April

Spring is Here

It's hard to believe that we have only 8 weeks of school left. It's been a remarkable year, and we are proud of all students' growth and maturity.

Now that Spring Break has come and gone, "senioritis" or "spring fever" will no doubt be apparent in many students, even though they are "seniors" only in the sense that this is their last year of elementary school. They anticipate the end is coming and it will be easy to slide backward, produce less and do so with minimal effort. Teachers will discuss the dangers of this with them throughout the remaining weeks and encourage them to finish strong with effective habits to take with them to sixth grade.

CMAS Testing Schedule

Please make a note of the following CMAS dates and times for the coming weeks, and ensure that students are present at school on time, well rested, and energized with healthy meals.

Please try not to schedule any appointments during these testing days, even if you believe it will not conflict with testing times. These times are approximate only. Of course, exceptions will be made for illness - students will be sent home if they are not well. If they are feverish or feeling lousy, please do not send them to school on those days.

April 6 - 8 (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday)

English Language Arts, 9:00 - 11:00 a.m.

April 10, 13 - 14 (Friday, Monday, Tuesday)

Science, 9:00 - 10:30 a.m.

April 16 - 17, 20 (Thursday, Friday, Monday)

Math, 9:00 - 10:30 a.m.

For testing, students will need to have their laptops charged and brought to school every day. They also need to bring their chargers as well, in case charging is not successful at home.

Please help us ensure that students can have a stress-free testing experience by double checking that they have both laptop and charger every day for the next 3 weeks.

Human Body

Our study of the human body will begin this month.

Throughout this unit, we will establish an understanding of a system as a collection of parts working together to perform a function.

In the coming weeks, students will first focus on the respiratory, circulatory, and digestive/urinary systems and then concentrate on the muscular, skeletal, and nervous systems. For each system, students will need to explain the primary function(s) of the systems and understand all of the organs associated. Special attention will be given to how the systems work together within a whole body system to keep the human body operating at full potential.

Information about our last body system unit, the reproductive system, was emailed on Monday, March 2.

Human Growth and Development

Elementary School HEALTH Parent Letter WCE.pdf

Math

We are completing our geometry unit, covering the following topics:

Graph points on the coordinate plane to solve real-world and mathematical problems.
Classify two-dimensional figures into categories based on their properties.

With CMAS testing coming up, we will be doing a spiral review of all topics covered in math to date.

Language Arts

This month, our focus in reading will be on short stories - reading, analyzing, understanding, and writing short stories.

Reading short stories is a simple but powerful way to support your child’s learning. Because they are shorter in length, stories allow students to focus on truly understanding what they read. This helps strengthen comprehension skills, such as identifying key ideas, recognizing themes, and making connections.

Short stories also encourage analytical thinking. Students practice looking closely at characters, setting, and plot, and begin to ask deeper questions like “Why did this happen?” or “What does this mean?” These habits build critical thinking skills that apply across all subjects.

In addition, reading well-written stories supports stronger writing. Students are exposed to rich vocabulary, sentence structure, and different styles of storytelling, which they can then apply in their own work.

Regularly reading short stories—both in school and at home—helps students become more thoughtful readers, stronger thinkers, and more confident writers.

Young Ameritowne

Young AmeriTowne is an outstanding program for students to learn about business, economics, and the concept of free enterprise. Students will actually run the town, including city government and various businesses. They will have bank accounts, use "AmeriDollars" to save/spend/invest, and become consumers in the town. It is a highly engaging, educational, and hands-on experience for all students and we are looking forward to the experience.

Work in class has begun to familiarize students with the concepts of Young AmeriTowne. We will cover basic economics, the flow of money through an economy, free enterprise, banking, and investing. Follow this link for detailed information on the Young AmeriTowne curriculum.

Next, students will learn about the various businesses for which they will be responsible during their time with Young AmeriTowne. They will be assigned jobs at a business based (as best we can) on their interests, abilities, and interviewing skills. Students will make twelve job choices and we will do our best to assign them one of their choices; very few will actually get one of their top six job choices and some may not even get one of the twelve. Teachers will make it very clear that each job is important at Young Ameritowne, as it is for jobs in the real economy. There is no need for disappointment at not getting their most coveted jobs and we will not be making any changes to job assignments. Also, students will undergo job training and then participate in "staff" meetings to ensure their places of business will run smoothly. Attendance at these training and staff meetings will be required in order for students to be assigned to certain jobs. If students miss any of these dates, their job assignment may be given to someone else who has been present at the meetings and trainings. This depends upon the nature of the job.

Our trip to Young Ameritowne is scheduled for Thursday, May 7. This is an all day field trip - more information will be sent home.

Important Events

Please see the Calendar Page within this website for upcoming important events.

Within the calendar you can find important events, event timeframes, and additional brief notes about many events.

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