Panther Cub News PRINCIPAL’s Corner

Dear Stratton Meadows Families,

Welcome to 2019! We hope you had a wonderful

winter vacation and are ready to learn! We start school

on January 8. Remember that January 21 is MLK Day

so there is no school. January often brings us colder

weather so please send your student to school with a

coat and proper footwear. Per district policy, indoor re-

cess is when the temperature is 17 degrees or below.

Being that this is Colorado, there are many days when

the sun is out and it is above 17 degrees and we send

the kids out to get fresh air! Please remind your stu-

dents to stay out of puddles and no snowball fights are

allowed. We don’t have enough clothing to change eve-

ry set of wet pants and soaked shoes so staying dry

and safe will allow kids to have some play time outside

and run around and also come back to class and be

ready to learn.

Please continue to do the great job of parking only

where the cones are and letting the center aisle flow

through. This keeps traffic moving and keeps our stu-

dents safe! Also, please use the crosswalks and don’t

walk through cars in the parking lot. We want our stu-

dents to be safe and using the

crosswalks is the safest way to

do this.

Thank you and welcome back!

Sincerely,

Dr. Clayton

JANUARY EVENTS Jan 11—Report Cards Go Home Jan 21—MLK JR Day—No School Jan 15—PTO Meeting at 4:15 Jan 24—HSD Board Meeting at

6:00pm

610 Brookshire Avenue * Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906

Christina Clayton PRINCIPAL

Dustin Cady ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL

January 2018

School News

Health Room News Please remember to update your contacts, as well as alternate/emergency with the front office. When your child is sick, it is im-portant that we can reach you as soon as possible. The district health office practice is to have your child stay in the health room for 10 minutes only, returning back to class. This excludes if they are having a health care plan issue/ treatment, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, or exces-sive coughing (or all of them), head injuries, emergency, and other injuries. Of course there are some exceptions to this practice. Thank you for helping us help your child stay safe and healthy. Happy New Year!

Cheryl Witzman Nurse

Michelle Pineda Health Aide

Welcome to 2019! We are looking forward to a great 2019 with your student(s). As a reminder, the parking lot has three major sections. We have two

spots where you can park and wait for your student. Those are the

two outer lanes closest to the field and the parking spaces and are

marked by cones. In between those two lanes, we have a middle

lane that is used just as a drop and go lane. PLEASE Do Not leave

your vehicle if you are in this middle lane. Outside lanes (against the

parking spaces and against the field) are for those who wish to park

and get out of their vehicles. The middle lane is a CONSTANT

FLOW LANE, and people in this lane must remain inside of their ve-

hicles.

Also, for second semester, in the unlikely event that a child earns a disciplinary consequence from an office

referral, we are adding after school detention for students. A detention consequence would be assigned by

the administration and family contact would happen prior to the consequence. This time will be daily from

right after school until 4:30. During this time, students will reflect on their behavior, write apology notes, or fill

out think sheets all focusing on the disruptive behavior and hopefully strategize on how to stop the disruption

of the educational environment. The students will be ready to be picked up at 4:30 in the front of the school.

Thank you for your support with both of these things and here’s to a great rest of the year!

Counseling News

PTO News VIP News Happy New Year! 2019 is here and we are excited to use our growing momentum as a team to make it a year of even greater achievements to benefit the SME community! Did you know that VIP supports the PTO in combined efforts? This is what allows our staff and families to have a voice in the special activities and programs at SME. To stay updated and get involved you are invited to attend our monthly meetings on the 3rd Tuesday of the month and check your inbox for the VIP e-newsletter! We still need volunteers to help in the following areas: Art projects (In class and/or take home) Concessions and Popcorn Event Assistance and Security Translation-Spanish and ASL Community Outreach As always, thank YOU for all of YOUR hard work and dedi-cation. Sincerely, Rachel LeDoux Stratton Meadows Elementary Volunteer Coordinator StrattonMeadowsVolunteers@gmail.com 951.229.6014 (text ok)

School News This time of year is often difficult not only for our young students, but also for student’s families and even staff. Knowing how chal-lenging this season can be, it’s critical that we (everyone including staff, students, families, etc.) all brush up on coping and self-regulation skills so that we have steps set in place be-fore those holiday blues start sneaking up on us. When children are calm, their thinking brain is on, and this is the best time to come up with a plan for when their emotional brain tries to take over. Encourage taking a break (not a timeout), deep breathing, releasing built up energy by exercising, and relaxation strate-gies such as, coloring, calm down jars, music, etc. Practice these repeatedly when they are calm. Helping your child begin to recognize their body’s early signs of a strong emotion (heart racing, clenched jaw, etc.) can help them learn when to employ their self-regulation skills.

January 15, 2019

4:30-5:30

Meet in Teacher's Lounge

PTO is seeking new Treasurer. Please contact Savanna

Lopez, PTO President, for more details. Thank you!

Please keep the volume of your vehicle sound system to a minimum.

As a reminder: It is illegal to use any tobac-co products on a school campus including the parking lot.

As a reminder: It is illegal to park in a handi-capped parking space without appropriate doc-umentation displayed.

PLEASE USE THE CROSSWALKS!

