Moyer S Monthly Memo

Moyer’s Monthly Memo April 28, 2017

Dear Parents and Students, Happy May! Spring is finally here and winter is a distant memory. May is my favorite month as it holds the promise of a magical time of the year when flowers are blossoming, grass becomes greener, children are frolicking outdoors sporting tanned cheeks and grinning ear- to- ear at the idea that summer vacation is looming on the horizon. Can it get any better? To date, we have 30.5 days of school remaining and I will do my best to continue to make learning challenging, meaningful and fun at the same time. Sixth Grade Promotion is scheduled for Wednesday, June 7 at 6:30 p.m. I look forward to sharing this special event that honors your child’s accomplishments for the past seven years. Students’ last day of school will be Tuesday, June 13, 2017. On that early dismissal day, we will have a breakfast for the students from 8:45-10:00 a.m. where students can mingle, eat and sign Yearbooks and tee-shirts. Please keep me abreast of any questions or comments you may have. I can be reached at [email protected]; your child is my priority! Alan Bai, Van Foster, Tyler Hood, Kevin Lytvynov, Ava Marquez, Roshan Peri, and Alex Trichon are involved in the Just Running program every Wednesday. We wish them luck as they train over the next eight weeks. Congratulations to Alex Trichon and Alli Troth for their submission in the Central Bucks Logo contest. Daily homework and a classroom calendar of events can be accessed via School Wires. Please encourage your child to access both daily. Students are expected to access the May calendar from School Wires, record the events that pertain to them in the May calendar and keep the calendar in their take home folder. We planted new red fire lettuce in the bed below our window on Wednesday, April 5. We will water the garden weekly and enjoy the wonderful fruits of our labor in June. Ava Marquez will be working with a kindergarten boy in Mrs. Wetzel’s class four days a week, 10 minutes per day on reading skills. On Monday, April 24 we watched the movie Paper Clips in remembrance of National Holocaust Day (Yom Hashoah). The Paper Clips Project was created by middle school students from the small southeastern Tennessee city of Whitwell. They created a monument for the Holocaust victims in Nazi Germany. It started in 1998 as a simple 8th-grade project and evolved into a project gaining worldwide attention. In 1998, assistant principal, teacher, and football coach David Smith of Whitwell Middle School suggested to Principal Linda M. Hooper that they could use the Holocaust as the basis for teaching tolerance in a voluntary afterschool program. Having difficulty in comprehending the massive scale of the Holocaust, students decided to collect 6,000,000 paper clips to represent the estimated 6,000,000 Jews killed between 1939 and 1945. The project started snowballing after it received attention from Peter and Dagmar Schroeder, journalists who were born in Germany during World War II and who cover the White House for German newspapers. The big break in the U.S. came with an article in the Washington Post on April 7, 2001. In science, we are working as scientists to discover, investigate, and solve problems dealing with air, noise, and water pollution. Thank you, Mrs. Peri, Mrs. Lund, and Mrs. Trichon for joining us as chaperones when we went to Peace Valley on April 21, 2017. Congratulations to Van Foster, Emma Penizotto and Naomi Watson for an outstanding grade level performance while playing Math 24 on Thursday, April 6. We read nonfiction stories in Quest dealing with the theme Unwrapping Ancient Mysteries. These stories paralleled our social studies unit on Ancient Egypt. We focused on the following skills and strategies: distinguishing between essential and non-essential information, compare/contrast information between texts, identify, interpret and analyze text features and text organization and identify characteristics of nonfiction genres and formats. In addition, we watched the documentary entitled Iceman after having read about him extensively in the Quest book. Students were fascinated by the documentary. Students are reading either Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan, Good Bye, Vietnam by Gloria Whelan or My Brother, My Sister and I by Yoko Kawashima Watkins within 12 school days. Students completed an historical fiction packet to go along with their daily reading assignment. After reading an allotted amount of pages each day, students: created three questions they wanted answered, wrote three questions they wanted to discuss with their peers to gain clarification, made a connection and prediction, recorded where there has been evidence of bias and listed three facts that they have learned about the culture or time period. I met with each group daily and we had a rich discussion focusing specifically on culture, bias, and summarizing the section. Our class is scheduled to go through the Sixth-Grade Assessment in May (1-8). Students will: research and draft a five -paragraph paper, revise their written work, create a PowerPoint that answers the research