ADMINISTRATOR S AVENUE (Anne Roper, Bob Bomar and Tracie Copper)

Transcription

1 March 2004 Volume 2, Number 4 to school on time everyday during the testing process. ADMINISTRATOR S AVENUE (Anne Roper, Bob Bomar and Tracie Copper) Dear Parents: All students enrolled in first through eighth grades will take the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) this spring. The CRCT is based on the Quality Core Curriculum (QCC). This test has been designed by the Georgia Department of Education to measure how well students have learned the QCC content standards for their grade. Students in third through fifth grade will be tested in five content areas: Reading, English/Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. Students in first and second grades will only be tested in Reading, English/Language Arts, and Mathematics. The scheduled dates for testing are April 19 23, Three hours have been set aside each morning for test administration. Testing will begin promptly at 8:15 a.m. and end at 11:15 a.m. Our PTO will provide all of our students who are testing with a mid-morning snack. Please be sure your child gets a full night s rest, eats a nutritious breakfast, arrives at school on time to begin the test, and attends school everyday during the testing process. If your child is tardy, he or she will not be allowed to enter the classroom once testing has begun. In addition, parents cannot sign out students after testing has started. As a special token, the administrators and counselors will reward those classes who have perfect attendance with no tardies during testing week a pizza party. Parents, you can help your child s class win this prize by getting your child As a reminder, breakfast is served in the Unity Grove Elementary cafeteria from 7:25 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. every morning. The price for breakfast is $.75. If you are planning for your child to eat a school breakfast, please send the payment to the cafeteria. Students are not allowed to set up credits for breakfast or lunch. At the end of the school year, you will be provided with a report of your child s test results. These results are only one source of information about your child s achievement. Please contact your child s teacher for more detailed information about their academic performance. For additional test taking strategies for your child, please read the article below entitled, Test Taking Tips for Students. In addition, please refer to the school s website for CRCT practice tests. Our website is: Test Taking Tips for Students Concentrate. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by noises or movements around you. Read instructions or directions carefully before marking any answer. Follow Instructions. Pay close attention to the samples. They are on the test to help you understand what the items on the test will be like and how to mark your Answer Document properly. Keep your test booklet and answer document together. This saves time and lessens the chance of marking answers in the wrong place. Read the entire question and all answer choices.

2 Make an educated guess. Making an educated guess means that you are able to eliminate one or more choices. For example, if there are four choices and you do not know which choice is correct, but do know that two choices are incorrect, you have a chance of choosing the correct answer. Place your answer correctly on the answer document. Make sure you match the number on the answer document to the item number in the test booklet. This is especially important if you skip questions and go back to them later. Mark only one answer for each item. Make clean erasures. Keep track of the time. Pace yourself so that you will be able to complete the section within the time limit. Use all of the time allocated. Persistence pays off. Check over your answers. Have sufficient rest! Attend school and be on time! Have breakfast! Be prepared; have #2 pencils. Give it your best shot!!! COUNSELORS CORNER (Jackie Duffey and Angela Davis) First and third grades have been learning about Good Touch/Bad Touch and the importance of personal body safety. Kindergarten, first, and second graders learned all about dairy life through the mobile dairy classroom presentation on March 3 rd. Kindergarteners have been discussing things that make them happy and sad. Also, they have talked about not calling other people names. March will be a busy time of year when we will begin to focus on test taking skills and tips. Please read with your child nightly! It makes a huge difference! (Jackie Duffey) MEDIA MINUTE (Lorena Sweeney) Our mid winter book fair was a big success! Thanks to everyone who made this event successful and profitable for the media center. With our profits, we will be purchasing new books, Accelerated Reader tests, Accelerated Reader prizes, equipment, assembly programs, and many other needed items for our school. Our final book fair will take place in May. This is a clearance event, and everything in the book fair will be half price. This is a very popular event with students, parents, and teachers. Be looking for information about this event at the end of April! Our school media festival was held at the end of February. This independent activity allowed students to produce projects using media: picture books, photo essays, radio plays, videos, slide shows, and web pages. Our students created about fifty projects for our school media festival. Projects were judged and given scores. Fifteen of our projects earned scores of 98 and were school-wide winners. Mrs. Moss kindergarten class, Mrs. Hartfield s 2nd grade, Ms. Jones-Campbell s 2nd grade, Mrs. Travis 5th grade, Kelsea Cawthon, Murphy Ledbetter, Shelby Dean, Felicia Stowers, Kristie Ziegler, Kristen George, Blake Sorrows, Jayci Carroll, Bethany Pildner, Destiny Yates, Savanna Mondy, Jarion Ponder, Blake Sorrows, Rai Davis, Ashley Bragg, Andrea Bragg, and Alexandra Travis. These projects advanced to the Henry County Media Festival. On March 2, 2004 our school participated in the Seuss-a-centennial, a celebration of the 100th birthday of Dr. Seuss. The National Education Association designated this day as Read Across America day. We joined with other schools across the nation by participating in activities to encourage our students to read. From reading stories by Dr. Seuss to wearing red and white striped hats, this day was fun-filled for students and staff members! Hopefully, these special activities at school foster a love of reading and help motivate our students to read every day at school and every night at home. Children who read succeed! CLASSROOM CAPTIONS

