February 2025

As we welcome February, we’re excited to share the celebrations and learning experiences that make our school community such a special place! This month is all about coming together, honoring history, and celebrating growth…a reflection of the values we embrace every day. We’ll start the month with Unity Day on February 4. This event will bring students and staff together to focus on kindness, acceptance, and inclusion. Don’t forget to wear orange to show your support and symbolize our commitment to standing UNITED! Throughout February, we will celebrate Black History Month with a morning spotlight, meaningful classroom activities and a special schoolwide program. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to learn about the many contributions of African Americans throughout our nation, fostering an appreciation for diversity and inclusion. We’re also thrilled to reach the 100th day of school this month - a wonderful milestone that shows just how much our students have grown and learned! Our teachers are committed to providing engaging and challenging instruction every day, making sure each child has the support they need to thrive. Thank you for being such an important part of our school community. Your encouragement and involvement help us create a place where every child feels valued, inspired, and ready to learn. Together, we’re shaping bright futures…one day at a time!

Tanya Montgomery, Principal

Karyn Chisholm, Assistant Principal

As we progress through the school year, I want to take a moment to emphasize the critical role attendance plays in your child’s academic success. Every day in school matters! Consistent attendance helps children stay engaged, build strong foundational skills, and develop positive habits that will serve them for a lifetime. Each day offers new opportunities to grow and succeed, and being present ensures your child doesn’t miss out on these important moments. This is especially important as lessons build on one another, and being present allows students to fully participate in discussions, group activities, and hands-on learning. We’re so grateful for your partnership in helping your child succeed. Everyday counts, and together, we can make sure your child has the best opportunities to learn and grow!

Just a reminder - any and all medications must be dropped off by a parent in the health room with the appropriate documentation signed by both the parent and a physician. Please do not send any medication to school in your student's backpack, it will be confiscated and thrown away. For the appropriate documentation, please contact the health room.

Dear Brooklyn Park Elementary Families,

At Brooklyn Park Elementary, your input is crucial in shaping the educational experience for your child and all students. To better understand and improve how we support our families, we kindly ask that you take a few moments to complete our Parent Survey.

This survey focuses on important topics, including:

• Communication
• Academics
• School Climate
• Attendance
• Support Services

Your feedback is invaluable in helping us identify strengths and areas for growth as we strive to enhance the experience for both you and your child.

https://forms.gle/rFw41kRXGMVaaTqj7

The survey will remain open until February 15th, and we encourage all families to participate. If you have any questions or need assistance accessing the survey, please feel free to contact us at 410-222-6590. Thank you for partnering with us to make Brooklyn Park Elementary the best it can be!

All Pre-K 3 and Pre-K 4 parents/guardians, come join us on February 19th from 7:40-9:30 for a breakfast with your child and then a brief overview of our Pre-K program. You will get a chance to visit your child’s classroom to see all the fun things they are learning and take some strategies and materials home to try on your own! All attendees will be entered into a raffle! Please scan the code to RSVP no later than February 5th.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXTZBxEzfczVfjTayxn2DgBXBuqa6Wwmt-l-WG_ybljTeAWw/viewform?usp=header

Pre-K 3

Hello Parents/Guardians,

Pre-K 3 is beginning Theme 5: Favorite Tales and Rhymes-Cuentos y rimas preferidos. Your child will hear the stories The Sky is Falling, Little Red Hen, The Enormous Turnip, The Lion and the Mouse, Three Bears' Rap, The Three Little Pigs, The House that Jack Built, and "Jack Rhymes." Letters for the month are Y, y, Z, z, A, a, C, c, E, e, G, g, P, p, Ch, ch, F, f, I, i, O, o, R, r, U, u, L, l, S, s, B, b, T, t, D, d. There is one more week of learning about AB, ABC, and AAB patterns and then we will begin to learn about one-to-one correspondence. In writing, your child is working on writing on topic, drawing a picture, and "writing" words which may be symbols and/or letter strings. Please continue to use the Family Connections paper that is sent home to continue to help your child at home! Reading each night is also a valuable experience. Thank you for your continued support.

Happy February, families! This month we will be finishing up our unit on Structures. Students will begin planning, designing, and building their creations. They will be able to make a toy, game or a structure of their choice. We will learn the last few letters of the unit Pp, Rr and Dd and continue with shapes and building sets to 10. With Valentine’s Day approaching, please keep an eye out for information regarding our celebration, donations, and the card exchange! We appreciate your continued support!

Kindergarten

Hi kindergarten families!

Happy February! We are looking forward to another month of learning and growth!

