BARFIELD BANNER

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Happy New Year! I hope that you had time to rest and relax over break! I certainly enjoyed the extra time with my family and friends. December was a busy month, filled with wonderful memories for our staff and students. I would like to thank all parents and family members that volunteered during December. Whether you were here at school, or at home, ensuring your child was well prepared for the many events taking place, your time and commitment to our students and staff is appreciated- we could do it without your help and support.

As we head into January, I would like you to pay special attention to our district calendar. There were a few adjustments made to the calendar after the hurricane, which moved Teacher Planning Day, as well as our end of Quarter 2.

I also want to make sure all families are aware of the upcoming Progress Monitoring 2 F.A.S.T Assessments that will take place in January for students in Kinder-5th grade. Students’ performance on this second round of Progress Monitoring is important and leads to success at the end of the year. All our students review their PM1 Data, set goals, and track growth on these assessments. Please look for notifications from your child’s teacher on the exact testing days. We look forward to seeing our students’ growth as we are halfway through the school year!

I have listed some important dates below.

As always, please reach out to our front office or your child’s teacher with any questions.

Thank you!

Mrs. Ledbetter

Monday, Jan 6th- Students and Staff Return

Friday, Jan 10th- End of Quarter 2

Monday, Jan 13th- Teacher Planning Day, No school for Students

Friday, Jan 17th - 3rd-5th Parent Lunch

Monday, Jan 20th - No School

Upcoming Testing Dates

Please mark your calendars for the state testing dates and try to plan any appointments outside your child’s testing time.

District Science Quarterly Benchmark Test -Tues. Dec 17 Grade 5th

STATE FAST PM2 ELA

o Tue Jan 14 – Grades 3rd and 4th

o Wed Jan 15 – Grades Kdg and 1st

o Thu Jan 16 - Grades 2nd and 5th

STATE FAST PM2 Math

o Tue Jan 21 - Grades 3rd and 4th

o Wed Jan 22 – Grades Kdg and 1st

o Thu Jan 23 - Grades 2nd and 5th

Toys in School

Please be sure to clean out backpacks regularly and make sure all toys, stay at home. Toys can be a huge distraction in the classroom and sometimes even cause disruptions in learning.

Attendance Procedures

We strive for all students to be at school all day, every day. In the event your child is sick and has to be absent, please either email dismissal@collierschools.com and let us know or call 239-377-8500 to report the absence. Reporting all absences avoids “unexcused” absences on your child’s attendance record. If your child visits the doctor, please submit a doctor note within 24 hours of returning to school to the office and the absence or early pick up will be marked “excused”. Excessive absences and/tardies could result in Out of Zone designations being rescinded and/or having to attend truancy court.

Update Parent Portal Information

Have you moved, changed a phone number or do you need to add another person to your child’s pick up list? Please make sure all information in the parent portal is updated with any changes that may occur throughout the school year.

Cell Phones and Smart Watches

Students must keep smart watches and cell phones powered off and in their backpack during school hours.

TBE Dress Code

Please be reminded that students must follow the Dress Code Monday-Thursday. On Fridays, students are permitted to wear TBE Spirit Shirts. On occasion, students are permitted to earn a dress down pass from their teacher or other staff member. Please visit TBE website for Dress Code information

https://www.collierschools.com/Domain/56

😊 A huge Thank you for the volunteers who help in the carline in the morning! We need you and appreciate you!

Dana Franklin

Assistant Principal, Curriculum & Instruction, Tommie Barfield Elementary School

Dear Kindergarten parents,

Thank you for your support with our holiday activities during the month of December! Our hunt for the Gingerbread Man was especially fun! In Math, we will continue to count 1-100 and start from any given number and counting backwards from 20-0. We will also be working on numbers 11-20 and understanding that they are made up of 1 ten and other ones. In ELA, we will be working on retelling of a story to enhance their comprehension along with comparing / contrasting characters in stories. Students should be able to identify uppercase / lowercase letters, beginning – middle – ending sounds of a word, and fluently read between 43-67 sight words by the end of the 3rd quarter. Students will be writing 2-3 complete sentences. In Science, we will be learning about Observable Properties, Changes in Matter, and Sound. Social Studies we will be talking about National Holidays - Martin Luther King Jr.

