Welcome to our weekly Gator Bites newsletter! Every Friday evening our team at CGE will send out any important updates for the following week. Our goal is to be prepared, transparent and informative! We appreciate your time and urge you to read through carefully each week- especially during these unconventional virtual learning weeks.

Stay safe, stay informed and stay Gator Strong! 🐊

I had a short Zoom meeting with parents to answer questions related to the shift to Plan A. If you were unable to attend, I am sharing the slides from the meeting. It may be found here. If you have questions that are not answered in the slides, please don’t hesitate to reach out. My email address is: lsavage@chatham.k12.nc.us

Dear Chatham County Schools Parent or Guardian:

As we move into the last quarter of the school year, we typically begin planning both for the summer and for the upcoming school year. Please take a few minutes to complete the following survey to provide feedback related to your interest in summer programming for your child, as well as feedback for instructional programs for next year. We appreciate your assistance in planning opportunities for our students.

https://survey.k12insight.com/Survey1.aspx?k=SsRYVTsTYPsPsPsP&lang=0

Sincerely,

Chatham County Schools

Each week we are celebrating students that display CGE’s CHOMP expectations. Here are our CHOMPERS of the week for last week:

Looking for a fun, safe activity during spring break? The Chatham Grove PTA has you covered! To purchase tickets, visit https://cgegators.memberhub.store/store

Exciting News….. reFUEL Chatham Grove will be starting this summer!!!

Many of you are familiar with Fuel Up, the assistance program offered to food insecure students at Perry Harrison Elementary. Students here at Chatham Grove Elementary (CGE) who are enrolled in the program have been getting their needs met through Perry Harrison’s Fuel Up but starting this summer CGE will have our own program – reFUEL Chatham Grove! CGE will be joining the reFUEL program umbrella that currently provides services to Pollard Middle and Northwood High School students. As such the program will provide food directly to students’ homes or other drop off point of their choosing, greatly reducing the manpower needed to run the program. However, reFUEL CGE will still need some volunteers for the program to be a success. If you have a desire to be involved in this much needed and worthwhile effort please consider joining us. We are especially looking for people with grant writing experience, and people who are savvy with online food ordering. You can email us at refuelcge@gmail.com And stay tuned for more news regarding fundraising opportunities!

Parent Pro Tip:

Check out these resources to build phonemic awareness and support your child as a reader!

• What is Phonemic Awareness? Video

• 10 Ways to Help Your Child Build Phonemic Awareness

We are excited to have many of our students returning to Chatham Grove! If you are interested, please review the following videos for a school tour and arrival/dismissal procedures for the bus and carpool.

As we continue to transition to Plan A, we will have a lot of new car riders joining our pick up and drop off lines. Please keep in mind these helpful tips to have a safe and efficient carpool.

-Pull up close (but safely) to the cars in front to allow more cars to fit onto campus.

-Do not block the intersection on Andrews Store Road.

-Please have your kids ready with everything they need to exit the car in a timely fashion when you arrive at our drop off points.

-Please be patient. We need your help to make this work :)

-Walkers are not permitted at this time. We do continue to assess, however, when we will be able to welcome walkers--it’s something we are excited to do.

AIG and Talent Development zoom groups for all grades are cancelled in March, beginning on March 1st, while Ms. Merilee and Ms. Wilkie complete required testing for students referred for AIG evaluation. We miss meeting with your children and rest assured, we are working to finish this testing as quickly as possible so that we can begin meeting with your children again.

During this testing period, weekly asynchronous activities are being posted in google classroom or sent to students via their email accounts, to provide independent challenge and enrichment experiences for students.

The families of students previously referred for AIG evaluation will be contacted via email to schedule remote testing sessions as needed.

• Hooray! In person students are cycling into the new visual arts now. Please note we will be painting & creating with other messy media! Please send an “art shirt” with your students so they may have something to protect their clothing. The “Art shirt” can be an old, large size tee shirt or button down shirt that can get dirty without worries. This will help the students not be focused on keeping their clothes clean, & be able to create without stress!!!! Any questions, please feel free to email Victoria Sylvestre.

• Wanted! (EMPTY) Cereal Boxes! We will be creating our own sketchbooks & will be using the cereal box cardboard as our covers. They will be so awesome! Please send as many as you can. Thank you!
  

Student materials will be available for pick up again starting on Monday March 29th from 9am-2pm. Please contact your student’s classroom teacher if you have a question about the materials/resources that need to be collected at our school.

A huge thank you to two of our County Commissioners Diana Hales and Karen Howard for taking the time to visit with our third-grade classes. Our kids enjoyed the opportunity to hear how they can be good citizens. They were intrigued by what inspired you both to go into government. Thanks to you, our third graders feel inspired to do more for their town, county, state, and country! Thank you for making the government personal to them.