Principal Green Run Gazette Assistant Principal

Dr. Sheila M. Wynn Quarter 3 2019 TaShenna Wiggins

Parent Newsletter

Principal’s Message I cannot believe that we are in the last quarter of the school year. I can assure all parents and guardians that the Green Run staff will continue to focus our work in the best interest of children. Teaching and learning continues to be diligent until dismissal on the last day of school. We appreciate your support and I want you to know that our dedication to children continues to be steadfast! As we enter the last quarter, I want to share the following two reminders: Parents Make the Difference with Reading Several factors have an impact on your child’s love of reading, but one of them may be closer to home than you realize. It’s an older sibling! Recent studies show that children who see their older brother or sister reading for pleasure are more likely to seek out books themselves. It’s not just that book-loving older children model good reading habits. They are also great resources when it comes to sharing books, suggesting new stories to explore, and talking about literature. Make reading a family affair. Set aside some group reading time each week. Turn off the TV, snuggle up on the couch, and read together. Include older siblings, cousins, or friends. This will show your child how much reading matters in your home. Reading together also encourages a thirst for knowledge. Visit the library together. The Joint Use Library is one of our Partners in Education and we encourage everyone to visit and join the library as a family. We recommend 20 minutes of reading each night for children. Outside our school you see signs posted with this message and many teachers communicate this to parents and children daily. This includes children reading or having someone read to and with them. Reading to your children leads to questions about the book and the information within. It gives you a chance to speak about what is happening and use this as a learning experience. It may also develop an interest in different cultures or languages. Don’t let your child miss out on learning! There is a direct correlation between successful outcomes for children and attendance. Whether your child is in preschool or fifth grade, it is important to get them into the habit of coming to school on time every day. According to experts, missing school regularly, especially in early grades, can hurt both the students who miss class and their classmates. When children miss school they miss out on learning. When they return, they have to work hard to catch up, making it easy for them to fall behind. Students may enter the building at 8:20. I encourage parents that drop off students, or children that are walkers, to be at school between 8:20 and 8:30. Please contact me at 648-2560 if you have any questions. I look forward to our positive partnership between home and school.

Literacy Corner At last, spring has arrived. With the warmer weather there are so many things to investigate outside. As children discover new bugs, plants, and animals and simply enjoy nature around them, they can connect reading to real life by learning about lots of living things from nonfiction books. These fascinating reads can be found at our school library and also at your local Virginia Beach Public Library. So, as your children encounter new experiences in nature, invite them to explore them in books as well.

Library News-Mrs. Atkins The Green Run library staff would like to thank all the students and parents that came out for the STEAM and book fair night. The book fair was a wonderful opportunity for students to see and select books for themselves and to help select books for our library that they were interested in reading. The library was able to add about 150 new books to our school library inventory! Let the reading begin…

Counselor’s Corner- Ms. Pierre-Louis It is hard to imagine that the 2018-19 school year is more than half-way completed! It has been a busy couple of months, but exciting things have been happening at Green Run Elementary!

Living in the Hampton Roads community, we know what an important role the U.S. Military plays in our everyday lives. As a way to honor and show our support for our military connected students and their families (April is Month of the Military Child), join VBCPS in celebrating Purple Up! Day on Wednesday, April 10 at Green Run Elementary!

Parents/Guardians of our 5th grade students, thank you so much for returning middle school registration and registration confirmation pages so quickly! Please be on the lookout for more information about Academic and Career Plans and middle school transition for our rising 6th grade students.

We've made great progress as a school meeting our All About the Be's goals! So far this school year, we have earned just over 5,300 Be Tickets!!! Awesome job, Colts! We’ve challenged the entire school to continue to gallop to greatness together by aiming to earn 6,500 tickets by Friday, May 3. If we meet our goal, we’ll have a school-wide celebration of a Pop-Up Popsicle Party on Thursday, May 9! Parents and guardians, we appreciate your support in reminding students of the 4 Be’s: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, Be Ready, and Be Supportive!

I look forward to working with you and your students as we #galloptogreatness and complete the 2018-2019 school year in the best way possible! Please view my web-page for additional updates from the school counseling department. https://sites.google.com/vbschools.com/gresschoolcounseling/home

GALLOPING TO GREATNESS!

Math News

Twelve Steps to Increase Your Child’s Math Achievement and Make Math Fun Based on the work of Jo Boaler, Stanford University, CEO: youcubed

Installment 3

(Steps 1-5 were shared in the Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 Parent Newsletters)

Step 6: Encourage drawing whenever you can.