Math: We are working on addition/subtraction strategies. We are also working on solving word problems! Activity ideas: Find some items around your house for your child to add and subtract.

Social Studies/Science: We will be learning about weather and completing a weather journal. We will use our science skills to make predictions and be inquisitive by asking questions!

Skills: We have completed learning the letters and sounds in the alphabet! We have also spent a lot of time working on sounding out 3 and 4 sound words. We are moving on to digraphs in February. At this point in the school year, your child should be able to identify all 26 letters of the alphabet and produce all 26 letter sounds. Students should also be able to tap out CVC words. Activity ideas: abc flashcards, cvc word practice. If you need materials to practice with your child at home, please reach out!

Knowledge: We will be finishing up our Native American Unit and will then move on to seasons and weather. Ask your child what they have learned about the Native Americans!

We appreciate your dedication to your child's education! As a reminder, please make sure your child is on time each day to school. Attendance matters! Please reach out to the kindergarten team if there is anything you need!

1st Grade

Hello families!

Quarter 3 has started and First Grade is ready to fall in love with some new units/topics! We will be starting Domain 6 in our CKLA Knowledge, learning all about astronomy. This includes stars, planets, constellations, and our solar system. In Skills, we have started learning how to decode and read multisyllabic words and we are working on answering questions in complete sentences. Keep working on those spelling words at home! We just started Unit 7 in Math and will be learning how to solve addition and subtraction word problems using all of our strategies we have learned so far. In Science and Social Studies we will start looking at the past and present and how things have changed. We will also explore sound and light. Make sure to check your child’s folder for the new spirit day calendar!

Thanks!

The First Grade Team

2nd Grade

Wow, Quarter 3 is here! It’s all about 3rd grade business now. We are really looking forward to our next field trip on Wednesday, March 19, 2025 to the Baltimore Museum of Industry. We are looking for chaperones. So please take a moment to think about traveling with us to explore! Thank you for the love and support from our PTA helping to support our transportation! Please be on the lookout for future trips. As we move into Quarter 3 our Math focus is strategies of; how to measure, compare and estimate length in a customary/metric unit with inches, feet, and yards and between centimeters and meters.

* Learning the value of groups of coins or bills, use analog and digital clocks to tell and write time to the nearest five minutes and determine whether the time of an event is a.m. or p.m., These concepts can also be reinforced in their home community.

*We will go back to learning to use place value patterns to mentally add 10 or 100 to a 3-digit number and add 3-digit numbers with/without regrouping.

Literacy focus will be

Don’t hesitate to send us some pictures of all the extra learning you may do. What a great way to showcase home school and community building! Remember spelling and vocabulary words are sent home to help reinforce what we are reading during our Skills and Knowledge instruction. Please don’t hesitate to practice as much as you can. We are here to ensure a successful journey and we can only do this with your continued support. There is so much more we will learn this quarter.We want the best for or soon to be 3rd graders and will continue to push them to their best potential. Again we thank you for your love and support

~2nd Grade Team

3rd Grade

READING

The nonfiction Reader for Unit 5, Adventures in Light and Sound, consists of selections describing the science behind light and sound. Students will read about light sources, shadows, mirrors, reflection, refraction, lenses, and color. They will also study the characteristics of sound, as well as the human voice. Later chapters include information about light and photography as well as biographies of two famous inventors who worked with light and sound: Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. It is important that you discuss the characteristics of the biography genre and stress that biographies are nonfiction since they are factual accounts of people’s lives. Students will be given opportunities throughout the unit to demonstrate read-aloud fluency.

SPELLING

During this unit’s spelling exercises, students will review words with spelling patterns of /ee/ spelled ‘y,’ ‘e,’ ‘i,’ ‘ea,’ ‘ee,’ ‘ie,’ ‘ey’ and ‘e_e.’ For Lessons 6–10, students will review words with spelling patterns of /ae/ spelled ‘ay,’ ‘ai,’ and ‘ea.’ Finally, in Lessons 11–15, students will review words with spelling patterns of /ae/ spelled ‘a_e’ and ‘a.’ Students will have two Challenge Words and one Content word added to each spelling list.

You will also continue to teach dictionary skills. As this unit progresses, students should become proficient in the application of guide words.

GRAMMAR

In grammar, students will review a part of speech introduced at the end of Grade 2: adverbs ending with –ly that tell how an action takes place. They will go further in their study of adverbs by examining those that indicate when and where. Students will be introduced to conjunctions as a new part of speech. They will learn the meanings and usages of the conjunctions and and but.

