ACADEMY ADVENTURES MIDTOWN
Building on Strengths and Filling Buckets!
SCHOOL UPDATES!
October was a busy month!! Come Back for S'MORE Learning Fall Break Camp was a success! We also saw an increase from their pre-test the first day to the post-test on the last day! Check out some of the pictures below from camp!!
Thank you to all of our families who joined us for our first Title I Family Movie Night under the stars! It was great to see so many families come! We hope you had as much fun as we did! We will definitely be planning another one soon! We loved having our families back for in-person events!
Pumpkin Palooza was another big success! The students had fun picking their pumpkins, decorating them and doing some fun activities related to pumpkins and Halloween! Check out some of the Pumpkin Palooza pictures below!
November 3rd was our Title I Parent Meeting & Curriculum Family Event. Thank you to the families who joined us! If you have any questions on curriculum or Title I, please do not hesitate to reach out to your child's homeroom teacher.
We have several half days and holidays during November so make sure to look at the calendar and the events below. Information will also be posted in Class Dojo.
Our December Baking Days are just around the corner and will finish out our 1st Semester of school! A link is posted below, as well as in Class Dojo, with a short survey regarding the December Baking Days. Please take a minute to complete it. Thank you to all the families who have responded so far! Your feedback is very important in our planning!
Thank you for your continued support! We appreciate you trusting your child's education with us and we take that very seriously. If you ever have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to speak with your child's teacher or Mrs. Angela.
December 2nd is our Tamale Making Day! Since the school was started, we have celebrated the season as a school community preparing, cooking and my personal favorite, eating the tamales we prepare. Students, staff, parents and friends of the school all join in the fellowship to come up with the most creative collection of tamales that Tucson has ever seen. Please come and share some time with your children in this fun activity. Even 1/2 an hour will provide your child with a memory that will last a lifetime! Let us know thru Class Dojo if you will be attending. We already have signed up some people and all are invited!
Support your children if you can spare the time. The gift of a good memory is irreplaceable.
MANDATORY FACE MASKS REQUIRED
Based on this decision and the Arizona Supreme Court is permitting School-Wide Face Coverings and Vaccine Mandates for Students and Staff. Academy Adventures Midtown will continue to require everyone on campus to wear a face mask.
For the most part, the students have done a great job with their masks. Unfortunately, we continue to have some issues, even with daily reminders. Please speak with your child about the important and requirement to keep their mask on properly (covering both mouth and nose). In addition, make sure that the masks you send to school with your child fit properly. If a mask is not fitting properly, we will provide a paper mask. If there continues to be issues with your child keeping their mask on, and we have to redirect your child more than 3 times, you will be called. It is essential that everyone keep their masks on to continue to keep those around us safe and healthy.
If you have any questions, please contact the school at 520-777-3757 and speak with your child's teacher, Mrs. Angela or Mr. Jack.
Thank you for your cooperation and continued support in keeping everyone as safe and healthy as possible.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3rd
Thank you to all the parents who joined us for the Annual Title I Parent Meeting and Curriculum Event! We hope you enjoyed learning more about the core curriculum and supplemental curriculum your children are working on, as well as hearing about the Title I program and how it it is helping your child to be more successful.
If you have any questions regarding assessments, curriculum or our Title I program, please reach out to your child's teacher. They will be happy to answer any questions you may have
CONGRATULATIONS to our students for winning 1st Place in Yellow Stomps in the Unruly Splats Go Bananas Competition during the month of September! We are so proud of them! Come by the lobby and check out the awesome banner, limited edition yellow Splat and banana door stop that they won!
We celebrated the win with a yummy Banana Split Ice Cream Cake from Coldstone Creamery!
We are gearing up for the next competition which will take place in December!
Way to Go Academy Adventures Splatters!
Unruly Splats is gearing up for their next competition in December! We are READY!!! Check out this video...do you recognize any of the students in the video?!
Celebrate with Cake!
Celebrate with Cake!
Celebrate with Cake!
Celebrate with Cake!
Celebrate with Cake!
Celebrate with Cake!
Go Bananas Trophy Presentation!
Go Bananas Trophy Presentation!
Go Bananas Trophy Presentation!
Students are continuing to "show us what they know" every Friday through short ELA and Math assessments in Renaissance! We are seeing an increase in the students' confidence when they take the test and lower test anxiety! Scores continue to improve weekly!
From the first test in August to the last test in October the students have increased in both ELA and Math! In ELA, students average percentage has increased 40%! In Math, students average percentage has increased 20%! Those are amazing results in just 7 weeks! We are so proud of our students!!!!
If you would like to see score on weekly assessments, please speak with your child's homeroom teacher and they would be happy to provide you information. We will continue to send home data with each report card.
As a reminder, these assessments do not count against your child's grades. The assessments are used to help the teachers and Title I interventionists determine how to best help your child close their learning gaps. It is also to help students get more comfortable and confident when taking a test. Please continue to encourage your child to do their best each Friday! If you would like ways on how you can help your child at home, please contact your child's homeroom teacher.
Thank you for your continued support!
