Winter Newsletter
January/February/March
No School - Martin Luther King Day
No School
There will be no school on Monday, January 17th in observance of Martin Luther King Day. School will resume on Tuesday, January 18th. School begins at 7:40 am. Students are considered late at 7:55 am. We wish everyone a restful three day weekend as we celebrate the life of Dr. King!
Family Center Opening
Our family center is opening for the Spring semester! Please join us virtually on Tuesday, January 18th as we celebrate our family center opening! The family center is a great way for our families to support our campus in various ways. Our family center liaison is Ms. Cynthia Cortes. Ms. Cortes does an awesome job connecting families to our campus through the family center. Please see the flyers below for more information. We look forward to a great opening!
CIA
Martin CIA Enrollment, parents must be approved before the student is enrolled. We are currently emptying our waitlist. Once students have been approved, an e-mail to confirm the enrollment will be sent to parents and a red CIA Tag will be given to the student's teacher so the student will know where they should go for dismissal. There are a few openings left and once they are filled, enrollment will close.
In Person Safety Protocols
- All students and staff in the building will be strongly encouraged to wear a disposable surgical mask covering their nose and mouth at ALL times
- There are hand sanitizing stations around the building for staff and student use
- Classrooms and desks will be thoroughly cleaned daily
- Please remain 6 feet away from other families when you walk your child to school in the morning
- Please DO NOT congregate at the doors during morning arrival
- There will be Limited visitors allowed in the building at this time and NO lunch drop off; Please be sure to send lunch with your child in the morning
- 1st-4th grade students eat lunch in their classrooms at this time
- Our first priority is the safety of our students. Please respect the above guidelines and help us to keep your children safe as possible while at school.
Lost and Found
Home Access Center
Nurse Notes
Welcome Back!
We are going to proclaim that this New Year, we will be healthier and more prepared to keep our students, staff and families safe! With doing so, we need your help to slow the spread of the COVID-19 Virus here at school. This is an individual effort that effects the collective as a whole. We can reduce the spreading of COVID by
- Washing/sanitizing hands frequently
- Wearing a mask in public areas
- Social distancing
- Staying at home when feeling sick
- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle
- Being current on vaccinations (Both doses of COVID, Booster, Flu, and yearly immunizations).
It is important that you communicate with Nurse Baltimore and Dr. Sha if you and/or a family member have symptoms of COVID and/or test POSITIVE. Nurse Baltimore can be reached by email at jasmine.baltimore@aliefisd.net or by phone at 281-983-8363 EXT 22644. Symptoms for COVID are as follows:
- Feeling feverish or a measured temperature greater than or equal to 100.0 F
- Loss of taste or smell
- Cough
- Difficulty Breathing/ Shortness of breath
- Fatigue
- Headache
- Chills
- Sore throat
- Congestion or runny nose
- Shaking or exaggerated shivering
- Significant muscle pain or ache
- Diarrhea
- Nausea or Vomiting
If POSITIVE, students and staff will quarantine for 5 days after the date of symptom onset or test date if asymptomatic as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Control (CDC). Individuals must be fever free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medications and symptoms improving before returning to school or work. You will be REQUIRED to wear a mask for 5 days when you return.
*Consent Forms will be sent home and must be filled out in order for students to be tested at school. If a student presents to the clinic with symptoms and a consent is on file, they will be tested immediately for COVID.
Thank you for your cooperation in keeping Nurse Baltimore and Dr. Sha informed! Down below are helpful links you made need to fight COVID.
Free COVID -19 Testing Sites
- Crump Stadium: 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Updates / Free Rapid COVID-19 Testing for Alief ISD Students and E
- Harris County: Harris County Free COVID-19 Testing
- Night Light Urgent Care: Covid-19 Testing
- Texas Children Urgent Care: Schedule an Appointment
Immunizations
- All students must have their age-appropriate immunizations current before returning to school Easy-to-read Immunization Schedule by Vaccine for Ages Birth-6 Years - shell.
- Send student’s updated vaccine records to the school nurse at jasmine.baltimore@aliefisd.net If you choose to opt-out of vaccinating please provide the school nurse with a notarized Affidavit for Exemption.
