Dear CMIT South Elementary Tiger Families,

As we embrace the autumn season, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude and share some exciting updates about our vibrant school community. Your unwavering support and active participation make our school a remarkable place of learning and growth.

First, I want to extend my deepest appreciation for making October's Principal Month truly extraordinary. Your thoughtful gestures, dedication, and enthusiasm created countless memorable moments that touched my heart. The way our entire school community came together to celebrate education and leadership exemplifies the strong, supportive family we've built at CMIT South Elementary. Thank you, Thank you, annnnd THANK YOU!

I'm particularly grateful for your engagement in our recent Parent University: Data Night. Your commitment to understanding and supporting your child's academic journey is truly commendable. For those who attended, we've made the resources readily available:

• Main presentation

• Recording of the general session

• Grade-specific information, including data analysis, strengths, growth areas, and intervention strategies. While the grade-level breakout sessions were not recorded, you can access grade-specific information by clicking on your child's grade level within the main presentation.

If you haven't yet provided your feedback from Data Night, we value your input and encourage you to complete the attendance and feedback form. Remember, your child's teacher is always available to discuss any questions about their academic progress. Our next Parent University will focus on Reading (Phonics) on Monday, November 18, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. Don't miss this hands-on, in-person session focusing on implementing phonics activities at home.

Recent Highlights:

• Our Character Book Parade on November 1st was a spectacular display of creativity, with students and staff bringing literary characters to life. Even our beloved mascot, Roary the Tiger, joined in the festivities!

• The Fall Festival on November 2nd, organized by our outstanding PTO, was a tremendous success. From face painting and trunk-or-treating to bounce houses and student entrepreneurs, the event showcased our community's spirit and talent.

Important Dates & Announcements:

• November 5th: Schools and Offices Closed for General Election

• November 6-21st: Coat Drive - Please donate new or gently used coats (Contact Ms. Hendy at ania.hendy@pgcps.org with questions)

• Saturday Academy: Beginning November 9th, 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. (Contact Mrs. Watkis at lwatkis@cmitsouthes.org with questions)

For more detailed information about our November initiatives and updates, please view our Principal Monthly Updates video.

As always, remember that the STEM Journey Begins Here at CMIT South Elementary! We're looking forward to a year filled with exciting learning opportunities, personal growth, and impressive achievements for all our scholars. Your partnership in education makes a profound difference in our students' success. Thank you for your continued support and engagement in our school community. Together, we're creating an environment where every child can thrive and reach their full potential. Remember, we can't continue this STEM journey without you!

Let's make this year a roaring success! 🦁📚

Wishing you all a 🐾 PawwRific 🐾 day and see you all Monday, November 4, 2024!

With Tiger Pride,

Ms. Tauheedah N. Simmons-Lewis

Acting Principal

Chesapeake Math & IT Academy Elementary South (CMIT)

Next week, as part of a county-mandated curriculum, I will be leading a personal safety lesson with our 1st-grade students. This lesson is designed to help children understand essential safety rules, including those that relate to touching.

During the lesson, we will discuss the differences between safe touches, unsafe touches, and unwanted touches. We will also cover important strategies for responding if they ever find themselves in an uncomfortable or unsafe situation. The goal is to equip students with practical tools and knowledge to keep themselves safe in a variety of settings.

I understand that this is a sensitive topic, and I want to ensure that you feel informed and comfortable with the material being covered. Please feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions, concerns, or if you’d like further details about the lesson content.

Thank you for your support in making sure our students feel empowered and protected.

Grade Level Blurb:

Thank you to all of our Kindergarten families who supported our school in making the Candy Wars, Book Character Day, Pumpkin Projects, and Fall Festivals a success. Next week, we will be passing out the field trip permission, so be on the lookout for the form. This year we will be only collecting money for the field trip through My School Bucks. The new homework packet went out October 28 and information about the new monthly project was included in the homework packet. Students will be creating a family tree to celebrate those special relatives or loved ones that they are thankful for. We look forward to seeing all of your amazing projects. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact your scholar’s teacher.

We are so excited about our upcoming field trip to the National Aquarium. A huge thank you in advance to everyone who will be chaperoning our trip to make it a success. We will be eating lunch on the bus, so lunches from home should be sent in a disposable bag, with no glass containers/bottles, and no food that needs to be heated up. All students should wear their gym uniform, including a gray T-shirt. Thank you for your assistance!

IMPORTANT KINDERGARTEN DATES-

NOVEMBER 5: No School

NOVEMBER 8: Homework Due

NOVEMBER 21: Family Tree Project due

NOVEMBER 22: Field Trip

NOVEMBER 27-29: Fall Break

Reading Updates:

UNIT 2: Living Together

Week 1: Animals on the Move

Essential Question: Why do some animals move from place to place?

