Dear Tiger Family,

I hope this newsletter finds you all in good health and enjoying the first week of Fall. As we approach the end of September, I want to take a moment to update you on some exciting developments at our school.

Student Assessments and Map Growth Reports

Our students have been diligently working on their assessments, and I want to extend my appreciation to both students and teachers for their hard work and dedication. Map Growth Reports will be sent home soon, providing valuable insights into your child's academic progress. Please review these reports carefully and feel free to reach out to your child's teacher if you have any questions or concerns.

Student-Teacher Goal-Setting Conferences

We believe that setting academic goals is a crucial step in a student's educational journey. In the coming weeks, students will have the opportunity to conference with their teachers to set personalized goals for their academic performance. These conferences are a valuable chance for students to take ownership of their learning, and we encourage active participation.

STEM Club Preview

We are thrilled to announce that CMIT South Elementary School will be offering a wide range of STEM clubs to our students. With 21 different clubs to choose from, there's something for everyone. These clubs provide an excellent opportunity for extended learning and exploration in the exciting world of STEM. Sign up here:

Please, Please, Please review the specifics, which include club descriptions, grade levels, meeting schedules, and timings, with your child. Afterward, please have your child pick their top two choices from the available club options. It's important to note that filling out this form does not guarantee selection. Selections will be made on a first-come, first-served basis and in accordance with the student code of conduct. Link will close Monday, October 2, 2023, at 6:00 p.m

STEM Fair Packets and Projects

To all our budding scientists and engineers, STEM packets will be sent home this week. We encourage students to start working on their projects early to ensure they have ample time to explore, innovate, and create. Let's capture the essence of STEM and nurture your love for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

October Read-A-Thon Fundraiser

October brings us to the kickoff of our Read-A-Thon fundraiser, running from October 2, 2023, through November 3, 2023. This event is a fantastic opportunity to promote reading while supporting our school. More details will follow, so stay tuned for ways to get involved and encourage your child's love for reading.

Upcoming Events

• The Scholastic Book Fair -10/02-06/23, sponsored by the PTO, is right around the corner. It's a wonderful opportunity to discover new books and foster a love for reading. Look out for details on dates and times.

• Picture Day -10/10/23, also sponsored by the PTO, is approaching. Smile for the camera, and capture these precious school moments.

New Staff Members

We are in the process of welcoming several new staff members to our school. As they go through the Human Resources process, we appreciate your patience and understanding during this transition. We are excited to have them join our CMIT South Elementary School community.

Thank you for your continued support and involvement in our school's activities and initiatives. Together, we can ensure a successful and enriching school year for all our students. If you have any questions or need further information about any of the mentioned items, please do not hesitate to contact our school office.

Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead!

Sincerely,

Ronald A. Miller, Jr

Principal

Chesapeake Math & IT Academy South Elementary

There are numerous upcoming events scheduled for October. In my capacity as your Professional School Counselor, I will be disseminating information throughout the month and conducting guidance lessons for our scholar.

• TOPIC 3- Numbers 6 to 10

  Essential Understanding- Good math thinkers use math they know to show and solve problems

  • There is more than one way to show a 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 compare numbers

  Vocabulary: six, seven, eight, nine, ten

  
  

TOPIC 1 QUEST EXPERIMENT AND ASSESSMENT (10/2 - 10/13)

• Students will create a sail car and demonstrate how the wind can move a sail car

• Students will test their sailboat design to see what changes they can make in order for the car to move faster and farther

• Quest Findings: Wind makes things go

• How can we use the wind to move something fast?

• Assessment and Remediation- Students will show what they have learned in

Topic 1

CHAPTER 1 LESSON 4- Leaders Make Rules

Essential Question- How do leaders make rules and laws?

• Identify leaders who make rules and laws

• Describe the leaders at my home

• Explain how the government keeps communities safe

Vocabulary: leader, government

OCTOBER TOPIC- The Five Senses

Essential Question- What are the five senses?

