Dear Stallion Families,

March brings with it lots of fun and work! I hope you and your families have the opportunity to carve out some Habit 7 time "sharpening the saw" together. Our students worked hard during third quarter and I am very excited about the academic pro-

gress our students continue to make throughout the year. As a school, our third quarter Galileo scores look like they are going to

be the strongest of the year. Good job!

A big thank you goes out to all of our families for making the time to meet with our teachers at Parent/Teacher conferences. It was great to see so many smiling faces. Also, thank you to everyone who also filled out the annual parent survey. We always ap-

preciate the opportunity to hear what we are doing well and what we can improve on.

On a final note, I am excited for our students to "show what they know" on the upcoming AZ Merit test. Last year Simonton's scores were in the top 25% of schools in Pinal County. This year we will be taking the computer-based AZ Merit exam and I am

optimistic that we will do even better.

Thank you for choosing Simonton.

Best regards,

Bradley Shepstead, Principal Kathryn Sue Simonton Elementary School

A Word from Our Principal

The Simonton Star

M A R C H , 2 0 1 6 V O L U M E 5 , I S S U E 7

At Simonton we LEAD Learn, Empower, Achieve, Dream

Kathryn Sue Simonton 40300 N Simonton Blvd. San Tan Valley, AZ 85140 Attendance Line: 480-987-5331 www.simonton.jocombs.org

We are happy to announce that we have purchased a brand new popcorn machine for Simonton. It is the support of families and Simonton staff that we were able to do this. We had such a tremendous turnout at January’s Skateland night that we were able to use those funds to buy our new machine. We will be unveiling it and using it for the first time at our Family Bingo night on Friday March 18th. Please plan on joining us for a fun family evening. Informational flyers will be sent home with your student. Thank you to all the families that purchased pizzas and supported our school at Little Caesars night. Our next PTO meeting is Tuesday March 22nd at 3:00 in the multipurpose room. If you have any questions or are interested in joining the PTO for the 2016-2017 school year you can contact us by email – simontonpto@gmail.com or on our Facebook page- SimontonPTO.

Be Our Guest

Saturday, March 5th, 2016 - 8:00am—2:00pm

FREE Medical / Dental Clinic and Social Service Fair

Vision, Haircuts, Children’s Activities, Food and Clothing

Drives, and so much more!

All guests will be seen on a first come, first served basis.

Combs Middle School

37611 N Pecan Creek Dr. San Tan Valley, AZ 85140

Please visit compassionqueencreek.org for more info.

From Angela Albers, School Social Worker

Become a Leukemia and Lymphoma

Society All-Star!

Hello. Again this year, we are doing the Pennies for Pasta.

Last year, Ms. Burkhead’s (2nd grade) won the free lunch

from the Olive Garden. What a great time they had! As a

school, we raised over $1300 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma

Society for children’s blood cancer. Let’s try to beat that this

year. Donate online (studentseries.org/az), in person or

through your change gathered by kids in the classroom. If

you have any questions, please phone. The dates for pennies

for pasta is March 7th thru March 25th.

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that March 31st is my

last day. I love all the kids and will miss them greatly. I will

sub for the district, so you may see me off and on. I have

thoroughly enjoyed all the parents, families and staff.

Nurse Barb

On a good note….let’s raise that money…..pennies at a

time….Thank you to all of you.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Mar 1

Mar 2 Last Day for Running Club 7:25am meet on the big field.

Early Release Wednesday Grades K-6th 8:15a-1:35p Governing Board Meeting at Combs Middle School 6;00pm

Mar 3 Art Club B 3:05pm-3:45pm

Mar 4 4th grade field trip to Goldfield Ghost Town. Bring a hat, water bottle and sun block 3rd quarter ends Habit Hero Lunch with Mr. Shep

Mar 7

Mar 8

Mar 9

Mar 10

Mar 11

Mar 14 PD for Teachers/Staff No School

Mar 15 School Resumes

Mar 16 Early Release Wednesday Grades K-6th 8:15a-1:35p

Mar 17 St. Patrick’s Day Awards Assembly 830a-1st and 2nd 920a-3rd and 4th 1010a-5th and 6th City of Mesa Energy Resource Event

Mar 18 Report cards go home PTO—Bingo night 5-7:00pm

Mar 21 Garden Club 3:05-4:00pm in the Garden J.O. Combs Job Fair 4-8pm

Mar 22 PTO Meeting 3:30-4:30

Mar 23 Early Release Wednesday Grades K-6th 8:15a-1:35p

Mar 24 Art Club A 3:05-3:45pm

Mar 25 Spring Holiday Good Friday No School

Mar 28 LEAD Assembly at the flagpole 8:15am Garden Club 3:05-4:00pm in the Garden

Mar 29 Mar 30 Early Release Wednesday Grades K-6th 8:15a-1:35p

Mar 31 Spring Photos

M A R C H , 2 0 1 6 V O L U M E 5 , I S S U E 7

Congratulation Kenli Clare! You have

been caught shining with

character! You

are the student

leader of the

month for

March’s

character trait of

Responsibility.

