Ashburton Elementary School 6314 Lone Oak Drive, Bethesda, MD 20817 * 301-571-6959

PRINCIPAL’S NEWS

December 3, 2009 Dear Parents/Guardians, I hope you had an enjoyable and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday and are now busily preparing for the upcoming winter holidays. It was wonderful to see so many families in November during Parent- Teacher Conferences, the PTA meeting, at the Book Fair, and our Family Reading Night. On November 5th Ashburton students participated in our first annual ‘Walk for the Homeless’. Students learned many age appropriate facts about homelessness and the importance of being an involved citizen to help stop the homelessness in Montgomery County. Good news - If you ordered a t-shirt it finally arrived. The Fannie Mae Foundation sends their apologies for the back orders on the t-shirts. Thank you for supporting this meaningful event. We are getting ready to help our third, fourth, and fifth grade students prepare for the Maryland School Assessment (MSA), which will be administered in March 2010. The Maryland State Department of Education uses the test results to determine whether Ashburton meets the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) needed to be satisfactory in meeting the goals of No Child Left Behind. I know that many families plan for vacations and doctors appointments well in advance so I wanted to provide you with the testing windows so you can plan accordingly: MSA testing will be held for grades 3, 4, and 5 from March 8-17. Additionally, MSA Science for Grade 5 only, will be given on May 5-6, 2010. Mark your calendars for TN2 testing for grade 2 on April 26-30, 2010. The LAS LINKS window for all ESOL students, April 6-26; dates for specific grades will be sent at a later time. Many students have been arriving late to school each day, which has a significant impact on the educational program. School starts at 8:50 a.m. and children are marked late if they enter the classroom after that time. Children miss critical instructions and organization for the day when they come in late. Please make every effort to send children to school on time and plan to keep afternoon appointments to a minimum. Teachers plan instruction until the end of the day. Also, please remember that we follow a ‘Kiss and Say Goodbye’ policy, which means students should be dropped off at the front or back door and proceed to the classroom on their own. Once students are in the classroom teachers need to December Calendar Update: have their full attention on students. It is not a time for Dec. 8- PTA Dine Out with conferences with the teacher. If you would like to conference Ashburton at Hard Times with a teacher you can send a note, email, call, or schedule an Dec. 12- SIT meets at 3:30 p.m. appointment. We appreciate your cooperation in following these requests to ensure the best possible learning environment Dec. 14-18 Spirit Week for your children. Dec. 17- Winter Choral Concert @ 7:00 p.m. The office will be closed over Winter Break from December Dec. 24-Jan 1- Winter Break 24 through January 1st. I hope you have a wonderful holiday Jan. 4, 2010- School Resumes season and I look forward to seeing you at our many events Jan. 5- PTA Meeting throughout the month of December. Sincerely,

Charlene Eroh, Principal Inclement Weather Information Announcements about the closing of schools in Montgomery County, delayed opening or early dismissal due to winter weather emergencies are available through a number of outlets:  MCPS QuickNotes e-mail news service (subscribe at www.mcpsquicknotes.org) Or schools-out.com  Local radio and television stations – WMAL (AM-630), WTOP (AM-1500), MCPS Cable Channel 34, NBC-4, Fox 5, ABC-7, CBS-9  MCPS website www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org  MCPS information telephone line at 301 279-3673  ASK MCPS at 301 309-6277 (7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. M-F )  Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcps  Decisions to close or delay opening are usually made by 6:00 a.m.  When school opening is delayed, it is usually by 2 hours, so that Ashburton opens at 10:50 a.m., with buses making their usual pick-ups 2 hours later than normal. There is no PEP when we have a delayed opening.  Decisions to close early are usually made by 11:00 a.m. An early dismissal usually means Ashburton students leave the school around 12:30

Please do not call the school for weather information- often the news outlets know of decisions before we do.