3 MUSIC: Music has filled the air in the month of February, from Tchaikovsky s Romeo and Juliet to Joplin s Maple Leaf Rag (ask your child to tell you about these people!). There is so much great music to celebrate last month s holidays!! The highlight of this six weeks for 5 th graders is the beginning of guitar study. While we have enough classroom guitars for everyone in each class, students are welcome to bring a guitar from home, providing it has six strings (leave the amps and flat picks at home, please). Instruction will cover the basic structure and vocabulary of the guitar and an introduction to the playing of chords. These are not guitar lessons, but an introduction of the basics of guitar playing. Students will learn three or four chords to accompany many, many songs and be able to read a chord chart to continue playing. All other classes will continue to sing, move, listen, and play classroom instruments. The Singing Panthers continue to gather on Monday afternoons to learn songs, receive voice lessons, and learn sight singing. As always, thank you for your support!! KINDERGARTEN: Kindergarten had a very busy February! We began the month by learning about dental health. Next, we learned about friends and discussed ways to show friendship. We ended the month by completing a unit about President s Day and how we honor our Presidents. We also enjoyed learning all the interesting facts about famous African Americans! Thank you for a wonderful turnout on skate night. We had a total of 144 students. Thanks! In March, we will be studying the well-loved books of Dr. Seuss. We are also looking into a possible spring field trip! FIRST GRADE: February was a very exciting and challenging month. The students learned about two special presidents. Stop by and read some great reports about these presidents. If you re wondering why your child is so engaged in brushing their teeth at least twice a day, it s because dental care was the focus for February, which is also Dental Health Month. We are also preparing for the CRCT, which will be in April. You can visit the school website at for practice tests. Also, don t forget to keep practicing the basic math facts! We had a very successful 1 st grade PTO program on March 2 nd called BUGZ. The children worked hard on their big production. Thanks to all of our students and parents for their help! SECOND GRADE: Second graders have been busy learning about many exciting new concepts. Two digit addition and subtraction with and without regrouping, time, money, and measurement are the math concepts that have been learned during the past six weeks. Students were challenged to read more books and increase their Accelerated Reader (AR) points. In addition, students learned all about plants and were able to watch their own plant grow. Famous African Americans, Presidents, and famous historical women were also investigated. Letter writing and non-fiction story writing were also highlighted last six weeks. We have been very busy in second grade! THIRD GRADE: As the year progresses, third graders are gearing up for an Economic Experience. In the next few weeks, your child s classroom will become a mini-society. The students will create a currency, flag, and a name for their society. All students will become business owners and get paid for doing jobs. It is quite an educational opportunity. Several reminders: Please remember to practice multiplication facts daily, visit to practice CRCT tests, and READ! READ! READ!

4 FOURTH GRADE: Fourth Grade is beginning to prepare for the CRCT test. We are reviewing basic skills in all subjects. In math, we are reviewing place value, rounding, multiplication (facts and 2 digit by 2 digit problems), division, and geometry. Our main goal is that each child can transfer these skills into word problems. In reading, we are reviewing basic comprehension skills (main idea and supporting details), identifying basic parts of a story and including these in writing, identifying new vocabulary using context clues, sequencing events, identifying types of genres, determining fact and opinion, and drawing conclusions. In language arts, we are working on identifying parts of speech and using them correctly in our writing. We are also learning to recognize grammatical mistakes in given selections. You will soon receive a letter that identifies the areas in which your child may need extra help to meet grade level requirements. Please incorporate the above listed skills in activities you do at home. Practice activities are included on our school website. ( We want all of our students to be successful, and this is possible if we all work together. FIFTH GRADE: Fifth grade is busy finding Geometry All Around Us. In social studies, we are beginning a unit on World War II. If you have any memorabilia, or know a relative who would like to give the students a first hand account of this war, please contact your child s teacher. We completed a science unit on Food Nutrition and had a nutritionist come to talk to the students. Boy, did we learn a lot about proper nutrition and establishing good eating habits! We are anticipating our three-day field trip to Rock Eagle; please send in the last payment as soon as possible if you have not already done so. The dates for that field trip are March 17, 18, and 19. We are also planning a field trip on March 25 th to Cubihatcha Outdoor Classroom here in Locust Grove. Please continue to monitor your child s nightly reading as we are all promoting our Accelerated Reading program. SPECTACULAR ATTRACTIONS March 3 Mobile Dairy Classroom to visit K-2 March 11 Skate Night 6-8 p.m. March th grade field trip to Rock Eagle March 25 5 th grade field trip to Cubihatcha April 1 Skate Night 6-8 p.m. April 2 School Staff Development Day April 5-9 Spring Break April 14 Spring Pictures April 19 Report Cards PTO POINTERS The PTO would like to thank all of our volunteers for helping to prepare the Valentines that were delivered on Friday, February 13th. Thanks to Publix for donating a portion of the suckers; they have been a really great partner. We are quickly approaching the end of the school year; and, as you may know, we will be accepting nominations for executive officers for the school year. Forms were available at the last room mom meeting. There is also a printable version of this form on our school web site. We will not be having a PTO meeting in March due to the 1st grade program being held at the Performing Arts Center; however, we will have an Advisory Board meeting on March 16th at 3:15 p.m. Everyone is welcome! URGENT REQUEST We have had several complaints from residents living on LeGuin Mill Road about the excessive speed of persons coming to and leaving from Unity Grove Elementary. Complaints have also been received that cars are passing in a no passing zone. Please be advised that this puts everyone at risk, including our precious students. Do your part to

5 make sure that you are complying with posted speed limits and other road signs, as this is the law. The newsletter printed courtesy of: Moye s Pharmacy, Inc. McDonough, Georgia