Mathematicians draw all of the time, they do this because sketching a problem helps them

really see the important mathematical ideas. Drawing and restating problems both help

children understand what questions are asking and how the mathematics fits within them.

Step 7: Encourage students to make sense of math at all times.

Children should never think that math is a set of rules that they need to follow. As they work,

keep asking “does that make sense to you?” “Why?” or “Why Not?” Discourage guessing. If

your child seems to be guessing, say “Is that a guess? This is something we can make sense of,

not guess about.”

Step 8: Encourage students to think flexibly about numbers.

Research has shown that the biggest difference between elementary students who are more

successful in math and those who find it more challenging, is not that the higher achievers

know more, but that they think flexibly with numbers. It is critical that children develop number

sense, which means that they think flexibly with numbers and can change and regroup them.

Step 9: Never time children or encourage faster work.

Avoid math activities that are performed under timed conditions. Timed math activities have

been shown to produce anxiety in students.

Clinic-Nurse Fox As the weather continues to improve and we all spend more time outside, be sure to wear sunscreen and hydrate. It’s easy to forget these basics after the long winter months. Over spring break encourage your child to leave the electronics and get outside for some fun times in the sun! Take a family walk, picnic, or even a reading break outside! Enjoy your spring break!

Music-Ms. Miller It has been a busy time for music students here at GRES! We recently finished our All-City Chorus concert and our 5th graders did a wonderful job representing our school. Kindergarten and 1st grade, along with 5th grade strings, did such a wonderful job on their Spring Program last Thursday! I’m so proud of how hard they practiced and I know you enjoyed seeing their performance. Fourth and fifth graders performed their recorder pieces for younger grades during March for Music in our Schools month. They are now working on earning those belts for recorder karate. I am very proud of all the hard work and dedication these students are showing.

Art-Mrs. Magee Many of our students have created art for the Art of the Military Child Art Contest. Each student that submitted art will have artwork on display at Lynnhaven Mall in the main court throughout the month of April. Our students also have work in the Audubon Art Show, "Spectacular Species: Fin, Feather, and Fur, currently on display at Pembroke Mall now through April 10th. The next big art exhibition for elementary students is the annual show at Pembroke Mall beginning on April 25th. Please support our students and their creativity by viewing this awesome art

during your shopping trip at our local malls!

Physical Education-Mr. Conger Hello parents. We have big things coming up in the next few months. April will be our fitness testing month, while 4th and 5th will be finishing up their fitness testing for the year. On May 1st we will have our Field Day and that evening we will play our first annual Field Day Finale 5th grade V. staff basketball game. Come and cheer on the students, staff, or both in this much anticipated game! We have lots of fun planned in the PE department as we push towards the end of the year!

Gifted Resource-Ms. Sawyer

The Francis Land House visited Green Run in March and spent time with all of our kindergarten classes. The students learned about how the alphabet used to be taught in school and how puzzles were made and used. Spring Break is a great time to discover and enjoy local museums and historical sites. The Chrysler Museum is open and has free admission, so consider going to Norfolk for a day trip! Some of our first graders and their parents enjoyed a trip there in October and learned about different techniques to use to enhance their learning. Have a wonderful and restful Spring Break!

Grade Level News

Kindergarten is ready to tackle quarter 4 with the same endurance that was put forth in the last three quarters. We will focus our language arts instruction on continuing to retell the stories we read, increase our vocabulary, and identify simple facts in nonfiction books. We will continue to improve our writing by using descriptive words, write to offer our opinions, and to narrate an experience. Students will use classroom references like the word wall and simple dictionaries to help when reading and writing. You can help at home by asking your student to retell a story you have read together, including the beginning, middle, and end of the story. In math, we will focus on fractions. Students will determine the half and whole of an item and decide if it is divided in a way that offers a fair share to each party. We will continue to work on counting forward by ones and tens, as well as decomposing and composing numbers. Students will identify one more and one less than a number. You can help at home by giving your student a number and asking them what is one more than that number given, and what is one less. This is a game you can play anywhere and you can take turns giving the number. Finally, we will work on solving a single-step story and picture problems, for the sum and difference. Kindergarten is full steam ahead to become first grade ready!!

Grade 1 has been working hard on retelling, using both fiction and nonfiction stories. In nonfiction stories, finding the main idea and details are key. Keep reading, reading, reading! Students have practiced counting coins and their values with pennies, nickels, and dimes. We have also talked about saving money and why it is important. We want our students to be prepared for anything that could happen! Our first graders are also very excited about being able to do Makerspace in the library every other week. They have been coming up with some great creations!