We are showing an increase in students arriving late to school. Attendance is very important. Just arriving a few minutes late can throw off a child's day. Please have your child at school by 8:00 AM.
Students are required by law to be at school daily. Unless your child is sick, they should be here. Every day missed puts them just a little behind. Please schedule any appointments for AFTER school or during breaks so your child does not miss out.
Gates open at 7:30 AM for breakfast. Please make sure your child arrives before 7:55 AM if you want them to eat breakfast.
Let's work together to have perfect attendance for all of our students!
The month of October at Academy Adventures Midtown was a fun-filled, fast paced and quite the ride. In a blink of an eye, all the students got a little taller, a little stronger and A LOT wiser. From the Come Back For SMORE Learning Camp to the Pumpkin Palooza, my heart is full. Where I have become most impressed is with each week, the students are truly showing us what they know every Friday. As of lately, on Show Us What You Know Friday, the student trends of fantastic scores continue to increase. I am not as concerned about the score of the test as I am about acknowledging student confidence and understanding of the material. It is evident in the scores, and in the conferences we have with each student. If you are interested in the content of the Friday scores, chat with your student or myself about our conferences! Though October was one for the books, November brings thankfulness and togetherness to our school and I cannot wait.
The Kindergarteners are killing it in their handwriting skills, almost mastering writing all uppercase and lowercase letters! Because our handwriting is stellar, we are now working on writing out full names! Not only are we moving through the alphabet so smoothly, I dare you to ask your Kinders what a noun is! They have DEFINITELY mastered the definition of a noun and can categorize nouns in PEOPLE, PLACE and THING! It is so fun to watch their excitement as they excel through this! We will be moving into segmenting initial and final sounds, which will catapult our Kinders into the best readers!
High Frequency Words, Sight Words, Nouns and Verbs are at the top of our list of accomplishments! Each week we are writing our High Frequency words on index cards to practice our handwriting and for references throughout the week when we see the words in our reading! Your first graders have also been able to practice Sight Words as we write them, use them in complete sentences, as well as Color By Sight Words! As we move through the next month, your first graders are going to become fluent in their reading as we read through our decodable books! At least two times a week, we gather as a whole group and popcorn read a story together. The more we become comfortable in this routine, the confidence builds and builds until we are at a place we read with pride!
Our second graders might as well be renamed as writers! Over the past month, we were introduced to personal narrative writing! Your second graders learned about adding more details to sentences to make them more inviting and fun! We explored adjectives by using MadLibs for fun! Second Grade wrote everything from exploring the seas to feed sharks, to finding treasure on an island! We practiced our reading by SHARE reading informational texts! In the upcoming month, we are exploring a fun new side of grammar, as well as identifying the craft and structure of informational texts!
Third grade is sailing through nonfiction informational texts! Throughout the nonfiction texts, we have learned the cues to identify the structures and organizational layout to further our understanding of what the author wants us to learn. As we go through November, we are going to explore the writing process to write their own research informational narrative!
Fourth graders have excelled in their understanding of the subject and predicates of a sentence! I am beyond impressed with their ability to become comfortable in SHARE read aloud. We have explored comparing and contrasting short stories, and pinpointing specifics using a Venn Diagram! During the month of November, we are going to practice the writing process to write multiple informational texts! I am excited to explore their research topics!
My poets of fifth grade… I hope that this class will always feel confident when it comes to their poetry! We have continued to explore figurative language and how we use these in our everyday life! We have written opinion pieces, poems and read about famous artists! Throughout November, we are going to explore various medias to conduct research papers!
Everyday, our students become stronger as a whole child. I cannot thank the staff, students and the parents enough for the support that you provide to your student! I look forward to any conversations about your students' success! Please do not hesitate to ask questions!
Just like that, we’ve made it through 3 months of school. The days are flying by! We have implemented a new routine in our homeroom class regarding packet work. Students are now taking what they do not finish in class home to finish and bring back the next day. If your child brings home work, please be sure that you sign it and they return it the next day. Every Thursday, the students will take home all of their completed work so that you all can see what amazing work your students are completing. Thank you for all the support you give your kids with the new changes. Your students continue to shine brightly every day, bringing that confidence, enthusiasm and laughter into the classroom and I love seeing it grow as we move forward.
Fifth grade is building on their fraction skills. In the past, we’ve worked on representing division problems as fractions, adding and subtracting fractions, making sure we have common denominators and converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and vice versa. With these skills in our pocket, we started multiplying fractions with whole numbers and are working towards multiplying both proper and improper fractions. As we continue working through these problems, we are reminded of the facts we’ve learned previously to help us make the problems easier for us to solve. An example would be multiplying two proper fractions, resulting in an improper fraction and converting that answer to a mixed number. They are showing immense progress and are starting to realize the connections throughout what we’ve been doing the whole school year, which makes my heart so happy to hear.