Please remember: State regulations require us to have a written note when your child is absent. Please call the school and leave a message on the answering machine or email the teacher or Mrs. Lynch ([email protected]) to let us know when your child is not at school. Ms. Lynch will need to call you if you do not call us. Please follow up the absence with a written note. Pre-School Education Program Egg, broken, fell, king, horses, fetch, pail, PEP water, tumbling, washed, sun, dried, spider, spout, diamond, sheep, fleece, wool, master, dame, clock, fiddle, dish, spoon, candle As we head into the last stick, meadow, rhyme. month of 2009, our December thematic unit will Sample of Activities: be Nursery Rhymes. We  Group recitation of rhymes with will enjoy reading, singing, finger play chanting, and acting out favorite, familiar, and new  Re-telling rhymes with flannel rhymes such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little board characters Star, Jack and Jill, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,  Acting out rhymes with props and Humpty Dumpty, and many more. Nursery puppets Rhymes offer opportunities to develop oral  Sequencing the actions in rhymes: language, math, and pre-reading skills first, next, then, last. through singing, finger play, and lots of fun  Sorting rhyme characters into arts and crafts activities. Since most children groups: people, animals, objects have had experience with some of these  Identifying rhyming words; rhymes and since the rhymes are typically generating real or nonsense rhyming short and involve animation and fantasy, this words is usually a fun theme for kids and adults  Identifying positional words in alike! rhymes: (up the hill, over the candle stick, on a wall.) Sample of Rhymes:  Identifying opposites in rhymes:  Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (black sheep, white sheep)  Mary Had A Little Lamb  Discussing fantasy, make-believe,  Little Miss Muffet pretend, in rhymes  Little Boy Blue  Motor Activities: jumping over  Humpty Dumpty candlesticks  One Two Buckle My Shoe  Science Extension: making  Three Little Kittens predictions; will objects sink or float  Baa, Baa, Black Sheep in a pail of water?; how many cups  Hickory Dickory Dock of water will it take to fill a bucket?  Jack and Jill Sample of Art/Craft Activities:  Hey, Diddle, Diddle  Handprint sheep (black or white)  The Itsy-Bitsy Spider  Humpty Dumpty egg carton  Jack Be Nimble character  Rain, Rain, Go away  Humpty Dumpty on wall (whole), on ground (broken) Concepts:  Night sky with crayon and black Real and nonsense rhyming words, tempera paint Opposites/Prepositions: up/down, in/out, hot/cold, day/night, under/over, on/off,  Twinkle star headbands wet/dry, broken/whole, little/big,  Character paper bag puppets white/black. Number concepts: rote  Mouse and clock craft counting, sequencing numbers 1-10, making  Candle stick craft with cardboard sets 1-5. tube and tissue paper flame  Paper plate spiders Thematic Vocabulary: Home Extensions: As always, we recommend that you unknown words. We will also be focusing enjoy reading with your child. Because on writing concepts such as using some of the children become very facile in punctuation, leaving spaces between words, reciting the rhymes and others are able to fill starting a sentence with a capital letter, and in the rhyming word at the end of each adding detail and color to our pictures that phrase, this is the perfect opportunity for match our sentences. Please continue to your child to turn the pages with you and practice these things at home with your help “read” the story. Since these rhymes child! tend to be short and sweet, you can recite them without a text at stoplights in the car, Counting on Math while waiting in line at the grocery store, We will continue Unit 2: Exploring etc. Numbers for the second marking period. Over the course of this unit, the students will Reminder: No School for PEP Monday, learn to read, write and count to thirty-one December 7th Staff In-Service Training and beyond! They will also be able to count back from ten! They will match numerals to Thanks, as always, for your continued sets, and use objects to make two sets equal. support! It is very important for your child to be able The PEP Team to consistently and accurately count a number of objects, not just rote count. December Happenings In Along with these concepts we will introduce Kindergarten odd and even numbers, and also ordinal numbers first through tenth. Continue to practice these things at home, outside, and Science/ Social Studies anywhere else you can! We will be exploring the new science unit of Me, Myself, and Others. We will take a look at how we are similar and different from one another including how we each celebrate the First Grade upcoming holiday season. News