Great Job!

Running Club ends this month. Our last meeting is Wednesday, March 2nd. Jump Rope for Heart was a huge

success with our Simonton Stallions. As of February 19th, The American Heart Association received $1,164.33 in

donations from our Jump Rope for Heart campaign. This year we exceeded our $1,000 goal for the school. For

National Heart Month students spent P.E. class time jumping rope and learning new ways to jump rope. Some of our

students are quite the Double Dutch jumpers. While Kindergarten, First and Second grade learned and practiced

basic skills, our older grades learned tricks and even competed to see who could jump the longest. We even did our

fitness exercises with jump ropes. Thank you to everyone for participating and special thanks to those who donated

to the American Heart Association.

Students will have the privilege of participating in Field Day on April 27th. Volunteers are needed to help out with

this fun event. Stations will be set up for each class group to rotate through. Activities will include; Standing long

jump, 40 yard dash, softball throw, obstacle course, soccer ball kick, tug-o-war and hydration. To sign up for a

station and volunteer, please contact Mrs. Baldenegro. rbaldenegro@jocombs.org

ADULTS Fitness Opportunity

An extra day of fun. SWEAT, SCULPT, ROCK – WITH POUND -

Rockout Workout

POUND® IS THE WORLD'S FIRST CARDIO JAM

SESSION INSPIRED BY THE INFECTIOUS, ENERGIZING AND SWEAT-DRIPPING FUN OF

PLAYING THE DRUMS.

Offered at Harmon Elementary at 4:00pm on Mondays and Thursdays, this class is just $5 at the door for parents and community members.

Free for JO Combs staff.

Kindergarten News

We had a great month! Valentines Day was a blast! We are coming up on Spring Break, be sure to still read and work on math skills. Helping in the kitchen is a great way to encourage reading skills with recipes and math skills with measuring! When reading a book see what words your child can read to you, have them touch the words while you read and do synchronized reader (reading at the same time). Do math outside with sticks and rocks, seeds, flowers, birds in the trees, or kids in the park. Even when driving in the car, count the red cars (or any color), trains on the track, people at the corner, and read signs, looking for letters, or familiar words. There are opportunities for learning all around and all the time! Encourage your Kindergarten to look for these learning experiences :)

one-syllable words. The students will be

using flow maps to organize their writing.

We hope you and your family have a

wonderful spring break!

We really enjoyed meeting with all of you

at Parent Teacher Conferences. In Math,

students will learn about telling time,

geometry, length measurement, and equal

shares. They will distinguish between

defining and non-defining attributes of

shapes and compose shapes. Students will

continue working on reading with

accuracy and prosody. They will also be

learning about long vowel sounds and

vowel-consonant–e syllable in

teams and all the different spelling

options they present. In math we

will focus on telling time, and many

different types of graphs. We will

create graphs, answer questions

and form questions about those

graphs. We hope everyone has a

fun and restful spring break.

T H E S I M O N T O N S T A R

In March, 2nd graders will

compare and contrast similar

stories. Then we will do an

author study of Laura Numeroff

and write a circle story of our

very own. We will finish up our

weather unit and begin learning

about maps, continents and

oceans. In Fundations we will

continue learning about vowel

2nd Grade News

1st Grade News

V O L U M E 5 , I S S U E 7 P A G E 5

Our

Mission is

to:

Learn

Empower

Achieve

Dream

5th & 6th Grade News

P A G E 6 V O L U M E 5 , I S S U E 7

5th Grade: We are almost done with Quarter 3! The next book we will be reading in class is Bridge to Terabithia. This

book also has a movie to go along with it so look for those permission slips. We have implemented a new website to our homework called Moby Max. This website is a helpful tool for students to practice math, read, vocabulary and language skills to help them prepare for the end of the state test. Please make sure students are logging on to the sight on a nightly basis. As we get ready for Quarter 4 we will be discussing with the students information about their state reports. Please look out for those flyers and handouts.

6th Grade: It was great to meet with all of you at parent-teacher conferences! Thank you for your support. This

month sixth-graders will continue learning about Ancient China, social action, and The Heidelberg Project. They will begin learning about cells and view slides under microscopes in science, and in math they will learn about rational numbers and the coordinate plane. We hope your children have a safe, relaxing spring break!

The fourth grade field trip to

Goldfield Ghost Town

is Friday March 4th.