• UNIT 1 ASSESSMENT

• Phonological Awareness: Initial and Final Sounds; Segment and Blend Phonemes

Blend and Segment: Onset and Rime

• Phonics: Consonants Dd and Kk

• High-Frequency Words: of, are, that

• Spelling words found in weekly readings: butterflies, geese, whales

• Unit Vocabulary: grow, need, share, depend

Learning Goals:

• Identify the main idea to understand informational text

• Find the Main Idea and Supporting Details

• Make Inferences About Main Ideas

• Words that Name Different Animals

• Adjectives and Articles

• Rhyming Sort

Math Updates:

TOPIC 3- Numbers 6 to 10

Essential Understanding: Counting tells how many are in a set, or group, no matter which order the objects are counted. The number said when counting a group is the total. Counting is cumulative.

• Review

• Assessment

• Ways to make ten, which groups of numbers can be counted together to make ten

• Which number is one less or one greater than any given number

• Counting tells how many are in a set or a group, no matter which order the objects are counted

• The last number said when counting a group is the total number

• Use objects, drawings, and numbers to represent numbers in different ways

Vocabulary: six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ten frame, make ten

Science Updates:

TOPIC 2 LESSON 2-

Essential Question: How can you classify different objects?

• Identify how objects are alike and how they are different

• Describe and sort objects

• Observe how objects can change

Vocabulary: matter, change, shape

Social Studies Updates:

CHAPTER 2 LESSON 2- Symbols of our Country

Essential Question- What are the important symbols of America?

• Recognize the American Flag, what it looks like, and what it represents

• Identify important national symbols that represent the U.S.

• Recognize different songs important to our nation

Vocabulary: pledge, landmark, freedom

Health Updates:

NOVEMBER TOPIC: Healthy Foods

Lesson 1:Food Needs for Life

• Identify food as a need for all living things.

• Explain how choosing healthful food promotes a positive self-image.

• Identify routines for healthy eating.

• Compare and contrast the needs of living things.

Grade Level Blurb:

Hello Tiger Family, Thank you all for participating in our Principal’s Appreciation spirit week. You all are amazing!

Reading:

We have completed Unit 1 in our Reading books. Your scholars will be testing this week. This assessment is a comprehension assessment.

Math:

Scholars are learning a variety of strategies to help add within 100. This methods include 100’s chart, open number line, and breaking apart the second addend

Science:

Students are continuing to learn the Scientific Method to help as they begin to work on their Stem Fair Projects

Social Studies:

The next Topic will be People, Places and Nature.

Health:

Students are learning about how their brain uses their five senses

Reading:

We are finishing up Unit 1! Students in Ms. Madison’s class and Mrs. Flores’s class have their Unit 1 assessment on Monday. Please note that the test is focused on comprehension, so students should read any of their books this weekend (and summarize them) to study! IXL also has lessons on comprehension that students can use. All classes also reviewed main idea, supporting details, and parts of speech!

Math:

Students worked on Topic 2 - patterns of multiplication for numbers 0,1,2,5,9, and 10. Students also worked through multiplying groups of 8 in Topic 3.

Study your multiplication facts when you can! Science: Students learned about unbalanced forces, as well as electricity!

Social Studies:

We retaught renewable and non renewable resources! We briefly reviewed landforms, regions, and bodies of water as well.

Health:

All classes continued to learn about the functions of the eye!

Grade Level Blurb:

Greetings Tiger Family,

One quarter down and three more to go. We have made it to the end of the first quarter. Grades have now been updated in Synergy for you to view. As we continue the year the classroom expectations have been set around behavior and work habits. Students are expected to follow school policies and be bucket fillers not dippers. As we move into the second quarter we will increase the level of interventions to support student needs. We will continue to have Winning Wednesdays with the focus being on reaching students where they may be. Please be on the lookout for specialized letters and emails sent to you regarding tutoring and other programs we have at the school.

We thank everyone that participated in our Principal’s Spirit week for our wonderful principal Ms. Lewis. Friday it was so great seeing everyone dressing up as characters from books. We enjoyed talking about our characters and our books with one another.

The fourth grade teachers became characters from Jory John books.

Parent Teacher Conferences:

Conferences with teachers are available to conference with families as needed. Please reach out to the homeroom teacher about scheduling a parent teacher conference.

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Tuesday November 5, 2024: No School Election Day

• November 27-29, 2024: No School Thanksgiving Break

Uniforms:

We are a uniform school. Students must be in the proper uniform each and every day. Students are expected to have mostly black shoes. They may wear a navy blue or school logo jacket or pullover during class. Students will be asked to remove any jacket or sweater that is not following the uniform policy.

Fourth Grade Reminders:

This is a friendly reminder that late work is only accepted if a student has an excused absence! If a scholar is absent and does not bring a note they will earn a 0 on the assignment that was missed. Please read the reminders to ensure that you are partnering with your scholars to make them successful for school.

Students must bring their agenda book each day. Teachers will note the agenda book and it should be signed nightly by the adult at home.

Please allow up to 48 business hours for all responses to emails and Classdojo messages. Teachers are not actively monitoring their emails during the day because we are engaged in instruction. Emails are not monitored over the weekend or in the evening hours when teachers have gone home. If the message sent relates to dismissal changes please call the school directly to leave a message with the front office.

