Brookside Updates

• Tues. May 14: Gr. 5 NYS Science Test
• Wed. May 15: Gr. 5 to Donnelly - Kick It for Cans
• Thurs. May 16: Gr. 5 to RTS Middle School for tour (during the school day)
• Fri. May 17: Gr. 3 to Waterman
• Fri. May 17: PTA Gr. 5 Party - 6:00-8:00 - see email for flyer and sign ups.
• Tues. May 21: Budget Vote, Art Show & Community Night! See attached flier!
• May 24-27: No School
• May 29: Gr. 4-5 to Rumble Ponies
• May 29: Gr. 3 NYS Field Test
• May 30: UPK/Kindergarten Info Night @ 6:00-7:00
• June 12: Field Day
• June 13: Early Dismissal @ 12:30
• June 17: Gr. 5 Moving Up @ 10:00
• June 18: Last Day for Students (full day)
• There will be many more events in June that we will post details about soon!

ANNUAL DISTRICT WIDE ART SHOW and COMMUNITY NIGHT

Art Show: Mark your calendars and join us any time between 4-8 PM on Tuesday, May 21 at the Senior High School! All students in the entire district each have 2 pieces of art on display!

This year, Community Night (4:30-6:30) is combined with the art show! Come do crafts with high school clubs, try to hit the target on the dunk tank; get snacks from Frito Lay and Hershey’s; check out the ROBOTICS and Hydroponic plant displays; and hear music from students! Bring your whole family; extended family members like grandparents and aunts and uncles are welcome too! I look forward to seeing you there! The poster for the event is attached above.

Dear SV families,

Susquehanna Valley will be offering our Summer Enrichment Camp for our SV students going into grades 4-8 during the month of July at RTS Middle School. The program offers a variety of courses led by our amazing SV staff! We are pleased to announce that we will be able to offer bus transportation from two designated locations- Donnelly and Brookside.

Summer Enrichment will run from 8:00-11:30 am, four days a week beginning Monday, July 8 and concluding on Thursday, July 25. Students will rotate through three different classes each day. There are a limited number of spots available for our enrichment program this summer, so please sign your child up ASAP. Registration deadline will be: June 3, 2024 and students will be enrolled on a first come, first serve basis. If a class is full, your child will be moved to another class.

To sign up your child please complete the form.

https://students.arbitersports.com/susquehanna-valley-central-school-district/summer-enrichment-2024

Directions for Arbiter are attached below.

If you have any questions, please reach out to either Catherine Kacyvenski, Assistant Superintendent at ckacyven@svabers.org OR Jessica Wright Summer Enrichment Coordinator at jwright@svsabers.org

Greetings from the Library!

It's been a busy month! Yes, we are packing and preparing for a prettier space, but we haven't stopped learning!

Fourth and fifth grade created plays. Third grade created paper books for younger children. Second grade planned and created paper chains for a STEM activity, and first grade practiced cooperation with Magnatiles. Kindergarten is practicing shelf skills, such as only pulling a book off the shelf far enough to see the cover before deciding if they like it. PreK is talking about animals and about cooperation in sharing STEM items, such as Legos.

While we are packing up for our construction project, you may wonder how we will keep up library class without books. There are plenty of STEM activities available, and we will lean on EPIC or SORA for read alouds. Technology is really helping!

Since we're packing, we are looking for books to be returned earlier than last year. Please look around your house to see if you have any books that belong to us. Most will say BROOKSIDE on the sticker on the outside cover, but some do still say CEDARHURST. Thanks for all your help!

Enjoy the amazing weather!

Students who will be entering the 4th and 5th grade next year will have the opportunity to sign up for chorus. Your child will be given a chorus permission slip in June. Chorus is a fun and wonderful musical experience. There is no cost to join and rehearsals are only once a week in the mornings from 9:15-9:55. They will not be missing any classes during this time. If your 4th grade child is already participating in chorus, they will automatically be enrolled for the following school year, so they will not need to sign a permission slip.

If you have any more questions, please feel free to email me. Thank you for your support and encouragement in our choral program and look forward to singing and performing with your child!

