Hello Families!

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend. 

Reading/Writing:

We will be combining our reading and writing skills this week to learn how to write reading responses. This is an important way to practice our metacognition.  We connect our reading response to the depth and complexity icons through different prompts. To start practicing this skill we will review different response examples and rate them on the rubric. Then we will write a response as a class over a read-aloud book. At the end of our learning for the week, students will be asked to write their own response about a depth and complexity prompt using evidence from the text. This will help support one of the new STAAR components on Evidence-Based Writing. We will continue to do responses throughout the year over our book club books.

Grammar/Word Study: This week, we will be learning about the root -man/manu. This means hand or handily. Students will be given 10 words using this root to learn the meaning of. Students will have a word study quiz on Friday, September 8th over this week's words and last week's. 

 We will focus on capitalizing proper nouns. This is a review skill from previous grades, but one that is very important as we continue into 5th grade. 

Social Studies: 

This week, students will learn about the regions of the United States.  Students will work in groups to research their region's landforms, history, people, resources, and challenges. We will be presenting to the class later in the week. Then, we are starting our colonization unit in Social Studies. We will start the unit by learning key language of the discipline students will need to know for this unit. 

On top of all of the amazing learning we are doing, some important dates are also coming up. They are:

• Thursday, September 4, 2025 @ 4pm- 5th Grade Parent Night

• Monday, September 8, 2025 @ 4pm- TAG Parent Night for current TAG students

• Friday, September 12, 2025- Grandparents' Lunch option 1

• Friday, September 19, 2025- Grandparents' Lunch option 2

• Monday, September 22, 2025- NO SCHOOL

• Tuesday, September 23, 2025- NO SCHOOL

• Thursday, September 25, 2025 @ 5:15- PTA Meeting

• Thursday, September 25, 2025 @6:00 - Hey Dude, Nice Shoes- Parent Presentation 

• Friday, September 26, 2025- Grandparents' Lunch option 3

• Friday, October 3 from 5-7pm- Spooky Steam Night

We also have an important announcement:

From Mrs. Elarms

Based on NEW Legislation, parents are now required to give consent for their child to be given health care needs by the school nurse and teachers (for minor things such as cleaning a scrape and providing a band-aid.) We also have to give consent for our counselor to provide any services beyond a short check in with a student. Sometime on Friday, or close to it, you should have received an email from POWERSCHOOL. (This is the same place that you complete registration forms.) There are NEW FORMS there which allow you to give consent to these two specific area. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fill these out. The new legislation goes into effect on September 1st. We really need to have this form for every student by then. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out! 

Important Reminders:

• If Nurse Stephanie does not have consent, she legally cannot assess or treat the student until she has parent permission. This includes something as simple as taking a student's temperature.

• If you haven’t received the form, please email Nurse Stephanie so we can get it straightened out quickly.

From Cafeteria:

Grandparent's Day is coming up soon - Sunday, September 7th. We would like to welcome our grandparents to lunch on Friday, September 12th. We will extend this invitation to the remaining Fridays in September if you are unable to make it on the 12th. Grandparents are welcome to sit with their grandchildren during lunch, bring a special lunch for their grandchildren, or join them in eating from the cafeteria. There will not be a special lunch, it will be a Friday Pizza lunch. IF your child's grandparents will be ordering pizza, we need you to email your child's teacher with the number of people ordering so that there is enough food. Thanks for your help with this! They will also need to bring the exact amount of $4.50 per adult lunch. 

From PTA

PTA Membership

Join our PTA!!! No Volunteering Required! Don't forget to add a student membership! Join Here! 

Spirit Wear Wednesdays!

Show off your school pride by rocking your Stallion gear every Wednesday!
Snap a pic in your spirit wear and tag us on Facebook or email (sommerptaspiritwear@gmail.com) for a chance to be featured or win a prize!  Let's turn the halls into a STAMPEDE of Red and Gold! 

1st General Meeting

Please join us for our first General Membership PTA meeting of the school year on 9/25 at 5:15 pm. Our meeting will precede Carolyn Brown's parent presentation, "Hey Dude, Nice Shoes" that begins at 6 pm. RSVP below! 

https://calendar.app.google/o749U5MaQLooGooR6

STEAM NIGHT

Sommer PTA is excited to host SPOOKY STEAM NIGHT on October 3rd (Friday, 5pm-7pm). Bring your FAMILY, wear your COSTUME & join us for a fun night of SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, ART, AND MATH ACTIVITIES! To help out planning this fun night please email to sommerptasteamnight@gmail.com

From the 5th Grade Teachers:

With the weather continuing to be sweltering, we ask your help in keeping kids safe. Please send your child to school each day with a water bottle. Also please talk to your child about taking their jacket off when we go to recess. We had some 5th graders wearing their jackets as they played soccer last week. We appreciate your help in this manner. 

