The Patriot Parent Newsletter
Brooklyn Park Elementary October 2019
Our Mission and Vision at BPES:
Mission: Rigorous instruction, engaging experiences, positive relationships, no exceptions.
Vision: With the collaborative support of our families, staff and community, Brooklyn Park Elementary will be a school of excellence focused on the academic and social needs of ALL students.
A Message from Principal Walker
Dear Brooklyn Park Community,
Fall has finally arrived. The hot weather has turned cooler and the leaves have started to change. The Fall also brings change in instruction at BPES as we look to end the quarter in November and to upcoming holidays.
Interims Reports/ Parent Teacher Conference Day
Interim Reports will be sent home on Monday, October 7th. The Interim will give you an update on your child’s progress at the midway point of the 1st Quarter. Additionally, Parent Teacher Conferences will be held on October 15th and 16th. Please contact your child’s teacher to schedule the conference. Collaboration between home and school is the best way to ensure your child’s success.
Halloween at BPES
Halloween at Brooklyn Park Elementary is been a tradition with costumes and our Halloween Parade. Please see an outline of activities below:
1. Costumes can be worn to school on Thursday, October 31st. Students can stay in their costumes during the instructional day. For safety and to continue with instruction, parents are not allowed to enter the building to put on costumes. Keep in mind that this is a regular instructional day, which includes Art, Physical Education and students riding the bus. Please keep this in mind as you are choosing costumes. Please refrain from skulls or scary costumes that can scare other students. Additionally, there will be no weapons allowed for their costumes. These include fake guns, knives or other accessories that accompany their costumes.
2. The Halloween Parade will be held in the Parking Lot starting at 9:00am on October 31st. Students will make two turns in the parking lot and return to class. Families and Community Members stand against the gate and by the basketball courts. Parents take pictures and wave as students walk by. It’s truly a fun morning that engages our community.
3. We are asking families to not buy candy and food for classroom parties. October 31st is a regular instructional day. We are asking for parents to donate to our PTA or to assist us in purchasing additional Chromebooks. If each student brought in 2 dollars, we can purchase 2 Chromebooks. More information to come.
I have attached a link to an article that talks about student success and how families can support their students. The link is https://www.educationcorner.com/top-10-parents-do-help-kids-best-education.html
I hope everyone has a wonderful month of October. As always, please feel free to reach out if you have questions.
Yours in supporting the BPES Community,
R. Walker
Mr. Walker
Principal
School Lunch Applications:
Please take a minute to complete the online lunch application form. Our school receives federal funding based on the data collected from these forms! Our goal is to have 100% of our families complete the form, so that we can secure our additional funding for next year!
Here is the link! Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete the application form!
Link:
http://aacpsschools.org/nutrition/apply-for-free-or-reduced-price-meals/
Mrs. Chisholm's News!
October PBIS News
What a great opening month! We have had such a great opening month and are so happy to see all of your children and reconnect with families. October is anti-bullying month. We will be recognizing the importance of this on October 23rd by wearing orange. There will also be some additional activities throughout the month. Please see this website for additional information https://www.pacer.org/bullying/nbpm/
KChisholm
Attendance matters.
Please bring your child to school every day! 238 students have perfect attendance (no tardies or early dismissals). Way to go!!
All students with perfect attendance in September will be entered into a drawing which will be completed on Tuesday.
Students with perfect attendance for the first marking period will be recognized with an attendance parade at the end of the marking period
October Attendance Percentages
Pre-k
96.55%
K
96.83%
1
96.71%
2
96.42%
3
95.42%
4
97.02%
5
97.00%
Employee of the Month!
Mrs. Chisholm is October's Employee of the Month! There are not enough words to write about the incredible character of Karyn Chisholm. She is an amazing role model for both staff and students at Brooklyn Park Elementary. She is the wearer of many hats, works beyond her duty hours, builds positive relationships, and never hesitates to help anyone out. She is kind, calm, and caring. She offers a wealth of knowledge to staff and is always willing to support. from organizing school events, to coaching alongside teachers, to supporting students; Mrs. Chisholm truly cares about what she does. She has a kid-first mindset and is dedicated to BPES. When you see her next, please be sure to give her an extra "Thank You" for always going above and beyond for everyone at Brooklyn Park. Thank you, Mrs. Chisholm, for all that you do for us and most importantly, thank you for all that you do for the kids here at Brooklyn Park.
