CMIT South Elementary School

Dear CMIT South Elementary Families,

As we embrace the spirit of Black History Month, I am reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful words: "Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." In this spirit, I want to celebrate the remarkable achievements and peaceful collaboration we've witnessed in our school community recently.

Your dedication as parents and the enthusiasm of our young Tigers continue to inspire us every day. The energy and commitment you bring to our school community make every initiative a resounding success.

I'm thrilled to share some highlights from our recent events:

Our 2nd Annual STEM Fair was an extraordinary showcase of our students' brilliance, drawing over 160 guests to witness our PAWWWRIFIC STEM projects and career presentations. I want to extend special recognition to Mr. Holloway, our STEM Program Coordinator, whose exceptional leadership made this dynamic event possible. Most importantly, I want to celebrate our 96 tiger participants who displayed their innovative projects with remarkable poise and expertise, truly demonstrating their growing mastery of STEM concepts.

The spirit of giving in our community continues to warm my heart. Our 2nd Coat Drive, in partnership with Bee's Babies Essentials, Inc., collected an impressive 110 coats, with 60 distributed to families in need. The remaining coats will be donated to local organizations serving our community. Ms. Hendy deserves special recognition for her compassionate leadership in making this initiative so successful.

Important Reminders:

• This is C-Week/Week 3, so please ensure your child follows their C-Week/Week 3 schedule for creative arts (CARTS) classes

• February 14, 2025, will be an inclement weather make-up day, and school will be open

As always, remember that the STEM Journey Begins Here at CMIT South Elementary! Let's continue to fill this school year 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 and we thank you for making CMIT South Elementary a vibrant and supportive learning community. Together, we're creating meaningful experiences for our scholars! 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, February 3, 2025!

With Tiger Pride,

Ms. Tauheedah N. Simmons-Lewis

Acting Principal

Chesapeake Math & IT Academy Elementary South (CMIT)

🔆SPOTLIGHT🔆 on what's happening around our School

As technology continues to be a major part of our children’s lives, it is essential to teach them the importance of digital citizenship. Recently, we have noticed an increase in students sending inappropriate messages to one another and sharing passwords with their peers. These behaviors can lead to serious consequences, including cyberbullying, privacy violations, and exposure to harmful content.

We encourage all parents to take an active role in monitoring their children’s electronic devices, including phones, tablets, and computers. Here are a few ways you can help promote safe and responsible online behavior at home:

• Check Devices Regularly – Review messages, social media activity, and apps that your child is using.

• Talk About Online Etiquette – Remind your child to communicate respectfully and to think before they send a message.

• Emphasize Password Safety – Encourage your child to keep passwords private and not share them with friends.

• Set Boundaries – Establish screen time limits and appropriate online usage guidelines.

• Encourage Open Communication – Let your child know they can come to you if they encounter something online that makes them uncomfortable.

As part of our school’s efforts to reinforce these lessons, I will be conducting guidance sessions with our older students to discuss digital citizenship, responsible technology use, and online safety. These lessons will focus on helping students understand the impact of their digital actions and the importance of making safe choices online.

We appreciate your partnership in keeping our students safe and responsible in the digital world. If you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

Sincerely,
Ms. Chandler

Grade Level Blurb

Students tested on MAP last week and the 2nd Annual Student STEM Fair Showcase was held. Students that practiced in the showcase did a great job. This week is our field trip to the MD Science Center. Homework will also be going home again starting this week.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, and in the interest of making passing out cards and treats easier, please do not use names. Instead, please write “my friend” in the space for “To” or leave it blank and your scholar's name in the space for “From”. Students that either bring in or order valentines will be the ones to pass them out at the end of that day.

As a reminder, please have your scholar utilize the online resource of Clever. Through Clever you can access other resources such as IXL, Lexia and i-Ready to help your scholar further their understanding of topics taught in class. Such as numbers 1-10, addition up to 10, shapes, sight words, and short vowel cvc, consonant vowel consonant, words.

Important Dates:

February 7: MD Science Center Field trip

February 14: Make up snow day: School Open

February 17: No School

February 21: Homework Packet and Black History Month Project Due

Reading Updates:

UNIT 2- Week 6: Project-Based Inquiry

Essential Question: How do some living things make what they need?