MORPHOLOGY

During the morphology portion of the lessons, students will review the suffixes –er, –or, –ist, –ian, –y, and –al. In addition, students will learn the suffixes –ous and –ly. They will review how suffixes change the meaning of root words. They will also review how suffixes added to a word can change the part of speech of that word.

MATHEMATICS

This month our Mathematicians will be exploring fractions. Students will practice partitioning wholes into halves, thirds,and fourths. They will also use models and number lines to determine equivalent fractions. We will continue focusing on fact fluency. Students should be fluent with the 0s, 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s facts and able to recall them within 3 to 5 seconds. This is such an important skill. Please ensure they are practicing daily and completing the homework sent home weekly. Thank you for your support.

SCIENCE

As we begin the third marking period our Scientist will begin to analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago. They will be asked to make a claim based on those observations and use evidence to support their claim. Can’t wait to see how they grow as Scientist this quarter.

SOCIAL STUDIES

This month, we will begin our unit on economics. Students will distinguish between needs and wants as we explore some of the following questions. How do I make good economic choices? How do we obtain money and use it to get the things we need and want? Encourage your child to set a goal, create a budget and work towards earning money towards that goal.

4th Grade

Reading: Students will learn about the theory of plate tectonics and how it explains the presence of volcanoes, mountains, underwater trenches, ridges, and other geological features. Students will also study geological processes like rock formation, weathering, and erosion in order to understand how the earth changes over time and why it looks the way it does.

Writing: Students will review the stages of the writing process and engage in several short writing projects. In this unit, students will examine and explain similes; draft an informational pamphlet about tsunamis; write a wiki entry about a specific volcano; and create a descriptive paragraph about a type of rock or item in the rock cycle, incorporating literary devices they have encountered in previous Grade 4 units, such as alliteration, personification, and simile.

Math: Students will use visual representations to recognize equivalent fractions by exploring the relationship between the parts in a whole and the number of parts that represent each fraction. Students will use multiplication and division by the same non-zero whole number to find equivalent fractions. Students will use different strategies for comparing fractions with different numerators and denominators.

Social Studies: As we progress through 3rd quarter, students will learn and dive into understanding the American Revolutionary War.

Science: Students will explore and identify sources of energy (electrical, solar, etc.) and state their reasoning.

Field Trips:

We will be taking more field trips coming up. Please make sure that you are background checked. Please check with the office to ensure you are cleared.

Arlington Echo will be a day trip. We leave at 8 and will return at 4. Students will need to be picked up from school at 4. The field trip is scheduled for April 1st.

5th Grade

In February, 5th grade will be learning about the renaissance artists and scientists and writing. We will be writing informational paragraphs.

In math, we will be dividing decimals as well as adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers.

In science we are studying states of matter. In social studies we will be learning more about the effects of the civil war and reconstruction era.

We look forward to working with our students each and every day!

PTA

The PTA wants to thank everyone for joining us at our Winter Carnival/Dance on the 31st. Special thanks to all the staff that stayed to volunteer and DJ Henning, we could not have made this happen without all your support!

Friendship-Grams are on sale now! Cost is $1 each. Our next PTA meeting will be February 3, 2025 at 6:00pm. Please join us at 5:30 to chat with our Title One staff and share your thoughts and ideas for the next school year!

Here is a look at our upcoming events:

2/1 - 2/10: Friendship-Gram Sale, delivered on 2/14/25!

2/3-: Title One and PTA Meeting 5:30pm PTA Meeting @ 6:00 pm

2/4: Urban Air Spirit Night 4:00pm - 8:00pm

2/14: Bubba’s 33 Dine and Donate - All Day event

All flyers and information will be shared on the BPES PTA Facebook page, the app as well as flyers sent home. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at bpes_pta@yahoo.com.

Chorus and Band

Hello Families!

SAVE THE DATE! Brooklyn Park Elementary's annual Band, Strings, and Chorus Spring Concert will be on June 2, 2025, at the Chesapeake Arts Center! As always, the concert will start promptly at 6:00 p.m.

-Mrs. Israel and Mr. Henning

Media

New books have arrived!

Encourage your child to share their library book(s) with you.

Please remind your child to read their book(s), keep them in their backpack, and return them to the Library-Media Center when they are finished or on their Library Day! Kindergarten and Pre-Kindergarten are learning how library check out works and will start checking out books in the near future.