Students should wear a blue shirt or a

Simonton Shirt and closed toe shoes. It

is also recommend that they have a

water bottle, sunscreen, sunglasses and

a hat. The Buses will leave

at 8:45am and will return by 1:30pm.

Students- enjoy your spring break!

Come back rested and ready to ROCK

the AzMERIT and AIMS!!

4th Grade News 3rd Grade News

This month in reading and social studies, we will

begin our unit on Ancient Greece and Rome.

We will compare and contrast ancient Olympics

and modern Olympics. We will also discuss some ideas

and concepts that the United States learned from Ancient

Greece and Rome. In math we will begin to review every-

thing that we have learned so far this year in preparation for

the AZ Merit test. On March 15th, the Farm Bureau will be

bringing a field trip to us. They will give us a short presen-

tation about the 5 C’s of Arizona. They will focus on

cotton and cattle. We will discuss some of the products

that we get from dairy cattle and then we will make

homemade ice cream. It should be a lot of fun!

Spring Gifted Testing J.O. Combs Unified School District is committed to identifying students who qualify for placement in the gifted cluster classroom. The Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) is the assessment used to determine whether a child qualifies as gifted.

Spring Gifted Testing for Kindergarten – 6th Grade

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Combs Traditional Academy

Students arrive between 8:00 and 8:20 a.m.

Testing concludes between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m. Permission to test is required

Student may only test one time in a 12-month period

You can locate information about testing via jocombs.org under the Curriculum and Instruction tab: Testing letter containing details about the CogAT test and qualifying test scores for placement in the gifted cluster classroom

Permission to test form

Characteristics about the gifted child

Please don’t hesitate to contact your child’s teacher with any additional questions, or you may contact Debbie Jones at 480-987-5300, extension 1050 or via e-mail at djones@jocombs.org

V O L U M E 5 , I S S U E 7 P A G E 7

You can follow us on Twitter: @simontonrocks, If you don’t have a Twitter account, but would still like to receive our updates via text message, follow these easy steps:

type :40404 (as the recipient)

type “follow @simontonrocks” (in the message area)

That’s it, you will now begin to receive our Twitter updates, even without an account.

Take advantage of the Arizona Tax Credit. We have tax credit forms in the front office or you can go on our website at www.jocombs.org to print the tax credit form. When filling out the form on line, please en-sure you check the box for Simonton Ele-mentary for any amount up to $400 (joint fil-ing) or $200 (single filing) that will be used for extra curricular activities. Thank you for the opportunity to serve your students.

What we are doing in Technology:

Kinder - Continuing to work on logging onto the computers independently (We're almost there!) and practicing our mouse skills using various educational web-sites

Grades 1 & 2 - Continuing to learn about basic formatting tools in MS Word

Grade 3 - Using MS Word to learn about clip art and how to search, format, rotate, flip, copy, paste & delete

Grade 4 - Learning how to use the Grammar & Spell Check Tool and Thesaurus in MS Word

Grade 5 - Learning about the Internet, World Wide Web, web browsers & search engines

We are so excited to announce that the new

student designed Leadership T-Shirts are now

available!

All students had the opportunity to participate in

the contest to design the new shirts and through

process of elimination the Lighthouse Team

selected the final two designs.

A BIG thank you goes out to Haylee Gonzales

(front) and Levi Potter (back) for your creativity!

Great way to synergize!!

These new shirts are available for $10 each and

we can take cash or a check.

By McKinzie Baker and Kiera Kaechelein I synergized by helping a friend with a math prob-

lem I sharpened the saw after a hour of homework

I began with the end in mind by planning ahead with my homework

I was thinking win– win when my friend and I wanted to do different activities

Student Reporters

Combs KidzCombs Kidz

Spring Break CampSpring Break Camp

C O M M U N I T Y E D U C A T I O N 4 8 0 - 9 8 7 - 5 3 1 0

DATE: MARCH 7TH-11 & 14TH

TIME: 6:30 AM—6:00 PM

$30/full day or $15/half day

$150/All 6 full days

$75/All 6 half days

20% Sibling Discount

20% Employee Discount

We also have Spring Camp for 3 &

4 year olds. Held at Ellsworth

6:30am to 6:00pm Call for rates.

Location: Ranch Elementary

Combs Kidz is the J.O. Combs Before and

After school child care program. Combs

Kidz is a licensed, safe, fun-filled extended

learning program for children in kindergar-

ten through 6th grade.

Register online

Now!

Field trips during camp will include:

Tuesday, March 8: Peter Piper Pizza Lunch included $10.00

Thursday, March 10: Harkins Theater Zootopia $8.00

K-6 students will stay engaged and

enjoy arts & crafts, planned

activities, board games, Wii, indoor

& outdoor action and oodles of fun

during this Spring Break Camp.

Snack is provided, however, please

pack a lunch.