Dear Parents, 

We are moving closer to Spring! We wanted to let you know that our elementary classroom schedules have changed to help accommodate some growing needs. We know many parents like to schedule doctor & dentist appointments around specific times. Please feel free to contact your child's teacher if you have any questions about their new schedule.

Believe it or not, our 3rd and final round of MAP testing will begin on March 25th for grades 3rd-5th. 

K-2nd-grade students will take MAP tests during the state testing window in May. Classroom teachers will communicate testing dates to families. Family Reports will be sent home when the testing window closes. 

We hope you have saved the date of March 20th to attend our school-wide Self-Directed Learning Showcase. This is one of our favorite events of the year! Our students love to share their expertise with families and visitors. Please stay tuned to the Bear Essentials for weekly updates.

Have a wonderful week & please reach out if you have any questions.

Kind Regards,

Lisa

Elementary Basketball- Basketball season has started. If you have not paid for this season's fees, please pay ASAP. Also, please pay attention to the official JCPS Basketball Schedule.

Elementary Soccer- If you are interested in having your child play soccer for Brown Elementary this year, please fill out the form below. 

• We plan to have an advanced team and two developmental teams. 

• This is for grades 3-5 only. 

• Tryouts will be on Monday, March 2nd, with an alternative rain delay date of Wednesday, March 4th.

• The season starts on March 21st. 

Brown Elementary Soccer Interest Form

Happy March!! We have an exciting month ahead as we prepare for our very first SDL Showcase on the 21st. In reading, we are still learning about trees during our module time, and our skills block focuses on blends. In math, we are finishing our unit 6 studies of numbers to 20 and beginning unit 7 - 3D shapes. For science and social studies, we’ll be studying living things and women’s history month. 

Can you believe it is only 4 weeks until Spring Break?

Jenna & Cheri

Firefly Newsletter LINK

Reading: In this unit, students engage in a variety of experiences as they answer the unit guiding question, “How do birds use their body parts to survive?” Throughout the unit, students read, write, talk,  and draw about feathers and beaks. Students are building their research skills through whole-group and independent research using texts and an online information database. This whole class research process involves listening to the text read aloud, generating group notes, and creating a shared writing piece. Students then have the opportunity to demonstrate their proficiency with these skills and answer the question "How do birds use their beaks and feathers to help them survive?" by researching a bird of their choosing, generating notes, completing an observational drawing, and developing an independent writing piece to explain.

Math: In this unit, students are learning that the two digits in a two-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones. To make sense of the digits in two-digit numbers, students continue to use familiar representations such as connecting cubes and base-ten drawings. 

Eriauna & Lauren

Dear 2nd Grade Families,

Our students are busy researching pollinators for their PBL project for March 20. They are very engaged in learning how plants and pollinators work together to survive. We are super excited to incorporate the Glowforge from the Ursa lab in our project.

We are working on Unit 6 in math, where students are learning that shapes can be partitioned into 2, 3, or 4 equal pieces called halves, thirds, and fourths or quarters, respectively. Using information about halves, fourths, and quarters, students learn to tell time and count money. 

Thanks for reading,

Ms. Mayra & Ms. Susan

Hello Third Grade Families,

This month, we worked on figuring out character traits and point of view in our third ELA unit on literary classics. We have also worked on introducing division and multiplying larger numbers in our fourth Math unit on multiplication and division. Next month, we will work on reading informational texts on water in ELA. We will work on developing an understanding of fractions in Math. 

Thank you all for your continued support of our awesome learners!

Andrew and Samantha

In Reading, students will apply what they have learned about the American Revolution and colonial perspectives on the war to create broadsides persuading someone to be a Patriot or a Loyalist. We then move to our final Module, Responding to Inequality, beginning with introducing students to the topic of inequality and the ratification of the 19th Amendment through the book "The Hope Chest" by Karen Schwabach. Students will analyze characters' reactions to human rights violations.

In Math, students will complete Unit 6: Multiplying and Dividing Multi-Digit Numbers - finding quotients from larger dividends (up to four digits), investigating new division strategies and ways to represent them, and interpreting division situations that involve remainders. Then, move to Unit 7, Angles and Measurement, where students will formalize their knowledge of geometric features, identify and define the building blocks of geometry (points, lines, rays, and line segments), and develop concepts and language to more precisely describe and reason about other geometric figures.

In Science, students are currently completing the Energy, Motion, and Waves Unit, where they have gained foundational knowledge of the phenomenon of energy. The essential question for this module was, "What is energy and how is it related to motion?" Students investigated how energy is transferred when objects collide. They will now explore how to use evidence to construct an explanation of the relationship between an object's speed and its energy. Then explore energy transfer through waves, which result in sound and motion. Finally, students will use their newfound knowledge to develop models to represent how energy moves from place to place in waves.

Christie & Jamie

MATH:

Fifth-grade math for March will focus on Unit 5: Decimals. Students will begin by comparing, rounding, ordering, reading, writing, and representing decimals through the thousandths place, including expanded form. The unit will then progress to performing operations with decimals, covering addition and subtraction to the hundredths place, and multiplication and division with products and quotients resulting in the hundredths place, all while utilizing place value reasoning and properties of operations. 

Check out Family Support Materials HERE.

LITERACY:

Performance Task/PBL WORKING TOWARDS and Assessment for Mastery:

Weekly Assessment: will be organizing information, determining key details, and identifying the main idea. We will also explain how the people and times we are reading about are connected.

End of Unit Assessment: We are explaining how people or events led to Jackie Robinson’s success using specific information from the text, and how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular claims. We will write an argument essay that takes a stand on which factors were most impactful in helping Jackie Robinson succeed and change society. 

Randy & Tyler