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

Blend and Segment: Onset and Rime

• Phonics: Short /o/ and short /e/ word families

• High-frequency words: blue, what, green

• Unit Vocabulary: grow, need, share, depend

Learning Goals:

• Review what a persuasive text is

• Learn about direction and position words

• Understand how to use a picture dictionary

• Find details in a text

• Capitalization for the beginning of a sentence

• Adjectives preposition and Verbs

• Rhyming Sort

Math Updates:

Topic 6: Understanding Addition

Essential Understanding: What types of situations involve addition?

• Show numbers in many way

• Express smaller parts of a bigger number with actions

• Represent addition as putting to or more numbers together up to 10

• Practice using an addition equation

• Show addition using number lines, ten frames and pictures

Vocabulary: plus, addition, equal sign, altogether, in all, patterns

Science Updates:

TOPIC 3 LESSON 2: Sunlight and Earth’s Surface

Essential Question: How do objects change in the sun?

• Learn how the relationship between the Earth and the sun

• Describe how the sun keeps things/people warm

• Designing structure to keep animals cool and protected

• Observe the sun

Vocabulary: Earth

Social Studies Updates:

Chapter 3 lesson 2: Jobs at School

Essential Question- How have jobs changed over time?

• Understand why people work

• Look into the different jobs that can be found at school

• Analyze a student’s job at school

Vocabulary: teacher, principal, and nurse

Health Updates:

February Topic: Going to the Doctor and Dentist

• Describe the difference between a doctor and a dentist

• Encourage confidence in the doctor’s or dentist’s office by discovering what happens when getting a checkup.

• Demonstrate respect for bodies and our teeth

• Explain why it is important to make healthy decisions

Vocabulary: doctor, dentist, teeth, help, and care

Grade Level Blurb:

Thank you for the amazing turnout Second Grade had this weekend at the Stem Fair Showcase. Each one of the scholars did an amazing job. Testing season is coming to an end. The Second Grade team would like to thank the parents for making sure your scholars were present and ready to test.

Reading Updates:

Reading this week we will complete research based writing activities. Students will compare and contrast important points from the test while using text-evidence to support their response.

Math Updates:

Students will learn how to count back and count up while using an open number line to Subtract.

Science Updates:

We will continue to discuss earths’ surfaces.

Social Studies Updates:

Students will continue to learn about our community as well as its resources.

Grade Level Blurb:

This week, we have mostly focused on district testing! However, all classes have been reviewing academic concepts that were introduced prior to Winter Break. We will continue to do so while staying on pace with our curriculum. If you have any questions specifically for one of your child’s teachers, please let us know. Thank you for your time!

Reading Updates:

We have started Unit 2, Week 1! This unit addresses fiction and nonfiction text that discusses plants and animals, and this week’s lesson focuses on texts addressing patterns in nature. We also worked on V/CV and VC/V words, and we reviewed concepts from the last week of Unit 1!

Math Updates:

Students have been working on problem solving division with the numbers 0, 1, 2, 5, 9, and 10! Additionally, they have been working on using the properties of multiplication (associative, commutative, and distributive) to problem solve with the numbers 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8!

Science Updates:

Students have been learning about electricity and magnetism! They are learning about how electricity and magnetism are related, as well as the cause and effect relationship between the two!

Social Studies Updates:

Ms. Madison and Mrs. Flores’s classes just finished Chapter 1! Ms. Howard and Ms. Hendy’s classes have started Chapter 2 (economics)!

Health Updates:

Students have been introduced to our unit on the food we eat! Specifically, all classes learned about how food gives us energy, and what counts as healthy eating.

Happy 3rd Quarter Tiger Family!

We are officially in the third quarter and we have plenty planned before the close of the quarter. We are excited to announce our first field trip of the year to the Spymuseum. Students have received their permission slips. This year payment will be collected through MySchoolbucks. The link will be shared with families through Classdojo. We do apologize for the delay in midyear diagnostic data, we still have a number of students that need to finish their makeup testing.

The character trait of the month of February is peace. We have been discussing with our students about the power of changing your mindset even when things get a little challenging. Please have your scholar practice creating positive affirmations that they can say to themselves. Please continue to read to get updates and important information from Fourth Grade.