Reading Dear First Grade In December, we will read favorite folk- Parents, tales. Here are some examples: November was a very busy and The Little Red Hen exciting month at Ashburton!! The Henny Penny students have been hard at work, and they Goldilocks and the Three are all making outstanding progress! Bears Since the month of December is Hansel and Gretel here, we wanted to let you know what we In a Dark, Dark Wood will be focusing on in all areas of the Little Red and The Wolf curriculum. The Gingerbread Boy Reading and Writing: First graders will We will focus on characters, setting, continue reading at their own level and problems and solutions as well as retelling continue to progress at their own pace. We with these tales. are beginning an author study about Eric Carle, and will continue this unit during the winter. First Grade Authors are writing Writing their own procedural (how-to) texts! In writing, we will continue to practice Math: We will continue to develop writing sentences using the Kindergarten students’ knowledge of addition and words that we know, and also using our subtraction – students will begin to commit letter sound knowledge to stretch out many of these facts to memory. We just finished learning how to tell time to the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour. At home, December will be an exciting month you can practice reading an analog clock (a for 2nd graders. Here is what we will clock with hands) with your child whenever you have to be somewhere at a specific be learning. time! We are currently learning how to measure using inches and centimeters, and Reading/Language Arts nonstandard units (ex.: paperclips). Next, We will focus on reading a variety of we will be studying place value. books about the December holidays. We Science: Our hands-on Constructions unit will use these books to discuss story helps the students focus on the scientific elements, cause and effect, and reading inquiry method which includes asking strategies. We will also focus on strategies questions, gathering and analyzing data and to use when we read unfamiliar vocabulary. communicating ideas. Each classroom will Please help at home by having your child have its own Constructions kit. We will reading nightly for at least 15 minutes. begin our Constructions unit later in Also, ask them questions about what they December. are reading. Social Studies: This quarter in Social Studies the students are learning about Writing to Inform human made features and other features that We will complete a variety of are not made by humans (natural features). writing activities with the purpose of We have also begun using directional words writing to inform others. We will learn such as North, South, West and East when we look at maps. Students will also be how to use procedural words to learning the names of the seven continents organize our writing (first, next, then, and five large oceans. Please be practicing last). We will continue to focus on these at home, as they are hard to remember! developing a topic sentence and supporting details for our writing. Thank you to all of the volunteers! You have all been incredibly helpful and Please encourage your child to write supportive! at home. They can write to inform As we all get ready for the winter you about their day or something they break, the students will become more and learned in school. more excited. This is a very exciting time of year with the constant possibility of snow, and the upcoming vacations! That is why it is even more important for us to continue to hold our standards high for every first grade student. Parents and teachers will continue to expect that each student will put forth their best work, and make their best effort to follow all school rules. Math We will finish our unit on geometry and If you have any questions, please contact us begin unit 3: Computation. We (301-571-6959). We are looking forward to will learn to model, represent, December being a challenging, fun month! and interpret number Sincerely, relationships to solve problems involving addition and The First Grade Team subtraction. We will relate problem situations to different number sentences. Using Second Grade Town News strategies, we will solve addition and subtraction problems. We Ms. Ashin, Ms. Bouquet, Ms. Canard, will also learn to model and Ms. Fox & Mrs. Rush demonstrate adding and subtracting with and without regrouping. News From Third Grade *Please make sure to reinforce all math concepts at home. It is important for We hope you had a great students to have a foundation of their basic Thanksgiving and enjoyed addition and subtraction facts. You can spending time with your family and help your child practice math facts by friends. Instruction in December playing a game or using flash cards. will include the following objectives: rd : Math with Ms. Canard Math 3 Grade Students will be starting the We will finish our unit on third unit in Mathematics. The unit measurement and begin unit 3: will include mostly multiplication. Multiplication and Division. We will Students will learn about fact begin by learning how to model families and how to make models multiplication using equal grouping of multiplication problems. Every third grader will be creating flash with sets, number lines, and arrays. cards in class, which he or she can We will also focus on multiplication use at home to practice story problems. computation skills. Please make sure your third grader practices his *Multiplication and division flash or her multiplication facts at home. Additionally, Ms. Zeccardi’s math cards will be sent home soon. classes should be working on their Students should review the flash math calendars as part of their cards nightly. nightly assignments. Math 4th Grade: Social Studies Students instructed in fourth We will finish our unit on the grade Mathematics will be completing the computation unit, Wampanoag and begin on our but should continue to practice geography unit. We will explore their facts each night. Third different characteristics and physical graders will be solving expressions