This newsletter will provide parents with updates and events at Marumsco Hills Elementary for October.

The PWCS Title I Office is excited to host the PWCS Title I Family Camp on Saturday, October 15. The event will be held 8:30-12:30 at George Hampton Middle School located at 14800 Darbydale Ave, Woodbridge.

Highlights of the Family Camp include:

• Meet, connect, and learn with other families, educators, and community resources.
• Attend sessions of your choice about topics that related to academics, specialty programs, social and emotional support and more!
• Sessions relate to grade levels PreK – 12.
• Get ideas for ways to support your child at home and FREE books.

Registration ends October 5. Use the link below to register:

https://tinyurl.com/PWCST1-FamilyCamp-2022

We would like all staff and students participate in red ribbon spirit week the last week of October.

• Monday, October 24 - School Closed
• Tuesday, October 25 - “Red”-y for Red Ribbon Week (Wear red)
• Wednesday: “Spotted Being a Genius” (Wear spots or a print)
• Thursday: “Be a Good Sport” (Wear a jersey or a sports team)
• Friday: “My Character Counts” (Dress as a book character)

Kindergarten

Reading:

• Letters/sounds
• Retelling story events with character and setting

Math:

• Counting to 20
• Numbers 0-6

Science:

• The 5 Senses

1st Grade

Reading:

• Fiction: Story Elements: character, setting, important events
• Fiction: Retelling Stories orally and in writing
• Nonfiction: Text Features
• Nonfiction: Asking and Answering Questions

Phonics:

• Comparing blends and digraphs
• Word Families
• Plurals with –s
• Decoding verbs with –s
• S Blends

Writing:

• Narrative
• Informational

Math:

• Computation and Estimation
• Join Story Problems
• Fact Fluency
• Number Combinations
• Communicative Property
• Making 10
• Doubles to 10
• Count On

Science:

• Weather
• Seasonal Changes

Social Studies:

• Patriotic Symbols

2nd Grade

Reading/Language Arts:

• Students will be learning more about fiction while diving deeper in realistic fiction and continuing exploration with narrative writing.

Math

• Students will be learning about place value, money, skip counting, compare and order, and rounding
  

Science:

• Students will be learning about the changes in our surroundings throughout the seasons

Social Studies:

• Students will be learning about famous American leaders and their contributions

3rd Grade

Reading: Unit 2 - Exploring Fiction and Literary Nonfiction

• 3.5i - Conflict/Resolution
• 3.5g - Ask and Answer Questions
• 3.5h - Draw Conclusions
• 3.5d - Identifying the setting, characters, and plot events
• 3.4b - Prefixes and Suffixes

Writing: Unit 2 - Personal Narrative

• 3.8 - Engage in writing as a process (prewriting, structure, revising, editing, publishing)
• 3.9 - Use complete sentences

Math: Unit 2 - Data Analysis and Probability

• 3.14 - Investigate and describe the concept of probability
• 3.15 - Collect, organize, represent, read, and interpret data in pictographs and bar graphs

Social Studies: Unit 2: Geography and Map Skills

• 3.6 - Develop map skills to locate major rivers, mountain ranges, and other geographic features of: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America

Science: Unit 2 - Earth's Water

• 3.7 - Water Cycle and water reservoirs

4th Grade

Reading:

• how author's choice of character, setting and language contributes to and impacts plot
• drawing conclusions about characters & character traits
• summarizing story events
• conflict & resolution
• theme/lesson/moral of story

Writing:

• Personal narrative

VA Studies:

• Completing Native Peoples unit
• Jamestown unit

Math:

• multiplication
• division
• patterns
• equalities
• measurement, perimeter & area

Science:

• Earth, sun & moon

5th Grade

Reading:

• continuing to explore fiction and literary nonfiction
• understanding different elements of a plot and summarizing those elements independently

Writing:

• drafting a personal narrative through the writing process
• Editing and revising personal narratives independently and with peers
• creating a final draft of their personal narrative

