cashell communique financial · use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose...

March, 2015 Cashell Communique, a publication of the Cashell PTA

Financial

Submission Guidelines:

Send your articles by email to

[email protected]

Submission Deadlines 2014/15:

10/31, 11/28, 1/30, 2/27, 3/27,

4/30, 5/29

President - Carrie Headen

Principal - Maureen Stamoulis

Editor - Barbara Finan

3/2 PARCC Testing Gr. 3-5

3/3 PTA Meeting at 7:00 p.m.

3/11 Market Day pickup

3/27 No School – Teacher Professional Day

3/31 PTA Meeting at 7:00 p.m.

Cashell

Communique

PRESIDENT’S CORNER By Carrie Headen

Carrie has flown down south for the winter :) She will be back next month!

A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF THE CASHELL ELEMENTARY PTA

March 2015


Kindergarten News Mrs. McLean & Mrs. Weisner It is hard to believe March has arrived. In class we predicted whether March would come in as a lion or lamb. We are hoping spring is just around the corner. Here’s what we have planned for March: Reading/Language Arts

Ask and answer questions as who, what, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text Use the most frequently occurring affixes as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word Recognize and name end punctuation Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative text that names a topic and supplies some in-

formation about the text Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds Spells simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships

Math Describe and compose 3-dimensional shapes Count objects arranged in a circle and scattered Count by ones to 100 Decompose a number in more than one way Create an equivalent set using counting strategies

Science Identify and describe the observable external features of insects Identify and describe features of invertebrate animals and label them as insects or not insects Classify plants and animals by their external features Identify and explain how plants and animals use external features to survive

Social Studies Recognize workers as human resources Identify and describe natural resources found in the environment Recognize that natural resources are used to make goods

~The Kindergarten Team

Pre–K News Ms. Rosendorf The Sweetheart Sing was a great success. Thank you to Mrs. Boice for all of her time and hard work. Also, thank you to all the Pre-K parents who attended the sing and helped with the party. We are looking forward to beginning our next unit Growing Up Healthy. The students will be learning to be happy, healthy and safe. We will be learning about our senses, eating healthy foods, and staying safe. Dr. Suess's birthday is in March. Our class will celebrate his birthday by reading Dr. Suess books and discussing the rhyming words in his books. We will be Pre-K authors and do our own writing!


First Grade News By The First Grade Team

One of the best parts of March is the arrival of spring! We all look forward to it and the warmer weath-er it promises is near. In the meantime, however, we ask that you have your child dress for the weath-er. March can be very windy and unpredictable with temperatures. We do try to have the students go out for recess whenever possible. Our academic success (thinking) skills emphasis during this third marking period is on effort, motiva-tion, persistence and synthesis. Frequently these skills are embedded right into our daily lessons in reading or math. So, for example, as a student is introduced to a new concept in math, they are also instructed on how to approach the learning of a challenging concept with persistence. We encourage you to reinforce these skills at home with your student as well. In reading, we continue our integrated curriculum study on natural and human-made features (reading and comprehension of informational text). This includes identifying the main topic, retelling key details, using context clues and identifying basic similarities and differences between two texts on the same

topic. Toward the end of the month we will focus on literary text: sensory words and phrases, story elements, reading strategies and frequent collaborative conversations. Writing will consist of using information gathered during our Young Geographer’s Project to write an opinion text about an attraction in the place researched. Students will select a topic, determine an audience, describe relevant details about an attraction, and or-ganize reasons that support an opinion. We will work on incorporating exclamatory and interrogative questions into our writings. Toward the end of the month, we will focus on writing narrative text, specifically poetry. Math this month will be exploring and applying the meaning of the equal sign as students work on balanced equations. Additionally, students will create and solve word problems involving addition and subtraction situations within 20. Students are expected to solve word problems involving add to, take from, put together and compare problems as they find the unknown in an equation (always a challenge!). We will also begin adding and subtracting 2- digit numbers (multiples of 10). We will work with students to develop the place value understanding that in adding 2 digit numbers, they add tens and tens, ones and ones, and that sometimes it is neces-sary to compose a ten. In social studies, students will examine the physical and human characteristics of places to understand how people and the environ-ment interact. Students will explore how people adapt to changes in the environment such as using less water in a drought. Finally, students will investigate ways people can help protect the environment. In science, we will be investigating the attributes of rocks, sand, and soil. We will identify what the Earth is made of, materials that make up natural and human-made objects in the environment, and how human actions affect the environment in which we live. We will learn how the surface of the Earth changes, including air and water temperature, and differentiate between human-made and natural objects.