question and present their paper and PowerPoint to a team. It is essential that your child get a good night’s sleep (at least 10 hours) each night and eat a hearty, nutritious breakfast and lunch each day. Please encourage your child that this will be a wonderful learning experience; an extra hug and kind words of encouragement go a long way. I will read over each paper as well as grade sheet and make a list of what skills each child needs more assistance with. Between that point and June 13, I will work with your child to bring those areas to at least a level of proficiency while challenging those students who have attained a level of proficiency to move to an advanced level. Mrs. Danko, Mrs. Brown and I will be assessing the students. Students wrote an essay answering the following question: Why do you believe you have the greatest mom and why should she deserve an evening out to be treated like a celebrity. Four essays will be selected by the CB Cares committee and the winners will be announced the week of May 7. The lucky mother of each winning author will receive a pair of tickets to the Celebrity Chef and Waiter Gala on June 4. Moms, look for your personalized essay on Sunday, May 14 in honor of Mother’s Day. Bridge Valley's sixth grade has partnered with Central Bucks Sertoma and their Heritage Award Program. For over 100 years, Sertoma (meaning service to mankind) has served to improve the lives of those with hearing and speech needs, especially children, through education. Sertoma has purchased equipment that helped improve the children's ability to hear and learn in the classroom. The last couple of years, Sertoma partnered with Doylestown Hospital and delivered gifts to children who were hospitalized during the holiday time. They also raised money and partnered with East Coast Hearing Loops to install a hearing loop system (which allows those with hearing aids/cochlear implants with t-coils to have sound streamed to their hearing aids from the sound source, such as a microphone, directly to their hearing aids allowing clear, crisp quality sound with no background noise during shows) at the Town and Country Theater in Buckingham. Bridge Valley's sixth grade students will write a 200- word essay about what their experience to not hear was like during the simulation. Students will learn "how loud is too loud" with the help of Bailey, a mannequin equipped with a sound meter. Typed essays are due Tuesday, May 25. Sertoma will treat classes with 100% participation with an ice cream party on June 6. There will be two essay winners; the first- place prize is a $50 Visa gift card and the second- place prize is a $25 Visa gift card. Winners will be announced on June 13. First and second place prizes will be awarded during a dinner hosted by the Central Bucks Sertoma Club in their honor. Details about the dinner will be forthcoming. Many students have spent seven years together at Bridge Valley and saying good bye to friends and teachers may not be easy especially as they move onto different middle schools. I have planned some activities that allow students to gain some closure. Each student and I will give one another a written Pat on the Back (Pot B). Twenty- five typed Pot B’s are due on June 7. Students were given a class list and asked to reflect about each person (from our class) in a positive way. Students will be given their envelope of Pot B’s in June. These sweet morsels should be savored for years to come. By mid- May please take a look at the beautiful bulletin board outside our classroom. Students are working diligently on the writing project entitled, Picture This: Then, Now, and in the Future. It will be a wonderful keepsake for years to come. On Monday, June 5 we are headed to Philadelphia Sports Club (PSC) for the class trip. We will leave at 9:00 a.m. and return by 2:00 p.m. The following parents graciously volunteered to chaperone: Mrs. Bai, Dr. Bonin, Mr. Foster, Mrs. Lund, Mrs. Peri, and Mrs. Watson. Chaperones, kindly have your clearances up to date as you will need them to attend and meet us at the facility by 9:20 a.m. We will be finished the rotation by 1:30 p.m. and arrive back to school by 2:00. Congratulations to the following students for being the proud recipients of the April classroom award: Alan Bai, Grace DiMattia, Sammie Holmen, Tyler Hood, and Alli Troth. Continue to soar to success!

Moyer’s Corner

1. I rarely put on the air conditioner as I love fresh air and despise the feel of cold, artificial air. 2. I was named after my maternal grandmother; I don’t have a middle name. 3. A great summer day would involve: swimming, reading the newspaper and a great novel, meeting a friend for lunch, going to the gym and taking an hour long walk or run in the evening while listening to my iPod. 4. I am currently reading Schooled by Gordon Korman. 5. Some of my favorite movies are: Stand and Deliver, Witness, Life is Beautiful, and Schindler’s List. 6. May is my favorite month.

YOU CAN, YOU WILL, SUCCEED! Be the best YOU possible!

Rachel Moyer

“Cherish individual talents, cultivate creativity, celebrate diversity and inspire curiosity.” (Richardson)