storybook Character parade: school appropriate costumes only

If you are interested in buying any Nansemond Parkway Spirit Wear, please follow the link below!

https://nansemondparkwayspiritwear.com/

This year, Nansemond Parkway Staff and Students will participate in the first ever Parkway Heavenly Hats Parade. Heavenly Hats Foundation donates brand new hats to cancer patients of all ages throughout the United States. Since Heavenly Hats was founded in 2001, volunteers have been able to donate over 5,400,000 brand new hats to cancer patients in need. Students will participate in a Heavenly Hat Parade on October 6th. Students and staff are asked to donate $1.00 or any other amount they choose for the privilege of wearing their favorite hat to school for the day. All proceeds from this event are used to offset the cost of shipping the new hats to all of the patients and hospitals around the United States. Parents are invited to attend the parade at 9:45.

We are inviting grandparents to join our students for lunch on October 11, 2024. Please plan to eat with your student during their assigned lunch period.

Kindergarten: 11:00-11:30

First Grade: 11:15-11:45

Second Grade: 11:45-12:15

Third Grade: 12:15-12:45

Fourth Grade: 12:25-1:05

Fifth Grade: 12:50-1:20

Please sign up with your child’s teacher.

Join us for our first family engagement night of the year! Students can wear their costumes and participate in reading and math stations after our Title 1 presentation. Please join us for this event on October 17, 2023 from 5:45-6:45!

Please join us on October 13th from 3:00-9:00 for our Parents of Parkway Fundraiser Event. A portion of the proceeds made during this event will be brought back to our school. This event is at the Western Branch location only. Please bring the flyer with you that comes home with your student.

Kindergarten students continue to grow! Please let your child know which food is intended for snack. Some students are eating their snacks at breakfast! Remember to use the study guide to get ideas for at home practice. Keep checking in with your child’s teacher for any questions and concerns.

We have been learning lots of new and exciting things in First Grade. As we begin October we will begin nightly homework. Please check your students' homework folder to see their homework for the month. We will continue to work on story structure (characters, setting, problem and solution) in Reading along with learning correct letter formation for Writing. In Math we have begun to learn about shapes and their characteristics and how we can find shapes in our environment. For Social Studies we have started learning about Virginia symbols and how and why we vote. Please continue to read with your child nightly.

Happy October! In Language Arts, we have been doing a good job working with our short vowels, digraphs, and CVCe words. We also have been working hard using the writing process, brainstorming and picking a topic to write about for our personal narrative writing activities. We are on our way to become great writers! In Math, we have been learning about equality between quantities using the equal and not equal symbols. Lastly, in Science we have been understanding what matter is and how it can exist in different phases. It's been fun doing experiments to show that! Please continue to practice reading nightly!

Wow! The first month of school has flown by. Third grade has been busy! We have been learning all about Citizenship and Reading about Diversity. Coming up in Math we will be solving addition and subtraction problems with and without regrouping. Please remember to send your child in each day with a fully charged chromebook. Happy October!

Hello parents,

As we move into our second month of school, the fourth grade team is so excited to continue the work that we are doing with each of our students. Below you will find what students will be working on in each subject this month.

Science: The student will investigate and understand that organisms, including humans, interact with one another and with the nonliving components in the ecosystem. Key ideas include: interrelationships exist in populations, communities, and ecosystems; food webs show the flow of energy within an ecosystem; changes in an organism’s niche and habitat may occur at various stages in its life cycle.

Math: The student will demonstrate fluency with multiplication facts through 12 × 12, and the corresponding division facts; estimate and determine sums, differences, and products of whole numbers; create and solve single-step and multistep practical problems involving addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and single- step practical problems involving division with whole numbers and estimate and determine quotients of whole numbers, with and without remainders.

Virginia Studies: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the first permanent English settlement in America by explaining the reasons for English colonization; describe the economic and geographic influences on the decision to settle at Jamestown; describe the importance of the charters of the Virginia Company of London in establishing the Jamestown settlement; identify the importance of the General Assembly (1619) as the first representative legislative body in English America; identify the impact of the arrival of Africans and English women to the Jamestown settlement; describe the hardships faced by settlers at Jamestown and the changes that took place to ensure survival; and describe the interactions between the English settlers and the native peoples, including the role of the Powhatan in the survive the settlers.

Reading: Students will continue to work with being about to understand use and identify the importance skills such as genre, identifying the narrator of a story or speaker of a poem, identifying the conflict and resolutions within a story, drawing conclusions based on the elements of a story; using text features to predict and categorize information; differentiating between fiction and nonfiction text; and identifying main idea and supporting details.

Hello 5th Grade Families! We have hit the ground running this year. We have covered our weather unit (Thanks Tropical Storm Ophelia for the assist), rounding decimals, word problems, genres, and nonfiction text features. Coming up in October we are looking forward to learning about the Solar System, Multiplying and Dividing Decimals, and a variety of fiction and nonfiction skills. Please remind your students to charge their Chromebooks nightly and review notes periodically throughout the week at home.