Please check with your child as to the quality of their school supplies. It’s time to refresh the supplies of pencils, erasers, glue

sticks, and scissors. As always, we love working with you and are so grateful for all the support you give us.

~The First Grade Team

Amazon.com Shopping Supports Cashell

When you shop at Amazon.com you could help support the PTA. By clicking the link below, .5% of your purchase automatically goes to Cashell. http://smile.amazon.com/ch/23-7077025 Happy Shopping!


Domino’s Pizza

Dough-Rising Days

Thank you for

supporting the PTA!!

On the first Tuesday of each month, you can support Cashell’s PTA, while getting a quick and easy dinner for your family!

Place an order with Dom-ino’s Pizza in Olney. Let them know you are from Cashell Elementary and 20% of all sales will be do-nated to our PTA. Order at www.dominos.com or call 301-570-3800. Thank you to all the Cashell families who ordered from Domino’s during our Dough-Raising Days! Please put the remaining dates on your calendar: Oct. 7th, Nov. 4th, Dec. 2nd, Jan. 6th, Feb. 3rd, March 3rd, April 7th, May 5th and June 2nd. Thank you again for supporting the PTA!

Second Grade News Ms. McNamara, Ms. Moloznik, Ms. Schwanger, Ms. Love

Wow, March already! We cannot wait for warm weather and our spring life cycles unit to begin! This month in reading, we will be shifting from informational texts to learning about rhythm and meaning in poetry. We will also be explor-ing literary texts by analyzing character, point of view, the setting and the plot of a story. In math we will be working on our time-telling skills! We will work on reading times on both analog and digital clocks and telling time to the

nearest 5 minutes. Students will also be working on partitions of shapes. We will be dividing shapes such as circles and rectangles into halves, thirds and fourths. In science, we are studying plants! Each student will have the opportunity to plant his or her own radish plant. Then, we will observe the plants and note how they change over time. In our social studies unit we are working on economic decision making! We will be discussing financial transactions, how to make informed decisions and how markets work. Every year we are pleasantly surprised and love how engaged and interested our students really are in such an advanced topic! In writing, we will continue working on developing opinion statements in order to write about 'a book every second grader should read'. As we stated last month, this quarter, our thinking skills will continue to be intellectual risk taking and flexibility. We are encouraging our students to ask questions and share their ideas, even if they are unsure. When we hear the ideas of others, we can change our own thinking or use our own ideas in a new way.

Please ask your child if he or she needs additional school supplies. We’ve worked hard the first half of the year and some pencils, crayons and glue sticks need to be replaced. Thank you for your continued support!

LOST AND FOUND! Wondering where your child's other glove is? Where in the world is that missing sweatshirt? We may have the answer! The Lost and Found bin and coat rack have been steadily increasing with lost items. Please take a moment to stop by the All Purpose Room and take a look. We display all of the items frequently during lunch, but many items still aren't claimed. Amazingly, some children don't even recognize their own items (even when their name is on it!). We also have 2 pairs of eyeglasses that remain unclaimed (they are not in the bin but are held in a more careful place - please ask the office or lunch/recess aides for assistance). Please remember to put your child's name on all items that come to school. We love to reunite lost items with their owners! The current collection of unclaimed items will be cleared out and donated on April 2. Thank you!