~Mrs. Dyson

kdyson@svsabers.org

Just the Facts

As we get ready to go on summer break, people ask what they can do to help their child prevent "summer slide". Besides spending time reading, math is also very important to keep going during the summer months. Kids forget addition and subtraction facts very quickly, if they are not practiced. Every fall, teachers are expecting students to know their facts, as lessons require that basic knowledge. Students often end up needing more help, if they don’t remember the facts. Multiplication relies on a background in addition, as it is repeated addition. Fourth graders need it to solve problems well into the thousands place within the first few weeks of school.

Students use many math sites throughout the year. They can access many of them online at home, too. The tricky part is that some sites claim they are math sites, like MathPlayground and CoolMathGames, but not all the games on them are math. Double check to make sure that the game a child is playing is math, as it is easy to get distracted by other fun games. There are also many family game suggestions online. Just Googling “Math Games” or “Family Math Games” will bring up many ideas. Flash cards always work, too.

Just remember, the facts are what matter!!!

Pre-K has learned all about plants. We became scientists by planting seeds and observing them grow, as well as dissecting bean seeds to find the baby plant inside. We learned the parts of plants, what each part does, and also taste tested some of the parts of the plant that are edible.

We have been working hard in kindergarten learning our tricky words and writing responses to the stories we read like “big kids” by using complete sentences. In writing we are working on opinions and how to justify why we prefer certain things. We are still talking about using capital letters to start our sentences, finger spaces between words and punctuation at the end of our sentences. In math, we are breaking apart numbers 11-20 into 10 ones and some ones. We are reading all of the time, using the skills we have learned this year to persevere through the words that we do not know and talking about the stories we have read to help develop our comprehension skills. The countdown is on until first grade!

First graders had a GREAT time at Kopernik where they had an opportunity for lots of fun while learning. They got to tour the observatory dorms and see the large telescopes that are used to look at the sky. Students explored and learned about shadows while using three dimensional objects to create/draw shadows. They also experimented with the movement of a light beam along indirect paths in order to strike a target as they learned about how light moves and travels. A FUN DAY HAD BY ALL!

We are collecting and organizing data to create graphs. We are using the graphs to ask and answer questions focusing on comparison questions. The unit will continue with money and telling time. It is helpful for your child to sort and count coins at home for more hands-on practice.

Also, your 2nd graders will get to visit the 2 other 2nd grade rooms for STEM Friday in the month of May! Be sure to ask your child what he/she did each Friday.

Mrs. Harlow's fourth graders are studying sound waves. They used balloons to prove that sound actually does travel in waves through air!

4th graders worked so hard on both the NYS ELA and Math tests. This was our first year taking the test on the computers and we were so impressed with their attention and effort!

Currently in ELA we just finished reading a novel, Eagle Song and we will be starting a new novel in class, Poppy. Poppy is a fantastic book where we will examine character traits and what it means to have courage.

In Math, we are preparing for 5th grade with our decimal unit. We will be discussing what a decimal is and how to compare and add them. We will also be relating decimals to money.

Thanks for getting in your permission slips for our two field trips. We will be going to the Rumble Ponies on May 29th and to Binghamton University on June 7th. There are so many events, please be sure to check the calendar. Thank you parents for all you do!

5th grade has been spending the past month preparing and taking our state assessments. Our students have put in a lot of hard work and we are so proud of their efforts. We also have been working hard on learning all about the coordinate plane in math. In ELA, we are reading the novel, Refugee, by Alan Gratz.

May offers our 5th graders a lot of exciting opportunities! First, we will be heading to Donnelly Elementary on May 15 to take part in the "Kick it for Cans" fundraiser to benefit the food pantry at Donnelly. On May 16, we will be visiting Richard T. Stank Middle School as the 5th graders begin their preparation for 6th grade. Later this month, we will have the opportunity to attend a Binghamton Rumble Ponies game during the school day. This is always a great day for our students!

Don't forget, as noted a few weeks ago, our Moving Up Celebration has been moved to Monday, June 17, at 10:00.