October Important Dates
2 Individual Picture Day!
7 Interims to go home8 Two-hour early dismissal for all students
9 School Closed: Yom Kippur-School Closed
15 School Closed for students: Parent/Teacher conferences
16 School Closed for students: Parent/Teacher conferences
17-24 Book Fair
18 Book Fair Family Night! 5:00-7:00
23 Flu Clinic
23 Wear Orange in support of bullying prevention
Elementary School Flu Vaccine Clinics
For Students of Title 1 Elementary Schools
Sponsored by the Anne Arundel County Department of Health
October 23rd at BPES!
Students in grades K-5 who are enrolled in a Title 1 Elementary School may receive a free flu vaccination at school.
For information about additional clinics, call the Department of Health at (410) 222-7343 or visit www.aahelth.org
PTA Happenings!
Brooklyn Park Spirit Wear Fundraiser
17 Chick-fil-A Family Night 5:00-8:0022 PTA Meeting 6:00 All Are Welcome
25 Halloween Dance 6:00-8:00
Classroom News!
Pre-Kindergarten
We are settling into our routines and showing great progress thus far in Pre-K! In the month of October, we will be focusing on the theme; Exploring the Changing Me. We will focus on what makes us special, how families are the same and different, how our senses help us, how we can keep ourselves safe, and using our 5 senses to describe objects. We have been learning about the letter Nn and it's sound. This month, we will learn the letters Ww, Pp, Hh, Mm, and Aa, as well as the sounds they make. We will be learning the words; we, I, like, to, and am. In our literacy small groups we will focus on book handling skills, recognizing letters/words, and identifying/spelling our names. In math, we will focus on counting objects using 1:1 correspondence (pointing to each object as we count). Please continue to check your child's folder daily for important newsletters, notes, etc. If you not already signed up for class dojo, please reach out to your child's teacher for more information. More information regarding Pre-K open house coming soon!
Kindergarten
We are continuing to build relationships in the classroom and establish routines. This month kindergarten students are learning how to form and recognize letters and numbers. We will start homework this month. A letter will be sent home with more information about our homework calendar. Please sign up for Class Dojo if you have not already. We would love to share photos and important news with you through the Class Dojo site!
First Grade
Students are beginning to write about “small moments” during Writer’s Workshop. We are focusing on using sounds to write words. Students are working on addition and subtraction in math, and recognizing the relationship between both. In science we are continuing to learn about Monarch butterflies. Students will receive interim reports in October. We look forward to meeting with parents at conferences!
Second Grade
Second grade is well under way. We are all off to a great start and have put in a lot of hard work at school and at home with learning the school and grade level routines and expectations. We took our first math assessment the last week in September. It was on addition and subtraction within 100. Please continue to practice at home with your child to help build their understanding of numbers and how they work together. We have moved onto measurement in math class. However, the homework will still be working with the addition and subtraction in order to keep those skills fresh in the students’ minds. Class dojo has been working great. Most families have signed up and will probably agree it makes communicating with the teacher so much easier than phone calls and emails. If you have not been able to sign in please contact your grade level teacher by sending a note in with your child or sending them an email. As always thank you for your support at home, we are a family at BPES and we all are doing great things for our children!
Third Grade
In math for the month of October we will be determining the area of shapes, rectangles and squares. They will learn that area of a plane figure can be measured by determining how many square units it takes to cover the figure with no gaps or overlaps. Students will connect their work with arrays and repeated addition (learned in Grade 2) to understand why multiplication of side lengths can be used to find the area of a rectangle. Without being told the formula to find area, students will explore the concept of area using concrete objects in order to discover the rule for finding the area of a rectangle. Please continue to complete homework as it is a review of the previous week. Keep practicing those multiplication facts!
Congratulations to those students who turned in all their reading homework the past two weeks! Keep up the great work! Please continue to encourage your child to read every night for at least 20 minutes and complete activities from the Quarter 1 Reading Choice Menu. The orange menu can be found glued in the front of their homework journal. Please encourage them to complete one choice per page and set up the heading as modeled below:
Book Title Date
Choice
Science: Students will conduct investigations to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.