Third Grade News Ms. Kress & Ms. Letina Third graders will be presenting our special recorder concert: The Magic Coffee Mill for our “Cashell Celebrates Success” event on Tuesday, March 31. Our students have been practicing their recorders (thank you) and will have an opportunity to show off their skills as we integrate them into our curriculum on folktales. The concert will be held for all family members in the Multi-Purpose room at 11:00 AM. Please remember that the concert will be presented to the school before parents will be permitted to enter the Multi-Purpose room once the school performance ends at around 10:20 AM. We hope to see you there! The first PARCC testing sessions will be held this month. It is very important that all third graders are in school and in good spirits. There will be limited homework on testing dates. Please make sure your child has a good night’s sleep a healthy break-fast, and arrives to school on time on the following test dates:

March PARCC Dates (for both classes.) Please mark your calendars: March 9, 10, and 11- Literacy March 16 and 17- Math Here are a few other suggestions for testing time:

If possible, please send in a corded mouse for your child to use with their Chromebook during testing. This is optional,

but it may help your child with the “drag and drop” process that some testing problems may require. Please do not send in a cordless mouse because these often interfere with nearby computers and cannot be used during the testing process. Your child will need a set of headphones for testing. Most of them brought headphones at the beginning of the school year, but please check with them to be sure that their current pair is working properly. The second semester is going by quickly! The end of the third marking period is Thursday, March 26. Please remind your chil-dren to continue to read at least 20 minutes per night at home and to practice basic math facts. On a slightly different note, we are running low on tissue boxes, as well as Clorox wipes (to minimize germs) and baby wipes (for cleaning the white boards.) Donations for these items would be greatly appreciated! ~The Third Grade Team

Physical Education News Ms. Leber All students will be working on forms of striking for the rest of the school year. We took a moment in class to discuss what sports we thought involved some sort of striking. We discovered there are a ton. Everything from football, to baseball, golf, tennis, soccer, hockey, volleyball, badminton, and pool. We also discussed that in each one of these sports where we strike something, we need think of 2 things; the force in which we strike the object, and how we strike it so that it goes where we want it to go. Everyone has started striking with rackets. K-2

nd graders are working with balloons. We have worked on striking the balloon

with various body parts. We even headed the balloon, bump volley, set volleyed, and punted the balloon. We then transferred over to a racket. We worked on hitting the balloon to ourselves, then to a partner. We also worked on the forehand, smash, and lob strokes in tennis. 3

rd-5

th graders are also working on tennis. We worked on controlling the racket, and ball by hitting forehands and backhands

to ourselves. We have also been working on a bounce serve and forehand. We discovered that we can use a lot of the same concepts from an overhand throw and incorporate it into our forehand (side to target, arm in an “L”, step with the opposite foot, and twist). We are working hard on keeping our racket level and finishing our swing. We will also explore pickleball (plastic

racket and whiffle ball) and badminton during our “tennis” unit. Once we have finished tennis we will start working on golf. K-2

nd graders will work on their putting, and

3rd

-5th graders will be working on their drive strokes.


SCBP Class News Ms. Baylin and Ms. Skobel The SCBP team has been very busy throughout these cold winter months. The snow has been beautiful, but we really look for-ward to spring! It’s time to replace snow and ice with daffodils and tulips! We have been continuing to work on our reading skills including answering WH questions about the story elements---title, author, main character, setting, main idea, and sequencing of events. We have also been incorporating new vocabulary words/pictures into our repertoire with the help of a 2-switch voice output device. For each book we read we are learning 2 new words/pictures. Our focus in math is broad. We constantly revisit counting with 1:1 correspondence and sorting/matching objects, colors, and shapes. We have also begun a deeper look at money, including identifying coins and dollar bills, sorting different types of coins, dollars bills, and matching coins and dollar bills. We practice these skills quite often so that it will help to prepare us for a more independent future. Science, along with the other content areas, span 3 different grade levels—kindergarten, 1

st, and 2

nd grade. We choose what is

most relevant from each grade level and explore those indicators. We have been focusing on (kindergarten) human features, ani-mals vs. humans, plants vs. animals, (1

st grade) size, shape, color, investigating objects, Earth materials, and (2

nd grade) sun/

moon/stars, and life cycles. Some of our social studies topics include markets, money, near/far, above/below, and community workers. Along with all of the work we do, the third-fifth graders have completed another year of Alt-MSA. Next year will be a new assess-ment that is computer based. We are curious to see what this new test entails.