Math:

• reviewing rounding rules to be able to apply them to decimals
• working towards comparing and ordering fractions, decimals, improper fractions and mixed numbers
• creating models to understand the concept of fractions when compared to decimals

Science:

• reviewing the relationship between the earth, moon and sun
• starting the unit of motion to include friction, force and energy
• understanding that when objects collide, the contact forces transfer energy and can change objects’ motion

Social Studies:

• understanding the geography, climate, natural resources and life today of the Northeast United States
• understanding the geography, climate, natural resources and life today of the Southeast United States

Art

• Kindergarten and 1st grade are continuing to identify lines, shapes, and colors that we use in art. Students are practicing coloring inside the lines and taking up the whole paper to create a finished drawing. They are practicing fine motor skills such as holding a pencil and crayon, stamping, tracing, and folding.
• 2nd grade is continuing to practice shading techniques to create art true to real-life, using pictures and objects as inspiration. Students are continuing to build their art vocabulary as we complete seasonal drawings.
• 3rd grade is working on their Color Theory unit and will be completing a Pop Art inspired pumpkin drawing using the following color schemes: realistic, monochromatic, analogous, and complimentary. Followed by a group mural project about our Earth's water system.
• 4th and 5th grades are continuing our shading unit, but moving into a new medium, ink. Students will learn stippling and cross-hatching techniques and use them to complete a mixed-media landscape.

PE

• Kindergarten: Learn underhand rolling and underhand throwing.
• 1st Grade: Practice underhand rolling and underhand throwing at targets.
• 2nd Grade: Practice underhand rolling and underhand throwing in game like situations.
• 3rd Grade: Practice underhand rolling and underhand throwing in game like situations.
• 4th Grade: Practice overhand throwing and catching and use those skills in different games and activities.
• 5th Grade: Practice overhand throwing and catching and use those skills in different games and activities.

Music

• Kindergarten and 1st Grade: Rhythms and Steady Beat
• 2nd-5th Grades: Elements of reading music, combining notes and rhythms

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, most recently reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act, states that parents in Title I schools have the right to request certain information about their child’s teachers.

The information that you have a right to request about your child’s teacher is:

1. Whether the teacher has met state qualifications and licensing criteria for the grade levels and subjects the teacher is teaching.
2. Whether the teacher is teaching under emergency or other provisional status through which state qualification or licensing has been waived.
3. The baccalaureate degree major of certification or degree held by the teacher, and the field of discipline of the certification or degree.
4. Whether the child is provided services by paraprofessionals and, if so, their qualifications.

At Marumsco Hills Elementary, we are extremely proud of our teachers and paraprofessionals, and are happy to provide you with any of the information above pertaining to your child’s teacher(s). If you have such a request, please call the school at 703-494-3252 and ask for the information you are interested in.

According to the Virginia Department of Education, "All students in tested grade levels and courses are expected to participate in Virginia's assessment program, unless specifically exempted by state or federal law or by Board of Education regulations." On December 10, 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) was signed into law. Section 1112(e)(2) of ESSA states that parents of students in Title I schools have a right to know about state or division policies regarding student participation in any assessments mandated by ESSA, including any policy, procedure, or parental right to opt students out of such assessments. The Commonwealth of Virginia does not currently have an Opt Out policy for SOL assessments. However, Section 22.1-253.13:3.C of the Code of Virginia states that, “The Board of Education shall not include in its calculation of the passage rate of a Standards of Learning assessment for the purposes of state accountability any student whose parent has decided to not have his child take such Standards of Learning assessment, unless such exclusions would result in the school's not meeting any required state or federal participation rate.” Prince William County Public Schools regulations state that, if a parent or guardian decides to not have a student take a state or local assessment, then the person making the request should be informed about the academic consequences that decision could have on the student.

If you would like to receive more information about this topic, please contact the Ms. Cuocci.