GEMS Family Newsletter

• Thurs. May 18 - Fri. May 19: Passages and SLC Presentations, No school for students
  
• Wed. May 24 - 8th Grade Graduation - 6:30pm at Indianola Church of Christ - 2141 Indianola Ave (just north of Lane Ave and only ½ mile from GEMS)
• Thurs. May 25 - Kings Island Trip - 6th-8th Graders
• Fri. May 26 - Last Day of School/End of Quarter 4
• Fri. May 26 - Columbus Zoo Trip - 5th Graders
• Fri. May 26 - Field Day - K-4th Graders
• Tues. May 30 - Fri. June 2: PD days, no school for students
• Tues. Sept. 5 - First Day of School

• Breakfast Menu - May
  

• Lunch Menu - May

• Academic Calendar 22-23
  
• GEMS Office Hours - 7:45am - 4:30pm - office@gemsschool.org
• GEMS School Day Starts at 8:30AM, building opens at 7:45am
• GEMS Dismissal Starts at 3:15PM, building open until 4:30pm

Summer building hours Monday, June 5 - Monday, August 7 will be 9:00am-3:00pm.

GEMS office hours are 7:45am to 4:30pm, however the office is closed each day from 3:00-3:35pm to help with a smooth dismissal process. If you arrive after 3:00pm to pick up students, please proceed to the appropriate pick up line instead of the front office. Thank you for your support.

If your student will be absent or tardy, please send an email with the information to office@gemsschool.org. If they are absent/tardy because of an appointment, please provide an excuse from the office/clinic. Any absences NOT documented are considered unexcused and marked in our attendance records accordingly.

Our front office associates do not have access to real-time information about buses. GEMS can help with general information about route assignments, but for questions about the location of the bus, or how late it is running, particularly in regards to morning routes, please call CCS at 614-365-5074.

Click here for important information about the Kings Island trip!

Forms are due this Friday, May 19

Click here for important information about the Columbus Zoo trip!

Forms are due Monday, May 22

We look forward to having your student continuing to be enrolled at Graham Elementary and Middle School (GEMS) next year, however, your student's spot for next school year is NOT guaranteed until all Annual Student Registration forms have been completed and are received by the school.

Please use our online system to complete Registration forms: https://gems.esvportal.com/

If you already have an account in the online eSchool/OneView system, use the same login you used for the 2022-23 school year. If you did not create an account last year, you will need to create an account using the invite code. You should have received an e-mail and letter with the invite code. Please contact us via email at: office@gemsschool.org or call 614-253-4000 with any questions.

1. As you set up your account you will be asked to create your own PIN.

2. After your account is created, select 'Manage My Students' on the Enrollment Student Dashboard to link your students to your account. You will enter the Invite Code.

3. Next, select View Online Forms, and under 2023-24 Back to School Forms you'll see 'Annual Student Registration'. Information should be pre-populated into the forms. Double check that the pre-populated information is correct. To update the information, choose Yes or No at the beginning of each section. Make your updates. Complete all fields, and then submit. Check each Section.

4. Once you have completed all seven parts, select Save and Return THEN Save and Submit to District.

Click here to review the OneView How To for what you'll see when you enter the eSchool site. This answers many of the Frequently Asked Questions. Please contact us via email at: office@gemsschool.org or call 614-253-4000 with any questions.

Check out the available positions for the 2023-24 school year!

Click here for GEMS

Click here for TGS

Click here for TCS@ODU

GEMS is enrolling students for next year! Would you be able to display a yard sign to tell the community about our wonderful school? Stop by the front office and pick up a GEMS yard sign today!

High school information. The Graham Family of Schools comprises GEMS, The Graham School, and The Charles School at Ohio Dominican University. However, an application must be summited before a GEMS student may be enrolled in either high school. Please join us:

• The Graham School - Tuesday, May 30 at 6:30pm - Please e-mail Pam Boseker at pboseker@thegrahamschool.org to RSVP for all session or with questions.
  
• The Charles School at Ohio Dominican University - Please contact Gail Collins at collins.5@thecharlesschool.org with questions.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/GrahamElementaryandMiddleSchool

Instagram -

https://www.instagram.com/gemscolumbus/

Hello Families! My name is Sarah Solley and I am one of the Reading Specialists at GEMS. Summer reading is essential for students to maintain the growth they had this school year and not experience the “summer slide”. Spending 15 minutes a day for K-4 reading books and 30 minutes a day for 5-8 is ideal. There are great websites that help parents/guardians find books for their child. The Columbus Library also has many resources, including audiobooks, magazines, and of course, the summer reading challenge. Please reach out if you would like to talk about how to keep your child reading this summer. ssolley.1@gemsschool.org

Websites:

• https://imaginationsoup.net/summer-reading-list-for-kids/
• https://www.columbuslibrary.org/
• https://www.weareteachers.com/best-middle-school-books/
• https://www.kidlit.tv/kidlit-at-home/

We would like to take this opportunity to spread the word about The Ohio Afterschool Child Enrichment (ACE) Educational Savings Account Program. This initiative offers qualifying families a $1,000 credit per child, which can be used to cover various educational activities. These activities are specifically designed to help accelerate learning for children affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more information, please visit https://education.ohio.gov/ohioace. We kindly ask that you share this information with other families who may benefit from this program. Thank you for your support in ensuring that our students receive the best possible education.