• Identify the five senses and the body parts they are associated with

• Respect what your senses can do for you

• Practice routines for healthful care of sense organs

Vocabulary: hear, touch, sight, smell, see, senses

Students have been testing this week and will also participate in this exercise again next week. Please take students to school on time each and every day. Support and encourage daily reading and writing activities for at least 20 minutes at home. Celebrate students’ success and help them set goals for learning.

Students are losing their personal belongings. Please label all items, and jackets especially so that students will know what belongs to them. Please use simple reminders to help students learn to become and stay responsible for their own items.

As students go online next week, please direct their attention to informational text that they can read and encourage them to do research. They can conduct simple research on topics that interest them. They write down the facts and give you a report on what they learned.

Make Every Moment Matter.

Theme: How do signs in our neighborhood help us? This week students will read and explore concepts and skills across informational text.

Vocabulary: left, right, guard, crosswalk

Sight Words: look, you, was, by, are

Phonics: Short /0/

Spelling Words: not, got, pot, cot, you, look, was, by, are, like

Language and Conventions: simple sentences

Two great books are featured below: they can be found online-check these out!

• Hello Tiger Family!
  
  

  We are moving right along 2nd grade! We are wrapping up the first unit of many subjects.

  Our team has been experimenting with math homework since DreamBox is no longer available. Many of the classes are trying out Boddle. Please contact your homeroom teacher for any questions about Boddle.

  
  

  Reminder: We are happy to have volunteers assist us with different things throughout the year, so if you are interested, please ensure your volunteer requirements are completed.

  
  

  As we finish up the month of September, we are excited to move along into October focusing on our character trait, kindness! We want to promote kindness in any way we can, whether the act is big or small!

  
  

  We will be attending our wonderful book fair next week, so if students are buying things, please ensure they have their money! You can also donate to our class e-wallet to help grow our class library https://shop.scholastic.com/ewallet/fund?lang=en_US&walletId=7c8bd786-9e7b-4d06-b9d7-17c989ad465f

  
  

  Parent-teacher conferences are Monday, October 9, and they will be virtual. Please keep an eye out for a signup sheet coming next week! It is first come, first serve for the time slots. Once they are filled, if you didn’t get a time slot but would still like a meeting, please contact your teacher to set up a conference on another day

  
  

Many classes will be moving on to Unit 1 Week 3 focusing on Informational Text. We will be reading the story “The Places We Go.” and focusing on our weekly question “How does living in a community help people?”

Our spelling week will be on consonant blends. Consonant blends are two consonants that are blended together. Example: Fast: In the word fast, we hear/s/ and /t/, but both are blended together.

Students have wrapped up Topic 1 - Fluently adding and subtracting within 20. Students have wrapped up or are wrapping up Topic 1. We will be moving on Topic 2 working with equal groups.

This week students planned their personal narrative in a Writing Workshop. Also, we discussed the steps of The Writing process. Students participated in a read-aloud of the personal narrative entitled “Dancing in the Wings” by Debbie Allen. Students enjoyed the inspirational theme and humor in this story. Students have brainstormed their topics and will continue to plan for their rough drafts.

We have finished our fifth fabulous week of school. The team is very proud of the efforts being shown by our scholars this year. Students received all diagnostic data from i-Ready and MAP testing from the fourth week of school. Please take the time to review them with your scholar their results. These results will help support instruction and interventions for students throughout the year. Teachers will continue to have conferences with students and set personal goals and goals for growth in diagnostic testing

Parent Teacher Conferences are scheduled for Monday, October 9, 2023. You will meet with both of your scholar-teachers at the conference time. All conferences will be virtually and Zoom links will be provided before the conference time. This upcoming week you will receive a Sign-up Genius that will allow you to pick a slot for conferences. We have a limited number of conference spots for Monday, but teachers will be offering other opportunities to meet. Please select the day and time that works best for you on the Sign-up Genius.

Each week we suggest checking your scholar's browser history and YouTube history. This is to make sure that your scholar isn’t going to a site or watching videos that you would not approve of. Teachers are limited to only seeing activity on your scholar’s screen when they are in class. We utilize a system called Hapara that allows us to prevent access to certain sites. We are asking that you check your scholar's computer history weekly.