features of the United States. Please and equations with variables. (For help at home by looking over a world example, 3 X b = 21) Students will also be taking the Unit 2 map and showing your child were assessment in December. different oceans are located, were Science: the United States is Third Graders are finishing located, and by going the plant growth and development over the directions of unit in Science. We will be a compass rose (north, discussing the role of bees in the pollination process. Students will south, east, and west). learn the different roles of Happy Holidays! bees in the hive. At home, you can go to the public library or look on the internet for interesting bee the month of December will bring! Please facts. remember that students are taking home Social Studies: Friday Folders and weekly TQ charts. Please In Social Studies, students check for these items, sign off on them, and will continue to explore man made have your students return to his/her teacher features and physical features on the following school day. Encourage found on maps. Students will also conversations with your student in regards be learning how media affects our to the goals they are setting for themselves culture. At home, you can continue for the second marking period. As a to point out man made features reminder, please encourage your students to (houses, streets, restaurants, always do their best and put forth 100% buildings) and physical features effort. We thank you for your ongoing and characteristics (trees, hills, support and appreciate all you do to help us! rivers, mountains). Happy Holidays and enjoy these specials times with your family and friends! Reading: In Reading, third graders will be beginning to read to perform a task. Students will learn about directions, sequence words, and the importance of text features when looking at a set of Here is what we will be covering for the instructions. We will complete month of December: several task projects in class and In reading students will continue explore students will be responsible for the features of historical and realistic fiction, their own project at home toward as well as informational text. Within our the middle of December. At home, fiction novels, we will be studying historical you can support your third grader and realistic settings, and analyzing the traits by reading recipes and creating of main characters. Students have been crafts and dishes based on a set of steadily reading independently and directions. discussing their books with the class. Keep We will also be exploring up the great work! elements of the William and Mary Reading Program and Junior Great In social studies students are in the midst of Books. their AGOPPE research projects continuing Other: our study of immigration and migration in Third graders will be starting Maryland. Students will be interpreting and to receive weekly MSA homework organizing primary and secondary sources of information including pictures, graphics, packets in both math and reading. maps atlas, artifacts, timelines, political Please encourage your third grader cartoons, videotapes, journals, and to work on his or her MSA practice government documents. With the help of at home. our dynamic media center staff and Thank you for your support resources, students will ask interview and continued involvement! questions, gather information, organize their research, prepare a written report, present Ms. Segal, Mr. White, Ms. Zeccardi, their ideas to the class, and finally evaluate Mrs. Rush, and Ms. Butler their performances. News 4 You ** Our next field trip will be to the Smith Environmental Education Center on th th December 9 (Ms. Brenner and Ralles’ Greetings to all 4 grade families! Here are classes) and December 10th (Ms. Leiser and a few reminders and information about what Weaver’s classes). If you have not already done so, please turn in your permission there is time to spare during the school day slips. This field trip will enable students to the students can work on them. practice the map reading skills acquired in Social Studies and measurement skills from In science students the Math curriculum. are finishing up their unit on In mathematics some fourth grade students ecosystems and the are currently working on number patterns Chesapeake Bay. and relationships, while others have begun One of the last to study whole number and decimal things students will fractions. Students learning about number be doing for this unit will be learning about patterns and relationships will be solving for runoff and the impact that different groups the unknown quantity in equations, using (farmers, boaters, land developers and variables in open sentences, and homeowners) have on the health of the Bay. generalizing a pattern by stating a rule. The students will be learning about Concepts covered in the unit on whole different sources of runoff and soon will numbers and decimal fractions include draw murals of each land type. Students computing with whole numbers, multiplying will also be learning about the pH scale and and dividing decimals by whole numbers, doing some water testing. and using estimation to solve problems with fractions and decimals. All students have been working hard towards meeting their Suggestions for parents this month which goal of mastering basic math facts in can be used during the days when school is addition, subtraction, multiplication, and not in session: division! All students participate in fact tests  Have your children review his/her on a regular basis. Students should be new book in the Writer’s Notebook. updating their fact calendars daily, noting how many minutes they’ve studied, as well  Take a trip to the library. Read a as having a parent sign off on both sides of book together as a family. their calendar at the end of each week. As they master each set of facts, they track  Have your child help you by reading themselves on a chart. If you need more you a recipe. resources to assist with the learning of basic  Help your child proofread and edit math facts, see Mrs. Brenner or Mrs. Ralles. all assignments.