Enjoyed sharing their artwork, science activities and demonstrating what they learned together this school year at our Celebration of Learning. We are also learning about Magic E, and how it gives vowels the power to say their names. If you need help counting by 10s (to 100) or doing addition facts with manipulatives, just stop by the kindergarten classroom!

Have completed their riddles and scientific drawings. We also had our chicken eggs hatch. We welcomed Cardinal, Sonic, Jimmy, Hedgehog Lamar Jr, and Lemonade to our first grade class. We've had so much fun watching them grow. We are also planning a walk to the Columbus Metro Library soon. Students will get their very own library card and bring home a book of their choice. In Math we finished our unit on double digit numbers. To end the year we will learn about the basics of telling time.

Are finishing our pollinator unit by making seed packets to grow our own plants! We have also been learning about money and coins in math this month. To finish the year in math, we will be learning about time and how to tell time on a digital and analog clock!

Are Classic Literature experts! We have read Peter Pan, revised scenes and performed them in our own Movie! Check out our Movie on GEMS YouTube (link below)! In Math we are finishing the year with memorizing our multiplication facts and learning about Volume!

Have been writing our own story/word problems and moving into measurement and geometry. Math review packets will be going home for Summer review and practice.

In Expedition, we have just closed out our final research project: investigating a social/racial justice issue. Students brainstormed, researched and created their own unique presentation. Presentations were either letters to politicians, protest signs, or digital designs using Canva. We are closing the school year with more practice on -tion, -sion, and -cian endings, editing paragraphs that contain run on/fragment sentences and parts of speech.

In math, are working in collaboration with 8th graders on our coordinate grid project about historical sites throughout Columbus. In science, we debunked solar system myths for our celebration of learning project.

In Humanities, students wrapped up our Career Portfolio project for our Celebration of Learning. Students are working in groups to create a final project to showcase their social studies knowledge. Students will be working on creating a civilization that would survive a zombie apocalypse. Students will create a map, a form of government, geography, culture, and a flag to showcase their knowledge.

In math we are finishing up our budgeting project. In science we are sharpening our problem solving skills by working through some survival scenarios and STEM challenges.

In humanities, students are learning about plastic pollution and created final projects. For the rest of the year, we will learn about the Harlem Renaissance and its lasting legacies in literature, art, and politics.

In math, students are finishing their statistics projects. Students came up with their own statistical questions about plastic pollution, collected data, and then created graphs that helped them to analyze the data.

In math, students have investigated scatter plots. They will be using this knowledge to help students in 5th grade complete a project involving historical locations in Columbus on the coordinate plane.

Thank you to all the families that came out for our Celebration of Learning this past week! We had so much artwork to display throughout the halls and the classrooms and were so excited to celebrate our students' hard work. This week we are wrapping up our current projects which extend from painting clay tiles to paper mache bowls. As we end this school year we get to work together on the habit of responsibility as students will help out next week to scrub down our tables, chairs, palettes and more from a year's worth of artmaking. I’ve had the honor of seeing many talented artists emerge and look forward to seeing how those talents continue to develop over the summer!

Congratulations to all of the students who performed and displayed work at the Celebration of Learning. I am so proud of all of you! For the remainder of the year we are wrapping up learning about the families of instruments in the orchestra. 4th grade and 1st grade had the honor of getting to enjoy a live cello performance this week. Looking forward to finishing the year off with some fun music and playing with boomwhackers!

GEMS is accepting applications for K-8th grades for the 2023-2024 school year. Please share this newsletter with anyone who is interested in learning more about GEMS. Please e-mail Wesley Owens at owens.2@gemsschool.org with questions.

Kroger

Go to: www.krogercommunityrewards.com or call 1-800-837-4483 to enroll in the program. Add GEMS to your Kroger card. You can search for GEMS by name or use our school code: FD086. Shop! Every time you shop and use your Kroger Rewards Card GEMS gets rebates. Kroger totals those rebates and sends GEMS a check.

Our partnership with EL Education empowers our teachers to unleash the potential of their students. EL Education is built on ten design principles that reflect the educational values and beliefs of Kurt Hahn, founder of Outward Bound and co-founder of EL Education. These principles also reflect the design's connection to other related thinking about teaching, learning, and the culture of schools. The 10 design principles are: The Primacy of Self-Discovery, The Having of Wonderful Ideas, The Responsibility for Learning, Empathy and Caring, Success and Failure, Collaboration and Competition, Diversity and Inclusion, The Natural World, Solitude and Reflection, Service and Compassion.

GEMS is a School-wide Title 1 program, enabling us to receive Federal Funds to ensure that our students receive the support they need to reach and exceed grade level goals particularly in reading and math. We welcome parent involvement in planning, review and improvement of Title 1 programs. Please contact Debbie Addison at addison.2@gemsschool.org with any questions. Follow this link to the Parent Pact.

Per House Bill 21 community schools are required to perform a monthly review of student files and randomly select families for residency verification. Please contact the school immediately in case of an address change. Proof of residency must be submitted within two weeks of an address change. If evidence is not provided, requests for additional documentation or a home visit may occur.

Office Hours - 7:45am-4:30pm

Email: office@gemsschool.org
Website: https://www.thegrahamfamilyofschools.org/gems_home.aspx
Location: 140 East 16th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43201, USA
Phone: (614) 253-4000
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Graham-Elementary-and-Middle-School-109578509098428