Social Studies: Students will be able to answer how are communities are organized and how physical characteristics shape a community. We will be looking at communities around the world and comparing them to our community here!
Writing: Students will continue working on a personal narrative. They are focusing on adding descriptive details to create a movie in the reader's mind. They are also working on adding dialogue to show the reader what happened.
Fourth Grade
October is a busy time for 4th graders! We will be powering through our curriculum, preparing for our first 4th grade assessments at the end of the month, preparing for Arlington Echo next month and having our first parent teacher conferences! It is going to be an exciting month.
In Language Arts, your child will be continuing the study of fictional texts and understanding the main idea elements as well as point of views of stories. When your child is reading a book ask them to explain how the book would change if another character was telling the story (differing points of view). Even apply this to every day life and ask them how the story would change if someone else told the story about an event. Ask them to explain the "why" in why characters do a certain thing or act a certain way - this can also be applied to real life. Encourage your child to add details when explaining what they are reading and also encourage this into their writing- the more descriptions the better!
In Math, you child will be decomposing large numbers for addition and subtraction as a strategy to solve problems. We will also begin the standard algorithm this marking period. Decomposing is a strategy that is used to help learners see the why of the standard way that adults learned in school. We will also begin multiplication and division of big numbers. Please continue to practice facts with your child every night- this will make this skill so much easier for them if they know their facts better. Please reach out to your child's teacher if you do not understand the way they are multiplying- we will post explanations and examples via Class Dojo to support with homework. This is not the year your child will be doing standard algorithm in multiplication and division and they must show that they can perform the strategies we teach before moving on to the standard algorithm.
In Social Studies, we are studying explorers and creating a heroes and villains game of world explorers and in Science we will be preparing for Arlington Echo- more information about this trip is coming soon so please be on the look out - if you are willing to volunteer for the trip please contact Ms. Nauman as soon as possible so we can begin the process of getting our chaperones and leaders in place.
If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to your child's teacher. We look forward to meeting you at conferences and potentially working with you on the trip to Arlington Echo!
Fifth Grade
Fifth grade is off to a great start to the school year! During October students will continue writing their personal narratives. Math focus will be on adding/subtracting fractions and operations with decimals. Please remind students to practice their multiplication facts daily. We will continue with small group reading instruction and Explicit Comprehension. If you are interested in chaperoning the drownproofing field trip please contact your child's teacher as soon as possible.
Media News
Arts and Humanity News
In Arts and Humanities all students are working on team building exercises to help us work in groups and problem solve together! Our classroom is PBL (project based learning) based, so we are strengthening our skills, while thinking globally and creatively.
Pre-k-2nd are also learning about discovery station rotations on top of their design challenges! 3-5th are finishing up journal cover designs as well as working in small groups to create inventions for a client. We are off to a great start!
Strings & Band
Instrumental music classes are off to a great start! Remember that all students need music books in order to practice in class and at home. All Band students need: Essential Elements Book 1. All Strings students need String Basics Book 1.
Please email Mrs. Israel at risrael@aacps.org with any questions.
Physical Education
It's been a great opening month in physical education. After reviewing expectations and procedures, students in grades 3-5 have been worked cooperatively on team building challenges including the parachute and castle ball. Students in grades 4-5 also created their own game and taught it to their classmates. Students in the primary grades have been practicing their locomotor movements and moving safely in the gym though a variety of fun games and activities. In October, students in grades 3-5 will be taking their Fitnessgram pre-assessments and all students will be participating in a soccer skills unit.
For your students' safety, please remind them to wear sneakers and clothing that is appropriate for physical activity on days they have PE class. Long hair should be pulled back so students can see, jewelry should removed, hip/fanny packs and purses should not be worn or brought to class, and students should not have gum in the gym. Thank you for helping support these important safety rules.
Art Room
We have been working hard in the art room on our Square 1 Art projects! I can’t wait for you to see what your child is creating! The fundraiser catalogs with your child’s artwork on it will be sent home in the beginning of November. Items purchased will arrive at the school right before Winter Break. Perfect timing for gift giving! All proceeds will go toward the art room for purchasing art materials. Thank you for supporting the arts at BPES!