Thank you for your continuing support and partnership.

Warm regards,

4th Grade Team

i-Ready:

i-Ready is a computer based math and reading program that is available for all of our scholars. Scholars have completed their diagnostics and are working on programs based on their areas of need. If scholars have access to a computer at home, we recommend that your scholar is getting at least 45 minutes of practice a week in both reading and math. Please encourage your child to complete lessons and ensure they complete the lessons independently to accurately improve their skills. i-Ready is accessed through clever.pgcps.org, and scholars will use their PGCPS logins to access the program.

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Friday February 14, 2025- School is Open!

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. If a scholar leaves early or arrives late to school and it is not excused they will earn a 0 for all work that is not completed.

If your scholar is absent, please share a note with the homeroom teacher and attendance managers 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.

Communications:

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.

Grading:

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.

Parent Teacher Conferences:

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

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 are reading the last text Unit 2 “Adaptations” The Weird and Wonderful Echidna” and “The Peculiar Platypus.” In these texts students are reading about two animals from Australia and their strange adaptations. Students are working on the skilly of synthesize. Synthesizing is where we combine information that was learned from two different texts to support one main idea. As students are reading the text we will work on the skill determining the main idea across two different texts. Students will also take the information gained from the two texts to compare and contrast.

Next Week: We will go back to Australia to continue to read the texts closely about the strange adaptations of the echidna and the platypus. Students are sill integrating or combining the information that is given to speak knowledgeably about animals that have strange adaptations. Students will also complete an informational writing in which they will combine information from both texts.

Math Updates:

This week we will continue with Topic 3, Multiplying mulit-digit numbers. We will also be taking the IXL diagnostic test Friday, February 7th.

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

Science Updates:

This week students took the Winter MAP Science test. Students began presenting their STEM FAIR presentations as well as peer reviewing classmates projects using a scoring rubric.

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

Social Studies Updates:

This week: Students read Chapter 3, Lesson 1, "Principles of Our Government," and be able to explain the fundamental principles upon which the U.S. government is based, including popular sovereignty, rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and individual rights.

Next week: Students will read Chapter 3, Lesson 2, "How Our Government Works," and explain the responsibilities of the three branches of the United States government: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

Health Updates:

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

Grade Level Blurb:

We have officially entered the third quarter of the school year, and I am so proud of the progress our students continue to make! Here’s a look at what we’ve been working on this week in class.

Black History Month Spotlight:

In celebration of Black History Month, students received information today about influential Black innovators in science and math project!

Reading Updates:

Unit 3 Week 1: Realistic Fiction and Listening Comprehension

Love, Amalia: Develop Vocabulary, Check for Understanding and Word Study

Unit 3 Week 2: Realistic Fiction

A Pet for Calvin: Develop Vocabulary, Check for Understanding and Word Study

Reading book: MyView Literacy 5.2, IXL, I-Ready, SavvasRealized accessed through Clever.com

Carefully listening to stories or information while understanding and remembering important details.

Reading fictional stories where the characters, settings, and events feel real.

Spell words with -ize, -ance, -ence, -ist

Appearance, Disappearance, Familiarize, Sanitize, Pessimist Optimist, Brilliance, Physicist, Colonize, Insurance, Coherence, Protagonist, Influence, Antagonist, Memorize, Italicize, Existence, Clearance, Performance, Preference

IXL and I-Ready accessed through Clever.com

Math Updates:

We kicked off our unit 6 on dividing decimals! This week, students focused on dividing decimals by powers of ten and are now beginning to practice dividing decimals by a whole number. Please encourage your child to review place value and division strategies at home to reinforce their learning.

Science Updates:

MISA prep is underway! We had some great class discussions about human impact on the Earth, exploring ways we can protect our environment and make sustainable choices. These conversations are helping students think critically and apply real-world connections to science.

Chapter 4 Lesson 3: Slavery in the Colonies

Lesson Check and Close Readings

Chapter 5: The American Revolution

Big Question: What is Worth Fighting For?

Social Studies book, IXL through Clever.com

Students will discover the 4 W’s of the American Revolution

IXL

Health Updates:

We are continuing our unit on lung health and learning how to protect our lungs. Students are gaining important knowledge about respiratory health and the impact of various environmental factors.

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