Grade 2 is so excited that the fourth marking period is here and all that comes along with it. Our second graders are half-way through their swim lessons and will finish up this Thursday. They will also get started on planting in our outdoor garden. In math, we will continue with our unit on measurement and the students will be learning to count money. In social studies, we will learn about economics. With our science unit, we will dive into plants and animals and how they grow. Learning even more as we travel to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens. We will begin our study on poetry and try our hand at writing our own poems. It's going to be a great spring.

Grade 3 has been working extremely hard this 3rd quarter! The math objectives were focused on geometry concepts and a whole lot of fractions! The students enjoyed the geometry unit and quickly grasped the ideas of naming and identifying polygons. Fractions were quite a challenge! As we start the 4th quarter objectives, students will continue to review representing fractions as mixed and improper models until they master the concept. The reading objectives have been ongoing throughout the year. The students are demonstrating a great understanding of main idea, character traits, and describing story elements as we explored poetry and functional text. Discovering an author's purpose is another area that the grade level has been focusing on for mastery. We have one quarter left! As we enter testing season, our goal is to help the students put in their best effort, and to stay calm and focused. They have learned so many strategies and concepts that we feel confident that the end of the year will be a successful finish for all!

Grade 4 can’t believe we’re already approaching the end of the year! In language arts, the students

have been working with functional texts such as reading flyers, recipes, and catalogs. We’ve been

working on poetry and using the Poetry Protocol to better understand poems and answer questions

related to them. In science, the students worked very hard on the solar system. They studied the ancient

astronomers Aristotle, Galileo, and Copernicus. They learned about what causes the seasons, day and

night, and also about the eight planets of our solar system. In Virginia Studies, the students have been

learning about the Jamestown Settlement, all of the hardships the settlers faced and how the Virginia

Indians helped them survive. Lastly, in math the students have been working on a number of different

skills. They’ve been working on comparing, adding and subtracting of decimals and fractions, elapsed

time, and have started working on length measurement. The students continue to work hard as we

prepare for the upcoming SOLs.

Grade 5 students are definitely ready for spring break and some much needed relaxation. They have worked hard preparing for the 3rd quarter assessments in math, science, reading, and social studies. In science, we made edible plant and animal cells from cookies as we studied the different parts of each cell. We will be finishing our final science unit of plants over the next week. In social studies, we finished the Reconstruction unit, which included the rebuilding of Virginia after the Civil War. Students learned the difficult concept of segregation and how it impacted so many lives during that time, as well as the steps that were taken to make Virginia what it has become today. We will start our final units in social studies, including Virginia in the 1900’s and Virginia Today. We have finished our unit on variables in math, which takes math from concrete to abstract situations. Students have worked hard to put these concepts into practice every day. Finally, in language arts, we have been studying poetry and how to use Poetry Protocol to analyze a poem. As we begin the 4th quarter, we are in the final stretch of 5th grade. In the coming months will be finishing up the last few units in all subject areas, and reviewing all of the information we have learned this year as we work toward our SOL’s. Please make sure your students are studying their notes nightly and completing homework, so that they have the extra practice they need to meet their goals. We truly appreciate all that you do!

All Schools and offices

will be closed:

Friday April 12th –

Friday April 19th

Schools will re-open Monday April 22nd

SOL TEST DATES Grade 5 Reading 5/14 and 5/15 Grade 4 Reading 5/15 and 5/16 Grade 3 Reading 5/20 and 5/21

Grade 5 Math 5/22 and 5/23 Grade 4 Math 5/28 and 5/29 Grade 3 Math 5/30 and 5/31

Grade 5 Science 6/4 Grade 5 History 6/5

Parent Reminders; *Please ensure your student arrives to school on time. *Please be sure your student gets a good night’s sleep & a healthy breakfast. *Use the study materials your teacher sends home. *Try to schedule appointments outside of school hours or late in the day.

REMINDERS FROM GREEN RUN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

For the safety of all children, students may not be dropped off or enter the building before 8:20 a.m.

Breakfast in the classroom is from 8:20 a.m. - 8:40 a.m.

The student drop-off area at the cafeteria doors closes at 8:40 am. After this time, your student is tardy and you must bring them into the building and sign them in.

Parents, please be sure to keep your contact information up to date with the main office. This includes: address, phone numbers, emergency contacts, and email addresses.

Please remember to call the main office before 9 a.m. at 757-648-2560 to report your student’s absence.

When you must change your child’s dismissal routine, please send a note in with your child for the office. If it occurs during the school day, PLEASE let the office know by 2:30 P.M.

VBCPS REQUIRES THAT ALL VISITORS ENTERING GRES MUST SIGN IN AT THE SECURITY DESK AND PROVIDE A PHOTO I.D.