Hello Families!

We are excitedly finishing up August and are looking forward to some enjoyable learning. As a reminder, it is VERY important that your child's computer is fully charged and ready each day. 

Reading: This week we continue to focus on purposefully talking, thinking, and writing about or reading. This is an important way to share and deepen our thinking. We will practice purposeful talk in small groups about our reading. Once we know how to talk about our reading, we will then start jotting about our reading. We will do this on sticky notes, including our thoughts and one of the depth and complexity icons we learned about at the beginning of the week. Then we will record our thinking using double-entry notes. This is when we record a quote from the text on the left side of the paper and our elaborated thoughts with icons on the right side. 

Writing: In Writing this week, students will focus on our first published writing of the year. Students will be writing poems about their favorite parts. This writing will be inspired by the mentor text "The Best Part of Me" by Wendy Ewald. By the end of the week, students will have this writing published in the hallway along with a picture of their favorite part. 

Word Study: This week, we will be learning about the root -ped. This means foot or feet. Students will be given 10 words using this root to learn the meaning of. Students will have a word study quiz on Friday, September 6th, over this week's words and next week's. 

Social Studies: This week, students will learn about the regions of the United States.  Then we will practice interpretting maps of these regions. We will finish this unit by discussing Deforestation and how humans and the environment interact. We will be testing over our first unit on Friday, August 29th. Students reviews are due Thursday, August 28th.

On top of all of the amazing learning we are doing, some important dates are also coming up. They are:

• Tuesday, August 26, 2025- Vision and Hearing Screening for Gagliardi and Wood

• Tuesday, August 26, 2025- Spinal Screening (Girls-Only)

• Friday, August 29, 2025- Social Studies Assessment

• Monday, September 1, 2025- Labor Day- NO SCHOOL

• Thursday, September 4, 2025 @ 4pm- 5th Grade Parent Night

• Monday, September 8, 2025 @ 4pm- TAG Parent Night for current TAG students

• Friday, September 12, 2025- Grandparents' Lunch option 1

• Friday, September 19, 2025- Grandparents' Lunch option 2

• Monday, September 22, 2025- NO SCHOOL

• Tuesday, September 23, 2025- NO SCHOOL

• Thursday, September 25, 2025- Hey Dude, Nice Shoes- Parent Presentation

• Friday, September 26, 2025- Grandparents' Lunch option 3

We also have an important announcement:

From Mrs. Elarms

Based on NEW Legislation, parents are now required to give consent for their child to be given health care needs by the school nurse and teachers (for minor things such as cleaning a scrape and providing a band-aid.) We also have to give consent for our counselor to provide any services beyond a short check in with a student. Sometime on Friday, or close to it, you should have received an email from POWERSCHOOL. (This is the same place that you complete registration forms.) There are NEW FORMS there which allow you to give consent to these two specific area. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fill these out. The new legislation goes into effect on September 1st. We really need to have this form for every student by then. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out! 

From Ms. Gagliardi and Ms. Wood:

I want our classroom to represent the students and the families that occupy it all day long. I would be honored if you could send ONE 4x6 photograph of your student with their family to display in our classroom. Please know that though we will send home the photos at the end of the school year, they may have staples or push-pin holes in them. I will tell your students about this as well, so hopefully, they will bring it up with you. 

A Note From Nurse Stephanie:

Please see the attached letter regarding our mandatory yearly spinal screenings. Spinal screenings will be conducted on ONLY 5th-grade girls on Monday, August 25th, and Tuesday, August 26th. If you choose to exempt your student from the screening, please provide current documentation of the physician's spinal screening results or a notarized affidavit stating that this screening conflicts with religious tenets. Do not hesitate to reach out to me directly if you have any questions!

From Cafeteria:

Grandparent's Day is coming up soon - Sunday, September 7th. We would like to welcome our grandparents to lunch on Friday, September 12th. We will extend this invitation to the remaining Fridays in September if you are unable to make it on the 12th. Grandparents are welcome to sit with their grandchildren during lunch, bring a special lunch for their grandchildren, or join them in eating from the cafeteria. There will not be a special lunch, it will be a Friday Pizza lunch. IF your child's grandparents will be ordering pizza, we need you to email your child's teacher with the number of people ordering so that there is enough food. Thanks for your help with this! They will also need to bring the exact amount of $4.50 per adult lunch. 

From PTA

PTA Membership

Join our PTA!!! No Volunteering Required! Don't forget to add a student membership! Join Here! 

Spirit Wear Wednesdays!