Flu Season
Counselor's Corner
Farewell 2021! Thank you for continuing to teach us how to be flexible, resilient, and perseverant. We look forward to much needed physical and mental health in 2022. I wish all our Mustangs, families, and staff all the best as we begin this new term. We are in this together!
All Alief ISD is using Character Strong as our social emotional learning curriculum. Each month, we explore a trait and do our best to put it into practice. The Counselor's Corner on our Martin Website has the monthly Purposeful Family Newsletters that help explain the month's character trait in English and Spanish. The newsletters also include games, discussion questions, books, and links to resources. I encourage everyone to take a look!
Upcoming topics/events
January: Perseverance
February: Kindness/College and Career Week/Random Acts of Kindness Challenge
March: Responsibility
April: Courage/Interim Assessments
May: Gratitude/STAAR Testing
Students who would like to speak with me can fill out a self-referral form located outside my office. They can also just tell their teacher they would like to see me. I am here to support all students and their families. Please reach out to me if you need support. I am happy to help out with uniform vouchers and school supplies as well. Please call or email me your questions, concerns, or needs.
Parents can reach me via:
Phone 281-983-8363 extension 22577 (Martin Elementary)
Google voice call or text: 281-668-8953
Email: martha.sepulveda@aliefisd.net or mdsepulv@ga.aliefisd.net
May 2022 bring much needed healing, strength, and optimism. Best wishes for everyone!
Pre-K
In Language Arts, students are working to learn the name and sounds of letters. Students are working on print concepts in books. Students will begin to learn how to write their name with without a model. In phonological awareness, students are working on recognizing rhyming words. In math, students are working towards to counting forward to 20, identifying numerals 0-8, as well as demonstrating one to one correspondence to 5. Please work with students on naming letters and producing letter sounds in the alphabet as well as in math and continue to work with your child on counting forward to 20 and identifying numerals 0-8.
Kindergarten
1st Grade
2nd Grade
In literacy, we have completed Module 4: Once Upon a Time, which focused on storytelling. Students read modern retellings of famous fairytales, different dramas, and fictional stories elaborating on storytelling. In the following weeks, we will be working on Module 5: Lead the Way. This module is connected to Social Studies and focuses on leadership. In math, students are currently learning about money and financial literacy. Students are expected to know the value and name of each coin in both dollar form and cent form. They are also expected to be able to add up the value of coins. The financial literacy portion consists of concepts such as lending/borrowing, producer/consumer, spending/saving, withdraw/deposit. etc. In the following math unit, students will begin to learn multiplication and division. In science, we have been working on our Earth and Space Unit. Students have learned about rocks, bodies of water, and Earth's resources. The unit we started and will work on for the following weeks is over Weather. Students will learn about the tools to measure weather such as a thermometer, rain gauge, wind vane, etc. Students will also learn how to record data over daily temperature, rainfall, wind direction, and clouds. In Social Studies we have been working on chapter 3: Our Worlds Students have learned about maps and their key components, the continents, and oceans as well as landforms. In the next few weeks, students will begin working on chapter 4: Celebrating Our Traditions. Students will learn about different cultures and their traditions and compare them to our culture and traditions.
3rd Grade
In Reading, students will continue using text and graphic features to infer the authors purpose of a given text. In Writing, students will learn plural nouns and the use of adjectives to help describe different nouns. In Math, students will continue learning about the importance of earning and saving money in Personal Financial Literacy. In the following weeks, students will be introduced to Geometry. Students will learn to classify and identify the different attributes of two- and three-dimensional shapes. In Science, we will finish learning about natural resources and begin exploring weather tools. Students will be able to use these tools to observe, measure, record, and compare day to day weather in different locations. In Social Studies, students will begin learning about the First English Explorers and their quest to present day America.
4th Grade
In reading, students will be applying skills and strategies while reading informational texts to understand Earth’s unique and natural wonders. For grammar, we will be addressing adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, and prepositional phrases. In writing we will continue to improve our sentence structure while creating expository compositions.
In Social Studies, students will be learning about the impacts of the Civil War and changes that occurred during the Reconstruction period in Texas.