Fourth grade is building on their knowledge of multiplication and division facts. One topic was factors and multiples, again this continued to build a bridge between multiplication and division to help us understand how they’re connected and how we can use factors and multiples to help us learn our multiplication and division facts. Our most recent topic has been applying our knowledge of multiplication and division into real-world problems. We’ve been dissecting the problems, looking for key words to help us know whether or not we need to be adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing, and why. Highlighters and underlining have been a big help in regards to figuring out what we need to do, and have helped the students figure what keywords are for what specific operation. All of the fourth graders have been working really hard, growing in their basic multiplication facts and growing in their confidence in regards to sharing answers and solving problems and I couldn’t be more proud!
Third grade continue their addition and subtraction facts, focusing mainly on the subtraction aspect. They’ve been learning how to set up subtraction problems so that our place-values line up, which has become an amazing strength for them. They’ve also been working on their “borrowing” skills and making sure they stay in the correct place-value spot. Once they were rocking the problems, we started incorporating word problems into the mix so that they were exposed to subtraction being applied in real-world scenarios. We did a similar tactic in regards to the word problems and finding key words with highlighters so that we can associate certain keywords with specific operations. They’ve been working so hard and so diligently that after reviewing one problem with them, they are confident enough to work on the following problems independently, checking their answers as they go.
Second graders continue to build on their adding skills, but rather than focusing on the 3-digit problems, we have been adding three to four 2-digit numbers. Our main focus in regards to these problems is making sure we separate our digits in their proper place-values and are starting in our one’s place when we add the numbers together. We have discovered lots of different tactics or strategies to use that help us address these problems and have been becoming more and more confident and independent in their work. For second grade, being able to work independently and be confident in our answers is a huge improvement and I am so eager to see where it goes from here. The Friday tests we’ve been taking every week have been helping these second graders a lot and it makes me so happy to see them continue to grow.
First grade has moved away from numbers and is learning about shapes, characteristics of shapes, patterns and things alike. It has been really fun seeing them grow in how they describe shapes and how they create them using play dough and figuring out how we can make pictures or patterns using them. One of the topics we touched on was recognizing shapes around us, we took a walk around the school and wrote down different shapes we saw. When we were talking about characteristics such as sides and corners, we talked about both flat and solid shapes and compared the two, seeing how they were similar and how they were different. We also used shapes to create pictures and look at pictures to see what shapes were used in it. For example, we drew jack-o-lanterns with triangles, circles, rectangles, etc. for the faces. We also drew pictures using shape cut-outs and had our peers find all the shapes we used. It was great seeing how interactive and engaged they were for each of the different topics, and I’m excited to move forward with them and continue seeing how creative they get and interactive they are with the lessons.
Kindergarten continues to work on measurement, building on their knowledge of length and height and adding in weight into the mixture. We’ve been very confident in our counting for finding out how long or short and object is, so I began to add in comparisons so that we can look at numbers and see which has “more” or “less” so that we can not only see physically what’s taller or shorter but have numbers to explain why. When we started adding in weight, we talked about objects that are light and heavy and how we can use a tool called a balance to help us visualize when objects are heavier or lighter than one another. As we grew in our abilities and began to build on our strengths for measurement, I started to have the students investigate objects so that they could use all three measurements and see how long/tall/heavy the objects were. Your students have been doing fantastic in class and their packet work, and I am so excited to see what fun activities we can do in the future and how I can get them to be as creative as possible while enjoying learning about math.
All of the students have been improving so much over the past month, they are all becoming very familiar with the schedules and are always eager to see the schedule change day-to-day to find out what they’re doing that day. I think that they’re taking great accountability for their work and are becoming such bright students. Thank you again for all that you do for your kids, it makes me so happy to see them continue to grow and I am looking forward to seeing it continue throughout the school year. If you have any questions, please message me on Class Dojo.
We have a few openings in all grade levels! What better way to fill the school than to refer your friends and family?! If you know anyone looking for a school, please refer them to our website or have them contact the school.
The After School Enrichment Program is going great! Thank you to Mr. Gilbert, Ms. Lia, Mr. Dan and Miss Kailey for the great job they are doing in keeping the children engaged!
A few reminders:
- Behavior expectations are the same after school as they are during school
- The after school program ends at 5:00 PM. Please make sure you are picking up your child(ren) on time
- There is no after school program on early release days
If you have any questions regarding the after school program, please check with your child's teacher.
We know that the more involvement parents have in their child's education, the more successful the child will be! We are always encouraging parents to be involved. Some of the ways that you can be involved include but is not limited to:
- Reading with your child nightly
- Keeping in contact with your child's teacher regarding their progress
- Attending family events
- Volunteering at events
- Asking your child specific questions about their day
- Encourage your child to always do their best
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2021 - CURRICULUM & TITLE I EVENT
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2021 -- EARLY RELEASE (11:30 AM)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2021 -- NO SCHOOL
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2021 - EARLY RELEASE (11:30 AM)
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2021 - EARLY RELEASE DAY (11:30 am)
THURSDAY & FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25 & 26, 2020 - THANKSGIVING BREAK!
ACADEMY ADVENTURES MIDTOWN
Email: info@academyadventuresmidtown.com
Website: https://academyadventuresmidtown.com
Location: 3025 North Winstel Boulevard, Tucson, AZ, USA
Phone: (520) 777-3757
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/academyadventuresmidtown