Whew, that’s a lot of material that we have been working on!

Fourth Grade News Ms. Vigil & Ms. Reed

Believe it or not, we are half way through the third marking period! We’d like to thank all of the parents who volunteered to make the class Valentine parties a success. A big hand goes out to our fourth graders who participated in the instrumental and choral music concert. Cashell kids are truly talented. Math: We have completed identifying factors of whole numbers within a hundred, understanding that whole numbers are the product of two factors. Students can identify prime and composite numbers. Students are now focused on number and operations in fractions (identify the numerator and denominator, identify equivalent fractions, compose and decompose to add and subtract fractions, add and subtract mixed numbers with like denominators, and solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of fractions). We will move toward topics in measurement and data. Students will create line plots to display measurement data and interpret the data. We continue to encourage students to master their basic multiplication and division facts now. Please practice the facts with your child at home. ELA: Students enjoyed our genre study of Greek myths. Students learned to describe the relationship between characters and the setting of the story, compare the treatment of similar themes, and make connections between the text and visual representation of a myth. Students referred to the text when explaining what a text says explicitly and implicitly and summarize the text in order to determine theme. Students will continue to analyze text to infer and determine theme in order to summarize both literary and informational texts as they read fantasy novels. Writing: After examining the characteristics of memoir, students will recall an event from their own lives and reflect on that experi-ence. We will also focus on self-editing and revision of their writing by including transition words to sequence events. Social Studies: Through our study of colonization in social studies, students are forming opinions based on informational text. Students conduct historical investigations with primary and secondary sources in order to answer questions about the lost colony of Roanoke and what caused the starving time in the Jamestown settlement. Students read variety of texts on the first English settlements in order to understand the settlers’ motives for migration and how they interacted with the Native Americans. REMINDERS:

Please check/sign planners each night. Students should have at least 50 Study Island ribbons by now. Ask your child how many he/she has. Students eat lunch at 12:40. They have snack at about 11 a.m. Please provide a healthy choice for your child. Students should practice their instrument each day.

~The Fourth Grade Team


Fifth Grade News Ms. Samsock & Mrs. Hill Thankfully, winter is almost behind us! We have quite a bit to squeeze in before the end of third quarter, and are hoping that the weather does not interrupt our plans. PARCC testing and family life instruction will both take place in the coming weeks. Please check the important dates section below for specifics. Additionally, the fifth graders will be working hard to complete several writ-ing and technology projects this quarter. Students will be given the opportunity to put their technology skills to use in an integrative literacy and technology project. In me-dia class, students will begin using the “WeVideo” application to create book trailers for books that they have read this year. In writing, we are starting to create original realistic fiction stories. Students have spent a good portion of this quarter studying au-thor’s craft in many realistic fiction pieces in preparation for writing their stories. They will use tools on Google Docs to work through the writing process and publish their writing. Overall, we have a busy stretch ahead of us before spring arrives. Please mark your calendars for the following: -March 2-6- PARCC Testing -March 16-20- “Family Life and Human Sexuality” Instruction Thank you for your continued support!

~The Fifth Grade Team

Gift Cards Return, with the opportunity to purchase your gift cards with a

CREDIT CARD!