The Kindergarten Teachers

Dear First Grade Parents,

First grade students have been learning to put the reading pieces together. We work on vocabulary, fluency, accuracy, and comprehension each day. We are navigating glued sounds, suffixes, blends, and other rules to know while reading. Reading is a journey! We love to see great progress happening. Thank you, families, for your support with reading daily at home.

We are exploring expository writing. Students are looking for topic and key details in text and then writing about it. We are crafting sentences using correct spacing, sight words and punctuation.

In math, we are exploring number patterns. We build math fluency, and we also stretch our thinking with story problems and higher order thinking.

First grade students work hard each day to meet their goals. They are kind friends and are becoming amazing leaders. We are so proud of each of them!

The First Grade Team

Dear Parents,

We cannot believe the 2nd Quarter is coming to an end! Time has flown past with lots of learning and holiday fun. We want to send a special thank you to all our awesome parents decorating the hallway for Grinch Day and helping with Field Day. We could not have these fun days without you!

As we continue our learning journey after Winter Break, our students will continue deepening their reading comprehension skills and work to identify rhyme schemes in poems, identify the central idea, story structure, relevant details, identifying, and explaining the theme, and retelling a text to enhance comprehension. In math, students will continue to work on customary and metric units of measurements. Additionally, students will use these skills to solve two-step problems with comparison. In Science, we will explore gravity, start our rocks, and soil unit!

Thank you again for your continued support!

Warmest wishes,

Dear Parents,

As the second quarter comes to an end, our third graders have continued to do great things!

The students have focused on explaining character development, characters’ perspectives, and identified types of poems in literary text. The students also worked on identifying the central idea while summarizing a text. In writing, the students read a variety of informational texts to write an expository essay.

In Science, the students described the changes water undergoes when it changes state. In Social Studies, we learned about the continents and oceans, the five regions of the United States and how the environment influences where people live.

Please continue to read with your child every night and practice their math facts. We appreciate your support and all that you do for our students! We hope your families had a wonderful holiday season.

Thank you,

The Third Grade Team

Dear parents,

Welcome back to everyone and Happy New Year. We hope everyone had a relaxing and safe winter break. As we are “keeping the end in mind” with starting a new year we plan to stay focused on growing, learning, and working hard to continue to accomplish our goals and make this a successful new year.

At the end of December, we wrapped up our Science unit on Renewable and Non-Renewable resources. We will be moving into our unit on Earth’s rotation, revolution, and the phases of the moon, which always is a favorite with our kids!

In math, we finished Unit 9 on the addition and subtraction of fractions with like denominators. Students will continue to be actively engaged using mathematical strategies to represent fractions as they utilize those strategies to add, subtract, and multiply fractions and mixed numbers.

Right before winter break all our 4th graders took their second iReady diagnostic. The ELA and Math FAST assessments will be this month. These assessments are an important instructional tool that helps us educators reflect, guide, and better engage our students.

ELA FAST: January 14th

Math FAST: January 21st

January brings us into Habit 5: Seek First to Understand then to be Understood. Our students should be familiar with this habit because they have been actively working on it and displaying it through our LEAD time lessons and all throughout the school.

As we move into quarter 3, students are analyzing and adjusting their goals to better reach those goals by the end of the school year. Please remember that our students are expected to be in school and engaged every day. If you have any questions or concerns about your child, please feel free to contact us here at school at any time. Success will happen as we continue to work together to help and support our students so they can reach their fullest potential.

As always thank you for your continued support,

The Fourth Grade Team

Dear 5th grade Families,

Happy New Year! We are so excited to dive into January’s curriculum, packed with engaging and enriching lessons. Here is a glimpse of what your child will be learning this month:

ELA (English Language Arts):

In ELA, students will explore the theme of water as a powerful and life-giving force through poetry and informational texts. Along the way, they will practice essential skills such as citing evidence, making inferences, and determining word meanings.

