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Monday, May 15, 2017

Linda M. Jones, Principal

Kimberly Thompson Assistant Principal The Principal’s Message for

Stonegate Families Stonegate Elementary School

14811 Notley Road Silver Spring, MD 20905

THE STONEGATE SPLASH

A MESSAGE FROM MRS. JONES

Dear Families,

I can’t believe it is already May. Where did the year go? I have begun to

reflect on my third year as principal at Stonegate Elementary and I am

very proud to serve this community. I am extremely honored to work

with my staff, students, and families. I can’t thank you enough for the

support that you have given me. It means the world to me.

I am looking forward to closing this year and wishing all of my families

a wonderful summer. This summer I will be very busy preparing for the

2017-2108 school year. We will have construction and we will receive

three new portables. We were approved for two more portables and

one of our original portables will be replaced. We will have a total of

seven portables for the upcoming school year.

As we wind down this year, we are already beginning to plan for next

year! We are currently forming classes, developing the master instruc-

tional schedule, and developing training modules for staff. Our grade

level team leaders will be involved in three days of summer leadership

development. Agenda topics include analyzing summative assessment

data-including MAP, mClass, and school climate data, revising the

goals for our school improvement plan, discussing curriculum upgrades,

and continuing our discussion on how race and culture impact teaching

and learning. This summer our teachers will engage in multiple profes-

sional development opportunities. We are already looking forward to a

great new school year!

Finally, I hope that everyone had an amazing Happy Mother’s Day!

A Mother’s Love

Of all the special joys in life,

The big ones and the small,

A mother’s love and tenderness,

Is the greatest of them all.

Anonymous

Warmly,

Linda M. Jones

Important Dates:

May 17—ESOL Night

May 21—Girls on the

Run 5K, Westfield

Montgomery Mall, Be-

thesda

May 25—Gr. 5 choral &

instrumental music

spring concert, 10:00 &

7:00, gym

May 26—Gr. 5 Wax

Museum, hallways

May 29—Memorial Day

Holiday—School and

Offices Closed

May 31—Town Hall

Celebration

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The 2017 Stonegate Talent Show is Coming Soon!

Students get your performances together! Grab your dancing shoes, comedy materi-al, musical instruments, or best friends to create an awesome performance for our upcoming talent show. Below are some important dates to know:

May 18th - auditions will be held in the APR at 3:40 p.m.

May 26th - the music for your performance turned in/shared (if applicable)

June 9th - our dress rehearsal - beginning at 9:30 a.m.

June 9th - Talent Show Night - beginning at 6:30 p.m.

TALENT SHOW

ESOL PARENT NIGHT

Join us on Wednesday, May 17th, from 6:00 – 7:45 p.m. for our second annual ESOL Parent Night at Stonegate. Pizza dinner for the entire family and childcare are provided! Learn about the ESOL program at Stonegate, discover ways to support your child at home over the summer, and receive information about important community resources.

PARCC TESTING

Stonegate students did an excellent job on PARCC testing over the past few weeks. We are fin-ishing our third grade Language Arts testing this week followed by make-up testing. Please continue to be sure your child goes to bed on time so he or she is well-rested. Be sure to get

up a few minutes early to avoid rushing and make sure your child arrives at school on time. Have

your child eat a nutritious breakfast. There is a strong correlation between eating breakfast and

memory and cognitive functioning. Be positive and communicate that this is your child’s chance to

show what he/she knows. The most important thing you can do right before the test is to build

confidence about doing his/her very best.

We thank you all for your support during this time.

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Core Values

Mission Statement

Stonegate's mission as

a caring community is

to foster the growth of

life-long learners by

communicating high

expectations and

standards through re-

spect, flexibility, and

collaboration.

Vision Statement

The Stonegate Com-

munity will be com-

mitted to a multicul-

tural learning environ-

ment that motivates

and supports all learn-

ers to achieve their

greatest potential. We

will collaborate re-

spectfully to develop a

standard of excellence

that promotes high

expectations for all.

learners.

SUMMER OPPORTUNITIES

Regional Summer School in MCPS has been discontinued. Below are a few opportunities for summer engagement.