The MSA (Maryland School Assessment)  Check to see if your child is seems far away, but before long it will be entering new stories, poems, essays, here! Preparing for the MSA does not descriptive and informative happen overnight. Students need time to paragraphs in his/her reading logs. review concepts on a regular basis to ensure  Use transitional words when they retain the information that will help conversing with your child. them succeed. Beginning the first week in December, students will be taking home  Family story hour. weekly mathematics and reading preparation packets. Packets will be sent home on Friday Thank you, and are due back in school the following Mrs. Brenner, Ms. Leiser, Friday. Students can earn MSA “bonus Mrs. Ralles, Mrs. Weaver, and bucks” for having a completed packet in Mrs. Davis class on the due date. Students will be able to use their “money” to purchase items as a reward for putting forth the extra effort. It Fifth Grade’s Fabulous News would be helpful for the students to keep these packets in their binders daily so that if Winter break is quickly approaching! In small groups, we are We have a busy month ahead in the fifth continuing to work on grade… narrative and informational text comprehension and Math analysis strategies, and During December, Math 6 students will working with the Junior take the Unit 2AB Assessment: Decimal Great Books curriculum. The and Fraction Connections and students are also going to review and Applications. They will then begin our practice strategies for Brief Constructed study of Unit 2C, which explores fraction Response (BCR) writing. operations and applications. Students will begin working on estimation with Please note that all 5th grade reading fractions, and then move on to students will soon be receiving weekly multiplying and dividing fractions. At the MSA Maintaining Skills Packets. Be on beginning of December, Math 5 the lookout for an information letter and students will be completing the the first packet towards the end of the geometry unit. Students will take the month. Unit 2 assessment. Students will then begin Unit 3A: Whole Numbers and Writing Decimal Fractions. They will work on Building upon their work in reading and their estimation skills as they round the introduction to poetry in writing, the decimals to determine the students will be writing poems in a reasonableness of answers to addition variety of forms in our writer’s workshop. and subtraction problems. They will end As a culminating activity, they will create the first part of this unit with multiplying a poetry anthology. Poems will include and dividing decimals and whole ones that capture an image, express numbers. deep thoughts and feelings, capture a surprising thought, play with words or Please note that all 5th grade math sounds, create an extended metaphor students will soon be receiving weekly or create a mask in a persona poem, MSA Maintaining Skills Packets. Be on among others. They will use a variety the lookout for an information letter and of poetic techniques as they explore the first packet towards the end of the poetry as a form of personal expression. month. Science Reading After designing and creating electric This month, students are continuing circuits, including parallel and series their explorations of poetry in reading, circuits and learning to troubleshoot as they delve further into the poet’s craft problems with circuits, this month, we and apply more strategies for shall venture further into our determining the meanings of the poems investigation of electricity and they are reading. We are examining how magnetism. The students will begin by poets use figurative language, rhythm, applying what they learned about forces rhyme, punctuation, and pauses to and motion in describing the laws of create effects in their poetry. The magnetism, noting the forces that move students are noting the powerful objects without anything touching them. imagery and strong emotions evoked by Students will then discover the careful word choices. They will examine relationship between electricity and the works of Langston Hughes during an magnetism by building and testing author study, and take a closer look at electromagnets. They will be able to the influences upon and sources of see how an electric current can create a poetry. magnetic field. Social Studies Thank you to Mrs. Campuzano for This month, fifth grade organizing our fall book fair and to all the students will be parent volunteers for helping out during completing the unit book fair week. Thank you also to PTA entitled “Citizens in Action: for allowing us to spend $500 in books for The Colonies Revolt”. our media center. Students will be analyzing images to determine how Have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving!! the Continental Army Happy Reading!  differed from the British Ms. Walker Army and how colonial Mrs. Ellett troops were able to defeat the British Army, known for its strength and power. The unit wraps up as students complete the timeline of the American Revolution. We will then get started on the next unit which is all about economics. Students will learn how the economy, at the time of the writing of the Constitution, shaped the outline of our country.

Media Center News Students in third and fourth grades have been busy working on their AGOPPE projects. A(ask)G(gather information)O(organize)P(prepare)P(pre sent)E(evaluate) is the process of completing a research project. While the third graders chose their topics of interest, the fourth graders are working on their “immigration” projects.

We had our Family Reading Night on November 16th and it was a great success! Students and parents enjoyed an informal evening of reading and spending time together. Thank you to all the parents and students for joining us. Always remember: good readers make excellent writers.

Please remember to return your books on time to the media center every week. Overdue notices are sent home on a regular basis. Bills will be sent home for damaged and/or lost books. Thank you for your help in raising responsible students!