Math:

We have jumped into our fraction’s unit! This month, students strengthen their skills to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions and mixed numbers with both like and unlike denominators. Knowing multiplication facts inside and out is a big help, so please encourage your child to keep practicing at home. Do not forget to remind them to complete their homework nightly; this is an essential way to reinforce what we are learning in class.

Science:

Our science lessons will focus on Body Systems and Structures. Students should be able to identify the organs in the human body and describe their functions as well as compare how plants and animals have similar structures.

Social Studies:

In Social Studies, students will explore early English colonies. By analyzing primary and secondary sources, they will investigate challenges faced by the first English colonies and the similarities and differences among the three colonial regions.

Thank you for your support as we continue this incredible learning adventure. Here is to a great start to 2024!

Your 5th grade team

Students have been creating beautiful masterpieces lately!

Kinder students learned about depth when they created these penguins!

First grade made these windy cities to show movement!

Second grade learned about Piet Mondrian and used his love for primary colors and straight lines to create these Mondrian Winter Characters!

Third Grade learned about Australian artist, Britty Em and her love of dogs in sweaters. Students created these Ugly Sweaters inspired by Britty Em’s artwork!

Fourth Grade learned about the Japanese artform known as Notan art. The term notan translates to “light and dark - harmony/balance.”

Fifth Grade learned about movement in art. Movement shown in what they created and also movement by making the observer’s eyes move from one side of the page to the other!

If you haven’t check out your student’s artwork on Artsonia, check out their art here: https://www.artsonia.com/connect/TCCPZFNC

To look at our artist’s work or to see who the Star Student was for each day, follow @beauvaisCCPS on twitter.

Lane Beauvais

Teacher, Art, Tommie Barfield Elementary School

Happy New Year! We ended 2024 with a SSYRA celebration! Students who read The Ultimate Goal were invited to a Soccer Shootout. We had 43 students qualify and a lot of fun was had! The finalist in each grade were:

Third Grade: Olek

Fourth Grade: Daniel

Fifth Grade: Emily and Aaron

Our next SSYRA reward is Gaga Ball! All 3-5 grade students who have read and tested 7 SSYRA books by Jan 24 will participate in our Gaga Ball Game on Jan 31st. Join the fun and get reading!

This month we are also introducing and beginning to read the SSYRA JR books. Second graders have a challenge to read and test the 5 Independent Reader books and earn brag tags on these books. Those 2nd graders who read all 5 will have a special celebration later in the year. Kindergarten and First graders will be enjoying the 10 SSYRA JR picture books. Every K-3 student who has read 3 or more of these books will be voting this spring for their favorite! Who will the winner be?? What will be your child’s favorite?

Greetings from your PTO Board.

We hope you all had a healthy and safe holiday with family and friends. Thank you all for the help in the holiday shoppe. We hope all students enjoyed their time shopping and brought joy to their loved ones with the sweet and thoughtful gifts they chose.

Next on the horizon is the Everblades Family night- Saturday Feb 8th. This is a fun event that can be enjoyed by the whole family. We have 2 sections reserved. Please click on the link to purchase tickets or visit our website for more details. Please note, once tickets sell out, we cannot sell any more. So please do not wait.

Date: Saturday February 8th, 2025

www.bladestix.com/TBES

Also, we are extending the 10% discount on all Spirit Merch. We have lots of stock to sell. Just use the code ‘HOLIDAY’ to take advantage of this offer. Check out the website for more details and to order. Extended through January.

Tommie Barfield (tommiebarfieldpto.com)

We are excited to see what 2025 brings to our TBE life! Wishing you all a Happy New Year from the PTO Board.

Click above to follow us on insta and Facebook for updates.

Or click the 1st QR to visit our website that has all up to date information.

Habit 4:

“Think Win-Win" is all about finding ways for everyone to be happy and succeed. Instead of competing with others, it’s like working together as a team to make sure everyone gets something good out of a situation. When you think win-win, you look for solutions where you and your friends/family can all feel like winners, making relationships stronger and more enjoyable for everyone. A great way to encourage your children to practice Habit 4 is by modeling the mindset. Show your children what thinking win-win looks like by demonstrating it in your daily interactions. For example, when discussing family plans, consider everyone's preferences and find a compromise that works for all!