In math we are finishing up the unit by writing decimals up to the hundredths place value, converting fractions into decimals, and comparing & ordering decimals.
In science we learned about renewable and non-renewable resources. We are currently learning about the weather, weather instruments, and predicting the daily conditions.
Specials Classes
For the 3rd nine weeks, students in PE will start with getting basic skills in Golf, in which they will focus on how to properly hold a club and how to properly strike a golf ball. Students will practice fitness activities and games that will focus on locomotor movement along with games that strengthens balance and rhythms. Students will also learn more about outdoor recreational activities that promote a healthy lifestyle and will continue to practice their jump roping skills.
Health Tech
In Health/Tech along with our varied health topics and Office 365 skills, we are recognizing that the use of the mouse and/or laptop trackpad is the most basic computer skill, but it is also one of the most important to learn. The mouse/trackpad, like typing, helps you tell the computer what to do. It can be a little bit hard to learn to control the mouse/trackpad at first, but practice will have you clicking around the screen in no time! Another one of the most important skills to learn on a computer is how to type. Typing is very important because it’s how you enter things into the computer. If you are searching online for information, you need to be able to type in what you are looking for, and as you get older, you’ll need to type up essays for school. Being able to type well will help you get things done on a computer more quickly. I have on our Martin website under Academic Resources several sites that allow us to practice letter placement, accuracy and speed. Check them out in the bottom right corner.
Art
In Art, we are working on paintings, sculptures and realistic drawings. We are painting landscapes and animals and learning about cultures around the world. Students are learning the importance of sequencing and how procedures and processes are an important part of art. We are learning how to use art tools properly and practicing our ability to make connections to our art.
Music
Martin Musicians K-4 are learning more about beats and rhythms. Students are working together to follow the steady beat of various musical styles and creating patterns with different rhythm notation. Grades K-1st will explore the relationship between steady beat and quarter/eighth rhythms. Grades 2nd-4th will practice playing different rhythm patterns in ensemble grouping. In addition to beats and rhythm, 4th grade will prepare for the AMMO competition coming later in the Spring semester.
Library Happenings
In the library, we are kicking off Black History Month by learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., using BrainPop, Kahoot, and hearing the book Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport and Bryan Collier. Students also have the opportunity to hear an excerpt from Dr. King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and write about their own dream for our school and community.
We will be introducing our maker space activities and centers this semester. These activities will allow students to practice collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity. Centers will include board games, Legos, Lincoln Logs, origami, crafts, Dash and Dot robots and so much more!
Events/Reminders
- 17th - No School Martin Luther King Day
- 18th - Virtual Family Center Spring Kickoff
- 27th - Virtual MC^2 Parent Meeting #2
- 27th - Progress Reports Go Home
- 28th - 100th Day of School
- 31st - 101th Day of School
February
- 3rd - Character Trait Day: Kindness - Wear Pink
- 3rd -3rd and 4th-Social Studies Interim Assessment
- 7th - Valentine's Day Pictures
- 7th - 11th-National Counselor's Week
- 10th - Career day
- 17th - Random Acts of Kindness Day
- 17th - Progress Reports go home
- 18th - Staff Workday/Student Holiday-No School
- 21st - President's Day/Student Holiday-No School
- 28th - Texas Public School Week Begins
March
- 1st-4th - Texas Public School Week continues
- 3rd - Character Trait Day: Responsibility - Wear Orange
- 8th - Class and Individual Picture Day
- 9th - 3rd/4th Math Interim Assessment Test #2
- 10th - 3rd & 4th Reading Interim Assessment Test #2
- 11th - End of 3rd Grading Period
- 11th - Hoe Down
- 14th-18th - Spring Break-No School
- 21st - Start of 4th Grading Period
- 24th - Report Cards Go Home
- 25th - Awards Assembly
- 31st - STEAM Night and Book Fair 4:30-5:30 pm
Martin Elementary
Email: Martincontact@aliefisd.net
Website: aliefisd.net/Martin
Location: 11718 Hendon Lane, Houston, TX, USA
Phone: 281-983-8363
Twitter: @Martin_Mustangs