We have been very busy in school so far. Our classes are starting to become a family! We continue to work on being Superfriends and expressing our emotions. We have been identifying the first letter of our name, writing our name daily and learning the features of the four main shapes. We will continue to use the Streamin3 curriculum where we will study “How Things Grow” and “The World Around Us!” The letters we will learn this month are Mm, Tt & Bb. Please have students color the October reading log based on their nightly reading!

MUSIC:

Nansemond Parkway’s Third grade students will be performing “A Salute to Our Veterans” on Tuesday, November 14 at 7:00 p.m. in our school’s gymnasium. Students will honor our Veterans and members of the Military through songs and poems. Please invite your family and friends that have served, or still serving, our country to join us as we celebrate and honor their service to our country.

ART:

Nansemond Parkway Elementary School will join together with all of Suffolk Public Schools to display a selection of work made by our young artists in the 45th annual Suffolk Peanut Festival! We welcome you and your child to attend the event and see the artwork in the Suffolk Public School’s student art tent. The art will be on display from October 5-8.

The Peanut Fest event will take place at :

Suffolk Executive Airport

1410 Airport Rd.

Suffolk, VA 23434

You can also visit their website for more information about the event. http://www.suffolkpeanutfest.com/

We hope to see you there!

Media Center:

READING ALOUD

The amount of research showing the benefits of reading aloud to a child is STAGGERING. I don’t mean just reading aloud to children until they themselves can read. I mean reading aloud even to high schoolers.

Did you know that silent reading was “discovered” around 400 years ago? Before the 16th century, the few people that could read all read aloud. They believed that reading silently made the words stick in your head and drive you mad. If you haven’t read Don Quixote, the reason that he went mad was because he stayed awake at night reading… SILENTLY! *GASP*

This isn’t the 16th century, though. Parents read aloud to your kids. EVEN 3rd-6th grade students AND BEYOND.

You know when many students start getting turned off to reading? 3rd-5th grade. You know when most families stop reading aloud to their kids and reading becomes silent? 2nd-4th grade. Coincidence? Maybe, but I doubt it.

Happy October. Our first month of school has gone by so quickly. Now we are in a groove and will begin our club activities and remediation opportunities. Progress Reports go live in HAC on 10/5. Please sign your child up for Saturday Academy if they are experiencing difficulty. Please also look out for opportunities for your child to join the club of their choice. Student Council elections will be the first school-wide opportunity for the students. More information to come.

During the month of September, classroom guidance lessons have focused on Meeting

and Understanding the role of the School Counselor and identifying and managing emotions.

Self regulation is important in helping students to identify and manage their emotions. Students

were introduced to the Zones of Regulation which categorizes feelings into four colors: Blue -

Sad,Yellow - Frustrated, Red - Angry, Green- Happy. Once students who are in either the blue,

yellow or red zone are able to identify what they are feeling and can recognize what zone they

are in, they can work back to the green zone. We talked about coping strategies, specifically

some breathing techniques to help to calm down.

The Student of the Month program is starting in October. Students will be selected by

their teachers for demonstrating a different character trait each month. The character trait for

October is Respect. Students will receive special recognition along with their awards.

Please feel free to contact me if you need assistance with your child's academic or

personal/social needs. I can be reached via email at chandapittman@spsk12.net or by calling

the school at (757)923-4167.

Our first family engagement night will be Tuesday, October 17th from 5:45-6:45. Families will participate in our Title I presentation and then rotate through Math Stations. We are excited to see you and hope to help you feel that "Learning Isn't Scary!"

Parents,

If your child has access to a device at home, here are some reading resources that can be used to reinforce various skills and SOLs.

• iReady (contact your child's teacher for login credentials)
• storylineonline.net
• starfall.com
• abcya.com
• getepic (contact your child's teacher for the class code)
• YouTube: Jack Hartman videos

Parents!

Do you know what PBIS is? Do you know our school-wide expectations? Please review our matrix below and fill in our first parent PBIS survey! Look back each month for more PBIS news! Ask your child's teacher about their classroom matrices and classroom expectations!

Braves are Behaving!!!! So far this year students have earned a total of 181 Braves Behaving! Our students are showing respectful, responsible, and safe behaviors all over Nansemond Parkway Elementary. At this time, the PBIS team is looking to recruit a parent to join the team. This would require virtual attendance at our monthly meetings which take place the first Wednesday of each month at 8:00am. If interested please reach out to Brittany Cummings at brittany.cummings@spsk12.net.

That's How Braves Behave!

This October, we will continue to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and we are also recognizing Disability Awareness Month. Here at Nansemond Parkway Elementary, we strive to be inclusive of all forms of disability. We recognize and empower individuals with disabilities and make sure we highlight the ABLE in disABLE!!

October 2nd

October 16th

October 19th

October 22-27