Montgomery County Recreation and Montgomery Parks have hundreds of exciting camps to promote healthy lifestyles for children this summer. Camp registration is now open via activemontgomery.org. County camps are affordable, fun and convenient to parents and families across the county. Activities are tailored to a variety of interests, skill levels and ages. Summer programs include aquatics, arts, nature, exploration, cooking, sports and much more.

To view the Montgomery County Camp Guide and register online, go to www.activemontgomery.org. Print copies of the guide are also available at community rec-reation centers, park facilities, aquatic centers, senior centers and public libraries. For more information, call 240-777-6840.

2017 Safety Patrol Camp

The Montgomery County Police School Safety Unit will be hosting a weeklong Safety Pa-trol Camp in June and July. This camp is for incoming 5th grade patrols who want to learn the various responsibilities of being an effective safety patrol. The weeklong camp will be held at Summit Lake Camp in Emmittsburg, Md. and the cost is $325 per session. Trans-portation to and from camp is provided. Registration opens on Monday, March 13. Two sessions are available—from June 26 to June 30 and July 17 to July 21; parents should regis-ter for only one of the sessions. Interested students should register early, as space is limited.

We kicked-off our Salad Bar on Monday, May 8th for our students. The first day 98 students ate salads. The second day we served over 200 students salad! One student was excited to say, “I am getting a salad every day!” We are truly excited to provide these healthy choices to our students. The salad bar is a part of their normal lunch offerings and packers can purchase the salad bar for a cost of 42 cents an ounce. We are currently look-ing for parent volunteers to help our K-2

students with salad bar service during our lunches. Please call the office if interested.

SALAD BAR

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PTA NEWS

With spring in full swing the PTA is finishing up the school year by supporting the school with some great activities and preparing for next year! During the final PTA meeting this school year, held on Tuesday May 2nd, the PTA membership elected PTA officers for the 2017-2018 school year. Melissa Labriola will serve as President Katherine McCarthy as VP of Programs and Activities Emilie Grahl as Treasurer Tamieka Thomasson as Recording Secretary Jessica Ryan was elected to a second term as corresponding secretary The VP of Administration and Operations position was not filled. A special election will be held at the September 5th PTA meeting to fill this position. We encourage you to join us in participating in our school community. There are both PTA board po-sitions and chair positions available for next school year. These positions include: MCCPTA Repre-sentative, Membership Committee, Read-a-thon Chair, Social Media Coordinator, Walking/Mileage Club Coordinator, Yard Sale Coordinator, and PTA Meeting Speaker Coordinator. More information is available if you are interested in any of these positions Please contact Jennifer Willis at stonegateptapres@gmail.com or Melissa Labriola at stonegatepta.vp.ed@gmail.com. Looking forward to…. Our next PTA meeting will be our PTA Orientation Fair on Tuesday, September 5th! Join us! Thanks... A big thank you to Victoria Henley for coordinating another wonderful Literary Festival! Ms. Henley arranged for five amazing authors to visit our school and share their stories with our students. Thanks to Maggie Conley, Katherine McCarthy, Melissa Labriola, Ashley Moore, Jessica Willis, and Susan Koutsky for help with a successful kindergarten orientation! We were excited to visit with many incoming families and look forward to welcoming them into the Stonegate ES community! Thank you to Maggie Conley and Marjie Dewey for coordinating a successful PTA sponsored commu-nity yard sale! We had 24 vendors participate in the sale.

Staff Appreciation Week is May 8th- 12th. Tamieka Thomasson is coordinating a wonderful week for our teachers and staff.

Thanks to Charisse Scott and Dr. Lesley Sanders for coordinating an informative and fun filled Healthy Family Fair on Saturday! Gratitude to the community sponsors for their generous donation of time, information, and materials. All who attended were enriched!

Thank you Victoria Henley, Kendra Harris, and Katherine McCarthy for serving on the PTA Nomi-nating Committee this year.