Please check Synergy weekly to see scholar’s updated grades. Canvas is a Learning Management System in which scholars utilize to complete assignments and get access to materials.The grades provided in Synergy are those that will be used to calculate progress reports and report cards.

If your scholar is absent, please share a note with the homeroom teacher within 3 days of your scholar returning back to school. In order for students to receive make-up work you must provide a note stating; the student’s name, the date of absence, and reason for absence. Work is provided to students upon their return to school with an absence note.

Reading Updates:

All texts that are being read in the classroom are also available for students to reread at home in their Vol. 1 textbooks. Please have students continue to read and discuss with you information that they find in the text. Students should always read a portion of the text and share any thoughts or questions they had while reading. Students should also note the text underlining, circling, and highlighting parts of the story that were important to know. Homework continues to be sent home on a weekly basis on the first day of the week.

This Week: We said goodbye to Unit 1 Networks. In this unit students sought to answer the question: How can a place affect how we live? The texts that were read in this unit introduced students to people and places and how they were connected to each other. Students closed out the week by writing about the author’s purpose for writing “Barbed Wire Baseball.” Students identified whether or not the purpose was to inform or entertain the reader and supported it with details and evidence from the text.

Next Week: Students will begin Unit 2 Adaptations. In this unit students will read texts that explore how living things adapt to their environment. Our first text will be “Feathers: Not Just for Flying” in Vol. 1 textbook pages (227-245). In this text students will read about different ways that birds use their feathers so that they can survive in their environment. We will explore features of an informational text. We will also explore the main idea of the text and support it with details from the text. This week's spelling words will be plural nouns regular and irregular.

Math Updates:

This week we will continue with Topic 2:Fluently Add and Subtract Whole Numbers. Our focus strategies for next week; partial sums and differences, and using the number line to count up and down when solving equations.

Please check Synergy ParentVue and Canvas with your scholar to ensure the completion of assignments.

Science Updates:

This week we continued our exploration of Topic 1 Lesson 2 “Collisions”, this section focuses on the changes in energy that occur when objects of differing mass collide and the different ways energy can be transferred between objects.

*STEM FAIR REMINDER* Materials, Procedures, and Variables DUE 11/6

Please check Synergy ParentVue and Canvas with your scholar to ensure completion of assignments

Social Studies Updates:

This week: Students continued working on their "Quest Findings" activity, where they will create an advertisement highlighting a specific region in the United States. This project will require them to research and incorporate information about local resources, adaptations to the environment, and the region's weather and climate. The goal is to effectively showcase the unique characteristics of their chosen region while demonstrating their understanding of the material.

Next week: Students will explore the significant interactions between Native Americans and European settlers. They will examine how these encounters transformed Native American cultures, from shifts in lifestyle and trade to the impact of diseases and colonization. Through this lesson, students will gain insight into the complexities of these early relationships and the lasting changes that shaped the history of both continents.

Health Updates:

In health we are learning about our Mouths and keeping our Teeth Healthy and clean.

Grade Level Blurb:

Congratulations to all our students for successfully finishing Quarter 1! Their hard work and dedication are truly commendable, and I’m looking forward to seeing their continued growth in Quarter 2.

Reading:

What I learned this week:

We learned about Observations through informational text. Unit 2 week1 Story: From Far from Shore

Learning of Open and Closed Syllables, New Spelling Words, Unit 2 Week 2: Protecting Habitats, Unit 2 week 2 Story: A place for Frogs

I-ready: Open and Closed Syllables , IXL for Unit 2 Week 2 , and Savvas Realize Unit 2 Week 2

Informational Text, Open and Closed Syllables V/CV and VC/V

Agent, Recent, Apex, Vital, Rotate, Musical, Donut, Solar, Vacation, Slogan,Malice, Recommend, Energetic, Register, Lavish, Topical, Enemy, Honest, Element, Minimum

Hard copy will be given Monday, November 4, 2024

Assessment will be given Monday, November 11, 2024

I-Ready focus Comprehension and informational text

and IXL: focus on Unit 2 assigned based on the My View 5.1 book.

Support materials can be accessed through Clever.com

We learned about the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England. What life was like for them and the reasons why they left England (Chapter 3: Lesson 3: - Jenkins& Jones section)

Chapter 3: Lesson 2 The English Colonies in Virginia.

Why England explored and settled in North America (Lewis & Price- Watson)

Chapter 3: Lesson 4, The French and Dutch in North America (Jenkins & Jones)

Chapter 3: Lesson 3, Pilgrims and Puritans in New England (Lewis & Price- Watson

My World Social Studies Book

Knowing the Key events surrounding the establishment of French and

Dutch colonies in North America

IXL

PE-

Hello families!

Students continued to learn about muscular strength and muscular endurance. As we go into the winter months, please ensure students have proper footwear for PE days. We often do a lot of movement in gym!

2024-2025 School Calendar

School Meals

School Violence Resources and Support

PGCPS TV

CMIT South ES Enrichment Program

Vendor Managed Child Care

Parent Handbook

Students’ Rights and Responsibilities Handbook.

Synergy ParentVUE Support for Parents and Guardians