Mondays:

3-Reed

1-Czorapinkski

Tuesdays:

4-Richmond

2-Mason

3-Dacus

Wednesdays:

4-Alvarado

2-Mathiesen

3-Bonaparte

5-Hudson

1-Dehaney

Thursdays:

2-Byer

5-Williamson

1-Harrison

Fridays:

4-Willet

2-Nappier

3-Mason

5-Frank

1-Taylor

PBIS

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m9D0XpblrHN471KzL-manZKibqvzFSEx_Usj-i9kshY/pub

CSI

Our school has been designated as a Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) School by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), based on schoolwide performance and other criteria. In partnership with MSDE, Anne Arundel County Public Schools has provided a dedicated team to address the unique needs of CSI schools. This team works to support students and teachers through targeted interventions, data-driven individualized plans, professional development for teachers, and family and community engagement initiatives.

These efforts aim to create a supportive and effective learning environment that accelerates student achievement and enhances overall school performance. If you have questions about the resources and supports available at our school, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Together, we can ensure the success of every student.

Title I

• Virtual Winter Academic Series: Session #2
• Here is the electronic copy of Help Your Child Become a Math Detective! flyer.

• 4th Annual Parent Summit: SOARing to Success
• Here is the electronic copy of the Parent Summit: SOARing to Success flyer.

Counselor

What does a School Counselor DO?

I work alongside teachers and parents to help students develop

socially and emotionally, and to help remove any barriers to learning!

I Provide:

•Classroom lessons teaching social skills, how to take care of strong feelings, study skills, etc.

•Small group counseling

•Short-term individual counseling

•Consultation with parents and teachers

•Parent workshops

•Community resource referrals (including longer term therapy services)

•Schoolwide programming (Kindness Week, Harvest for the Hungry etc.)

Last year we introduced our Appreciation Station Snack Cart to our staff! The cart will be filled every Wednesday full of sweet and salty snacks and drinks to show our BPES staff just how much we appreciate them. This school year we are looking for families to sponsor a week by either purchasing snacks or making a $40 donation so the snacks can be purchased. We ask that donations are dropped off to the school by Monday of the sponsored week. Please consider signing up below! Thank you for helping our staff know how much we appreciate them!

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080D4BABAA2CA0FB6-appreciation

Five Star Parent

1. Builds a positive relationship with all staff members.

2. Dedicated to the BPES community.

3. Builds a partnership with their child's teacher. This partnership is based on trust, communication, and student growth.

4. Dedicated to preventing chronic absenteeism and chronic tardiness.

5. Respects and honors our community of diverse learners.

Emergency card verification emails have been sent. Please make sure you check and update your emergency contact information. The links are only active for 10 days. If you need assistance, please contact the main office at 410 222 6590.

Doors open at 7:40.

Students are dismissed at 2:25.

Late arrival/Early Dismissal

If your child arrives at school after 8:00, they are considered late. Please make sure they are at school prior to this time. Students need to be in their classrooms by 8:00 in order to be marked on time. If your child is late to school, or is getting picked up early, an adult MUST come into the building to sign them in or out.

Early dismissals must take place before 2:00 pm. The office is busy after 2:00, preparing for dismissal procedures, and will not be able to call any kids for dismissal after that time.

Below is the link for Before/After Care for families who need childcare.

School start times:

The doors will open at 7:40am for breakfast and community building. Instruction will begin at 8:00am. It is EXTREMELY important that all kids arrive on time ready to learn!

Walkers

Walkers will be dismissed at 2:25

Bus-Riders

To access BPES bus schedules, please click HERE

Car-Riders

We will dismiss car riders car by car. Please have your child's name on the hang tag so we can quickly call them to your car. Please do not park on 13th Ave during dismissal or arrival. It can make it challenging for people to enter and leave the lot.

Arrival

When students arrive they will pick up their breakfast and report to their homeroom. Teachers will greet students as they arrive.

Dismissal

At dismissal, walkers will be released. Following the release of walkers, car riders will be escorted to the cafeteria. Bus riders will be called as buses arrive.

Visitors

We will be planning several events this year where we will be inviting parents into the building. Unfortunately, we will not be able to allow parents to have lunch with their children in the cafeteria.

Student Birthday Celebrations

• Each student will receive a Birthday pencil and be acknowledged by the whole school on the morning announcements.
• We will celebrate all students' birthdays each month.
• It is very important to understand that food cannot be shared to celebrate. Please do not bring food to share with the class for your child's birthday. We have students with allergies and food sensitive health conditions.

Families can pay for their student’s meals online by going to www.mypaymentsplus.com.

At schools this year, breakfast will be free, and lunches will cost $2.75 for full price students.

Students will need to log in with their student ID in order to get their lunch. Please work with your student at home to help them memorize their ID.

Apply for Free or Reduced-Price Meals: Online Meal Benefit Application (MBA) (English and Spanish) - Link to online MBA – www.aacps.org/mealapplication. Applications must be filled out each school year, even if you qualified the previous year.