The Cashell PTA has again partnered with GLScrip to offer our community the opportunity to pur-chase gift cards through our PTA. Every gift card purchased through this program earns money for our school and students. A flyer came home this past week. NEW this time, you can now pay for your gift cards with a credit card!!! How does it work? Families order gift cards through the Cashell PTA and pay face value (a $25 gift card costs $25). The PTA submits one giant order on behalf of all participating families to the

GLSCrip. Every gift card purchased earns Cashell PTA a rebate (1%-15% of the card value). There are hundreds of gift cards to chose from in every major shopping category....grocery, department stores, gas stations, restaurants, retail, hotels, home improvement and more. Many Olney retailers participate: Giant, Safeway, Shoppers, Chipotle, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, CVS, TJMaxx, HomeGoods, Panera, Subway, etc. Rebates for everyday shopping really add up! Money earned will help the PTA fund educational books, software and supplies for the classrooms, fieldtrips, annual events like our Variety Show and Sci-ence Fair, staff appreciation programs and more. Orders can be placed online (shopwithscrip.com; enrollment code: 2FE4173L27561) or using a paper order form. All orders must be submitted by February 27th . Payment should be submitted with the order. There are two ways to pay. You can send a check made payable to Cashell PTA with your order. OR, For the first time you can pay for your gift cards with a credit card. Click this link to put in amount spent. http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/cashelles/pta/means.aspx . Or go to the Cashell PTA website under Ways and Means and look for the button/link to submit gift card payment. Authorize the amount due. You will receive a receipt noting your payment was received. Gift cards will be delivered the week of March 9th . We thank you for your consideration. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions. ~Courtney Brinkman ([email protected])


Calling all Video Game and Lego Robotics Enthusiasts! Cashell will offer two classes this Spring that promise to be loads of fun! REGISTER & PAY ONLINE BY MARCH 31, 2015 @ tinyurl.com/S15-STEM-CASH Video Game Programming (Level 2): Grades 4 -5 Fri 3:15-4:15pm Apr 17, 24, May 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 Video Game Programming 2 builds on what we learned in VGP 1. We focus on making more complex scrolling games and multimedia stories. Each student makes his or her very own game. *Prerequisite: Video Game Programming 1 Course Structure and Fees: 2 instructors. Seven 60-min. meetings, once per week. $140 per student. Min. 11 / max. 12 students. Lego Robo Challenge Machines: Grades 3 - 5 Thu 3:15-4:15pm Apr 16, 23, 30, May 7, 14, 21, 28 GRADES 3–5 (3rd grade prerequisite: LEGO® Robotics) Students may not repeat this class. Students must be in specified grade range. Robo Challenge Machines is ideal for students who want more of a challenge than the LEGO® Robotics class offers. No previous robotics experience is required for 4-5th graders. Instead of working with step-by-step building directions and sample programs, we start each class with a programming challenge set by our instructors. We then use LEGO® robotics kits to design bots to go with our programs. We build catapults, crash-avoidance vehicles, hexbug nano catchers, and more! Robo Challenge Machines and Contraptions can be taken in any order. Course Structure and Fees: 1 instructor, 1 aide. Seven 60-min. meetings, once per week. $125 per student. Min. 11 / max. 12 students. QUESTIONS? CONTACT MEREDITH SINGER, [email protected] OR 301-792-5509

County Education Budget Meeting, 3/9

Councilmember Craig Rice will be hosting an Education Budget Meeting at Sherwood High School on Monday, March 9th. Dr. Andrew Zuckerman, from MCPS along with Dr. DeRionne Pollard from Mont-gomery College will be joining him that evening. This is a great oppor-tunity to hear about what is happening this year both at the state and county level regarding the education budget and get your questions answered. We will also discuss the opportunities residents have in influencing the budget decisions. Please help us get the word out to your parent community. Look for-ward to seeing you on March 9th! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Sharon St.Pierre │Deputy Chief of Staff │ Montgomery County Coun-cilmember Craig Rice│ Montgomery County Council │100 Maryland Avenue │ Rockville, MD 20850 │ 240-777-7955 (main number) 240 777-7955 (Direct Dial)

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