This week: Students began reading our second story “Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries.” In this biography, we will read about paleontologist Mary Anning and how she became famous for finding fossils on the beach near her home. Students monitored their inner conversations as they comprehended the text. Students also found the main idea of the text and supported it with details from the text.

Next week: Students will continue to read the text of the week “Rare Treasures” closely. This week we will focus on the skills of context clues and figurative language of similes and metaphors. Context clues ask students to define a word using the text details provided. Similes compare two things using the words “like” or “as” while a metaphor compares two things without using the special words. Students will also have an opportunity to show their understanding of the text by taking a quiz on the information covered in the story.

This week we began focusing on sub-topic 1-5 Constructing an Argument, in this subtopic students have been learning how to engage in mathematical arguments using what they know about place value relationships. Because,1-5 is the last sub-topic of Topic 1, and we have begun reviewing all of the Topic 1 skills to prepare for the Topic 1 Assessment scheduled for Monday, October 2, 2023.

This week: Students read Lesson 2 Climate and Weather of the United States and identified the different climates and weather that are in different regions of the United States. They also chose one of the five regions of the United States and created a visual of the climate and weather by analyzing a map.

Next week: Students will read Lesson 3 Regions and Resources and analyze and classify natural resources, capital resources, and human resources. They will understand how each region has natural resources that are used to make products.

This week: Students finished reading about the land and regions in the United States. Students answered text dependent questions to check their understanding of the United States' regions and its characteristics.

Next week: Students will begin reading lesson 2 Climate and Weather of the United States. Students will identify the different climates and weather that are in different regions of the United States.

Hi everyone!

We are moving right along in 5th grade! We have been moving along in our curriculum for each subject finishing up our first unit in each subject. Please check the assignment calendar on our Google site to see what upcoming assignments students may have. Students should click on their homeroom teacher’s name to see their assignments. Here is the link to the 5th-grade website for those who need it: https://sites.google.com/pgcps.org/5thgradeclasssite/home

Reminder, that we are happy to have volunteers come in to assist us with different things throughout the year, so if you are interested, please make sure your volunteer requirements are completed.

As we finish up the month of September, we are excited to move along into October focusing on our character trait, kindness! We want to promote kindness in any way we can, whether the act is big or small!

We will be attending our wonderful book fair next week, so if students are buying things, please ensure they have their money!

Parent-teacher conferences are Monday, October 9, and they will be virtual. Please keep an eye out for a signup sheet coming next week! It is first come, first serve for the time slots. Once they are filled, if you didn’t get a time slot but would still like a meeting, please contact your teacher to set up a conference on another day. We also have our field trip coming up on October 18, so please keep an eye out for more info on that!

We finished up our story in our textbook “Life on Earth and Beyond” as well as our spelling test. In this story, students will read an informational text about microbes found in Antarctica. Students will be moving onto section 3 next week along with new spelling words as well.

Students are in the first unit of Math which is about place values. Homework will be posted on the assignment calendar as we get started so keep an eye out!

Students are in the first unit of Science which is about properties of matter. Homework will be posted on the assignment calendar as we get started so keep an eye out!

Students finished chapter 1 lesson 2 in our Social Studies textbook on geography. Students learned about how geography affects the way people live. After each section in the chapter, there will be a short quiz. We will be moving onto section 3 next week.

Lego:

Hello All,

This week in Legos and Robotics, the scholars completed their final build of their bridges. I was impressed with their critical thinking skills. Most of the bridges were very sturdy. All of the scholars used no more than 5 support beams as well as wire cables. The bridge was high enough for a boat to float under and sturdy enough for a car to drive on it. A 16-ounce water bottle was used for the car. I am proud of all of the hard-working students this week. They uploaded pictures of their builds to their homeroom Canvas.

I wanted to share some exciting news about this week's Makers Lab class! It was a resounding success, and your children had a fantastic time exploring their creativity and problem-solving skills. Collaboration was a key theme this week as we studied the 4 Seasons. Students worked together in small groups, sharing ideas and discussing their favorite Season and why with the class. Each student made a booklet showcasing what each season looks like to them. It's heartwarming to see how they support and encourage one another. This was a great week.

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