Please be aware of neighbors’ driveways, and be careful not to block them.

mailto:StrattonMeadowsVolunteers@gmail.com

Grade Level News

1st Grade News MATH: We are gathering and tallying infor-mation. Then, we will move into adding double dig-it numbers READING: We are practicing main idea and details in non-fiction texts and sequencing in fiction texts.

Kinder News ELA: As we start the new year we will be continuing our letter a week, learning our high frequency words and building our skills of identifying character, setting and key details from stories. We are also build-ing on our writing skills but adding addition-al details to our sentences. MATH: We are finishing our module on more and less and will be starting a new module on addition and subtraction to 10.

2nd Grade News MATH: Second grade will be continuing to solve two and three digit numbers using adding and subtracting. We will be using place value charts, vertical way and arrow ways. ELA: Second grade is finishing our unit on Author’s purpose. We are continuing to work with synonyms, contractions, and mul-tiple meaning words.

3rd Grade News

ELA: We hope that you and your families have a wonderful holiday season and a restful break! As soon as we get back, third grade will get back into our Wonders curriculum in Unit 3. We are still focusing on the Big Idea question of “Why are individual qualities important? For writing we are finally going to be able to practice writing narrative! Students will transition from using an outline to plan for these stories to a box plan and this is an opportunity for the students to get super creative with their writing.

MATH: We are continuing to move through Module 5 and will be continuing to work on fractions. We are moving from just identifying a fraction of a shape to plotting fractions on a number line. Finally at the end of the unit and month we will move into comparing fractions with same and

different denominators. SOCIAL STUDIES: We will be exploring the life cycle of animals and plants!

Grade Level News

5th Grade News ELA: This quarter students will be analyzing the different perspectives of the American Revo-lution. Math: This quarter students will be able to multiply fractions. Science: This quarter students will be able to an-alyze data from a variety of weather instruments to de-scribe weather conditions in any given region.

4th Grade News ELA: We will be working on perspective in reading. You can support your child by asking them to explain the point of view. MATH: District CBMs are over and the 4

th

grade math students worked so hard prepar-ing and working hard on the test. Starting in January we will continue with fractions and decimals. We have many standards to cover with fractions addition, subtraction, and multi-plying. Many strategies to learn and practice. Have a great January. SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES: In January we will begin our Science unit on the environment! The focus of this unit is for students to investi-gate the characteristics of habitats, the organ-isms that live in these habitats, and the chang-es that have occurred to both over time.

Music News January is the start of a new year and with that comes new skills! Kindergarten and First Grade are working on reading musical note values and combining it with rhythm instruments. Second Grade is working on proper mallet technique in order to correctly play xylophones, metallo-phones, bells and glockenspiel. Third grade is focusing on TAD words: Tempo, Articulation and Dynamics. They are learning Italian musical terms to discuss what they hear and perform. Fourth grade is working on how to build different chord progressions. Fifth Grade is building on chord progressions and applying it to mallet in-struments and recorder.

Library News Welcome back to school! I hope everyone found a new favorite book over the break. Come down to the library and check out new books.

Grade Level News Art News Welcome back! We are kicking off the new year with a Stratton Meadows student art show at Sand Creek Branch Library begin-ning on January 12

th, through the end of the

month. Students whose work is on display will be notified with a letter home. Kinder-gartners through 5

th graders can look forward

to creating many wonderful new projects to kick off the new year. As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. –Ms. Quesenberry

Lunch Room News Harrison District 2 offers

each student gets 1 free

breakfast and 1 free lunch.

Students may purchase

second meals or extra food

at any time, however they

have to have money in their

account or bring money with them to do so.

There are times that we may limit the items that

they may purchase due to number of students

eating.

As a reminder some fruits and vegetables might be limited because of recalls, shortages and going out of season. We try our best to stay with the menu but unfortunately there are times that we will change an item due to short-ages. We will still offer 2 vegetables and 2 fruits a day but we may be limited to the same one each day.

PE News

Happy New Year!! Make 2019 the best year ever!! Fitness Fun Facts: You are 3 times more likely to accomplish a goal if you write it down and say it out loud every day! January Happenings in PE: Kindergarten: In kindergarten, we are finishing up our learning on chasing, fleeing, and dodging. We are also working on managing equipment and being responsible for our space. Ask you kindergarten student what they know about chasing and fleeing this month! 1st Grade: In first grade, we are going to be working a lot with overhand and underhand throwing this month! Help your first grad-er practice by throwing a ball with them outside! 2nd Grade: In second grade, we are going to be spending some time learning how to be safe in our environment as well as learning fun new recess games to play at school and at home. Discuss some games that you played at recess as a child! Maybe you can teach them one of your favorite games as well! 3rd Grade: Third grade will be working a lot with throwing and catching this month! We will learn the cues for over hand and under-hand throwing and catching! Ask your student to “teach” you the cues for throwing! 4th Grade: In fourth grade, we will be learning a lot about self-assessment and feedback this month. We will video ourselves doing skills. After we watch the video, the students will see what corrections can be made and adjust their performance. Ask your stu-dent if you can help them by giving them feedback on a new skill they are learning in PE! 5th Grade: In fifth grade, we are going to be learning the 6 skill related components of fitness. Ask your student what these are and if they can show you an example of each! January Challenge: Set a fitness or nutrition goal with your student and write it down. Each day repeat the goal to each other, and see how many goals you can accomplish this month!