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HELP PREVENT SUMMER LEARNING LOSS

Adapted From: 12 Ways to Prevent Summer Learning Loss by Dr. Gail Gross Two words can help you prevent learning loss this summer: enrichment and involvement. Academic delay that occurs over the summer is one of the greatest problems confronting teachers each fall. In fact, when your children return to school, they may have experienced such learning loss during the summer, that they will need to spend several weeks catching up to where they once were academically. Parents who stay involved and vigilant for those teachable moments over summer vacation can bond with their children, get to know them better and have a lot of fun learning together. 1. Visit your local library. A fam ily tr ip to the library is a w onderful source for m any activities. This in-cludes taking turns reading to one another, sharing interests and opportunities for you and your child to write and dis-cuss your choices of reading material. You can also record stories that you and your children create for one another, to be played back at bedtime or by a babysitter when you have a date night. 2. Go on field trips. Field tr ips to art m useum s, science m useum s and history m useum s open up all kinds of activities that are related to history, math, science, geography and social studies. Not only do your children bene-fit from mutual discussions about your field trips, but also from reading, drawing pictures and writing stories about what interested them about their excursions. You can link a trip to a particular museum to the library, to find books that relate to the museum exhibitions. Then there are trips to ice cream factories, cheese factories, bakeries, farmer’s markets, arbo-retums, zoos, historical sites — all of which provide learning opportunities. 3. Travel the world without leaving home. Geography w as a big hit at our house. My fam ily spent m any hours looking at an atlas that we checked out at the library. The atlas is a great source of maps, color photos and explana-tions of resources found at particular locations. You can also hang a map in your children’s room and using colored tacks, track the course of a friend’s, family member’s or famous person’s trip across the globe. 4. Encourage your children to connect with other children. Having a pen pal or a book club over the summer is a free and fabulous way of engaging reading and writing, English and literature. 5. Cook with your children. Cooking is a great w ay to teach about m easurem ents and how to use frac-tions. Theme nights for dinner not only teach cooking skills, but math, as you teach your child how to measure and con-vert weights, volumes and numbers. Using an historical cookbook for a taste of history can help you and your family re-enact events important to our past. History will be remembered when linked to a delicious meal, including an historical dessert. 6. Play school with your children. Let your child take turns being the teacher , w ith other children or with yourself. Include the creation of lesson plans, colorful pencils and workbooks. 7. Get into the act with the whole family. Putting on fam ily plays, w riting scr ipts, rehearsing and m em o-rizing parts can help your child not only learn about writing and organization, but also about performing. Try musicals, which can tap into your child’s musical talents and skills, while all along building self-esteem. 8. Spell F-U-N with family game nights. Fam ily gam e night including Scrabble, Taboo or crossw ord puz-zles, is a great way for your child to polish up on spelling. And simply enlarging your summertime vocabulary daily will increase your child’s. 9. Teach about money, stocks and bonds. Use the new spaper as a teaching tool. This is an interesting and fun way to engage your children in math. Your kids will love it, because they will feel grown up, imitating you. 10. Send your kids — and yourself! — to camp. If your child is lucky enough to be able to go to cam p over the summer, they may enjoy a camp that focuses on their interests. For example, science camps and writing camps are interest-based. If you can’t afford a camp, you still have access to free and available day camp activities in your town or city. For example, performing arts centers, parks and recreation departments, various museums and outdoor theaters often offer free day programs in the arts, nature, and sports. 11. Take family vacations — real or virtual. Fam ily tr ips to histor ic places like W illiam sburg, Valley Forge or The Liberty Bell are fun vacations that include the re-enactments of important moments in history, and are so exciting. 12. Establish chores with a purpose. Sm all chores around the house can give your children the oppor-tunity to save money, to count money and to plan for something special that they need their math skills to accomplish. Chores can provide so many lessons: responsibility, obligation, commitment, as well as curriculum.

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White Oak Middle School

Is offering

A SUMMER SPORTS CAMP &

Academic Enrichment

Students choose a sport and a class.

BASKETBALL CAMP with Mr. Wade or SOCCER CAMP

with Mr. Padgett Math 6: Ratios/Rates the Common Core Way (new

6th graders only)

Algebra Prep

Lights, Camera, Literacy (7th and 8th graders only)

Dance and much more….

Only $240 for 3 weeks! (financial assistance is available)

Starting: Monday, July 10— Ending: Friday, July 28, 2017

7:45 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Return registration form to WOMS– Mr. Camilo Casey (Camilo_K_Casey@mcpsmd.org)

Register Now: Camp will fill quickly!!!!