Show off your school pride by rocking your Stallion gear every Wednesday!
Snap a pic in your spirit wear and tag us on Facebook or email (sommerptaspiritwear@gmail.com) for a chance to be featured or win a prize!  Let's turn the halls into a STAMPEDE of Red and Gold! 

From the 5th Grade Teachers:

With the weather continuing to be sweltering, we ask your help in keeping kids safe. Please send your child to school each day with a water bottle. Also please talk to your child about taking their jacket off when we go to recess. We had some 5th graders wearing their jackets as they played soccer last week. We appreciate your help in this manner. 

Hello Families!

We've had a great 1st week of school. We ended the week all together creating our class treatment agreement. This is our agreement on how we will treat each other throughout the year. You will be getting paper copies this week. I encourage you to talk about this agreement with your child. 

Reading: This week we are focusing on purposeful talking, thinking, and writing about or reading. To start we will be learning about the depth and complexity icons that can help guide our thinking.  Purposeful talk can be done both in-person and through online discussions. This is a great way to share and deepen our thinking. We will practice purposeful talk in small groups about our reading. 

Writing: In writing, we will be working on brainstorming in our Writer's Notebooks. Students will brainstorm about their writer's heart.. Students will have a chance to write long on these ideas. These ideas are important because a writer's notebook is a place writers can return to when they are stuck or don't know what to write about. We will also start our first published writing of the year. Students will be writing about their favorite part. This writing will be inspired by the mentor text "The Best Part of Me" by Wendy Ewald.

Social Studies: In Social Studies, we will start the week by discussing different Rural, Urban, and Suburban communities. Then, we will work on interpreting maps. This will help us learn about important geographical features in the United States and the climate of different regions. We will also look at some of the major US cities. This will also lead to discussions about why people settle in certain areas over others. 

On top of all of the amazing learning we are doing, some important dates are also coming up. They are:

• Tuesday, August 26, 2025- Vision and Hearing Screening for Gagliardi and Wood

• Tuesday, August 26, 2025- Spinal Screening (Girls-Only)

• Friday, August 29, 2025- Social Studies Assessment

• Monday, September 1, 2025- Labor Day- NO SCHOOL

We also have an important announcement:

From Ms. Gagliardi and Ms. Wood:

I want our classroom to represent the students and the families that occupy it all day long. I would be honored if you could send ONE 4x6 photograph of your student with their family to display in our classroom. Please know that though we will send home the photos at the end of the school year, they may have staples or push-pin holes in them. You may send a digital photo for me to print on your behalf if you need or do not want to send an original photo. I will send what photos I receive to the printer by Friday, August 22nd, at 3:30 pm. I will tell your students about this as well, so hopefully they will bring it up with you. 

A Note From Nurse Stephanie:

Please see the attached letter regarding our mandatory yearly spinal screenings. Spinal screenings will be conducted on ONLY 5th-grade girls on Monday, August 25th, and Tuesday, August 26th. If you choose to exempt your student from the screening, please provide current documentation of the physician's spinal screening results or a notarized affidavit stating that this screening conflicts with religious tenets. Do not hesitate to reach out to me directly if you have any questions!

From Cafeteria:

I wanted to make sure that everyone is aware if your child's account balance falls into the negative, they will receive a sun butter and jelly sandwich. This can make for some very sad kiddos, so please be sure to keep their lunch accounts up to date. You can do this through www.myschoolbucks.com
Also, if you were set to receive free and/or reduced lunch last year, remember that you have to reapply each year. The grace period is about to end, so please be sure to reapply by CLICKING HERE.

From PTA

PTA Membership

Join our PTA!!! No Volunteering Required! Don't forget to add a student membership! Join Here! 

Spirit Wear Wednesdays!

Show off your school pride by rocking your Stallion gear every Wednesday!
Snap a pic in your spirit wear and tag us on Facebook or email (sommerptaspiritwear@gmail.com) for a chance to be featured or win a prize!  Let's turn the halls into a STAMPEDE of Red and Gold! 

From the 5th Grade Teachers:

With the weather continuing to be sweltering, we ask your help in keeping kids safe. Please send your child to school each day with a water bottle. Also, please talk to your child about taking their jacket off when we go to recess. We had some 5th graders wearing their jackets as they played soccer last week. We appreciate your help in this manner. 

Hello Everyone! 

Teachers are excitedly preparing rooms for the year. Sommer's supply drop-off will be on Thursday, August 7th. Please come at the time based on your last name. Families with last names beginning:

A-M: 4:00 - 4:45 PM

N-Z:  5:00- 5:45 PM

The First Day of School is Tuesday, August 12th. I cannot wait for the year ahead full of fun and learning. 

Hello Everyone! 

We are officially out for Summer Break. If you need anything, please contact the school.