Hawk Newsletter

Calendars Subject to Change

May 1- School Lunch Hero Day

May 4 - 8- Teacher/Staff appreciation week. Thank a teacher/staff member with a heartfelt thank you note.

May 5- Cinco De Mayo- Out of dress code in Mexican atire.

2/3 and students that scored HP on Galileo #3 from 4/5 Tucson Symphony Orchestra Field Trip

May 6- School Nurse Day

May 7- 4th grade field trip to NHS

May 8- 1st grade: Mothers Day Concert- 8am in the cafeteria

May 11- Board Meeting 4pm

May 12- 5th Grade DARE Graduation 9:00am

May 19-

Kinder Graduation 9:00am

5th Grade Transition 1:00pm

Pierson High School Graduation 6:00pm

May 20- WCMS Transition 6:00pm

May 21- Senior Walk through AJM 12:30pm

DSMS Transition 6:00pm

May 22- Last Day of School- Early Release @ 10:00 am. This is different than on the original school calendar.

NHS Graduation 6:00pm

May 26- Summer School begins for those signed up

Dear Hawks Families,

As we enter the final stretch of the school year, we are excited to celebrate all the growth and accomplishments of our students. This is an important time to stay focused, finish strong, and continue building positive habits that will carry into next year.

Teacher & Staff Appreciation Week: May 4–8
We are proud of our incredible teachers and staff who work tirelessly to support our students every day. We encourage families to show appreciation through positive actions and behavior at school. A kind word goes a long way, and a handwritten note is always greatly appreciated!

Important Dates to Remember:

• May 19th
  • Kindergarten Graduation – 9:00 AM
  • 5th Grade Transition Ceremony – 1:00 PM
• May 22nd – Last Day of School
  • Early Release at 10:00 AM
  • Students will participate in voting for next year’s school theme!

Even as the year winds down, learning continues every day. We encourage all students to maintain a strong growth mindset—keep trying, keep improving, and keep believing in your ability to succeed.

Attendance and punctuality remain essential. Being at school every day and on time helps students stay connected and continue progressing. At AJ Mitchell, we live by our motto:

“ABCs and 123s of Soaring – Always Be Climbing to Achieve Better Comprehension.”

Thank you for your continued support this year. We are proud of our Hawks and look forward to celebrating them in these final weeks!

With appreciation,
Christina Dang

Dear Hawks Families,

As we approach the end of the school year, May is a time for reflection, celebration, and continued growth. Our students have worked hard all year, and we are proud of their progress both academically and socially.

Finish Strong!
Encourage your child to stay focused, complete assignments, and continue putting forth their best effort. Remind them that learning doesn’t stop until the very last day!

Managing End-of-Year Emotions
Excitement, nervousness, and even sadness can come up as routines change and students prepare for summer or transitions to a new grade level. Support your child by:

• Talking about their feelings
• Keeping consistent routines at home
• Celebrating accomplishments, big and small
• 
  

Friendship & Positive Choices
This is a great time to reinforce kindness, respect, and positive decision-making. Encourage students to:

• Use kind words and actions
• Include others
• Solve problems peacefully
• 
  

Looking Ahead to Summer
Help your child maintain a sense of structure over the summer by:

• Setting daily routines
• Encouraging reading and learning activities
• Staying active and engaged

We are proud of our Hawks for continuing to grow and demonstrate a positive mindset. Thank you for partnering with us to support your child’s success!

Kindergarten News: May Edition

It is hard to believe we have reached the final month of the school year! We are so proud of the growth our students have shown, and we are finishing the year strong.

🎓 Kindergarten Graduation

The big day is almost here! We can’t wait to celebrate our graduates as they prepare to head off to first grade.

• Date: May 19th

• Time: 9:00 AM

📝 Final Push for First Grade

While we are celebrating, we are still working hard in the classroom. Our focus this month is mastering our remaining standards to ensure every student is fully prepared for the transition to first grade.

We are reviewing:

• Sight word recognition and fluency.

• Addition and subtraction strategies.

• Independent writing skills.

🏠 Home Connection

You are our best partners in finishing the year successfully! Please help your student stay sharp by practicing these two things daily:

1. Read Together: Aim for at least 15 minutes of reading each night. Ask your child questions about the characters and the "big idea" of the story.

2. Count Everything: Have your student count items around the house—cereal pieces, toy cars, or socks. This helps build the strong number sense they will need next year!

Thank you for an amazing year! Let's make this last month the best one yet.

First Grade News: May Edition

May has arrived! It’s a bittersweet time of year as we begin to wrap up our journey in first grade. We have a busy month ahead filled with celebrations and final preparations.

🌸 Mother's Day Performance

We are so excited to invite you to a special performance dedicated to the wonderful mothers and guardians in our students' lives. The children have been practicing hard and can't wait to show you what they've prepared!

• Date: May 8th

• Time: 8:00 AM

• Location: School Cafeteria

📚 Getting "Second Grade Ready"

Throughout this month, our primary focus is reviewing our core standards. We are revisiting key concepts in reading, writing, and math to ensure every student feels confident and prepared for the challenges of second grade.

Our areas of focus include:

• Reading: Increasing fluency and diving deeper into reading comprehension.

• Math: Strengthening addition and subtraction facts up to 20 and understanding place value.

• Writing: Polishing our paragraph structure and ensuring proper punctuation.

💡 How You Can Help at Home

To help your student finish the year strong, please continue to encourage daily reading habits. Research shows that consistent reading over the summer helps prevent the "summer slide," so let's keep that momentum going through the end of May!

Thank you for your continued support and for making this school year so memorable.

ELA - Over the next three weeks, our class will build knowledge about nonfiction. We will read different forms of nonfiction, including informational texts, narrative nonfiction, and opinion texts. The genre focus in this module is nonfiction. Discuss with your child

the characteristics of this genre. Ask your child to read to you each day and make time to read together. Look for texts that spark your child’s curiosity, provide interesting facts and details, and texts that have unique formats and graphic features.

Math - During the next thirteen days, our class will be learning about inches, feet, and yards, making measurements, using a ruler, and learning how to show measurement data in a line plot. In this module, we will also be learning the following math vocabulary: estimate, foot, inch, inch ruler, line plot, measuring tape, ruler, yard, and yardstick.

In third grade, our students are currently developing their understanding of multiplication. This includes learning basic multiplication facts, recognizing patterns, and applying multiplication to solve real-world problems. We are working on building both accuracy and confidence, as well as helping students understand multiplication as repeated addition and grouping.

In class, we use a variety of strategies such as visual models, arrays, skip counting, and interactive activities to make learning engaging and meaningful. Each child progresses at their own pace, and we encourage persistence and a positive mindset when tackling challenges.

You can support your child at home by:

• Practicing multiplication facts regularly in short, fun sessions

• Encouraging them to explain their thinking when solving problems

• Using everyday situations (such as cooking or shopping) to talk about groups and quantities

• Playing math games that involve multiplication

In ELA, students will be learning about the art of telling a story. We will be focusing on myths and folklore. We will also be focusing on recounting stories, which is one of our schoolwide goals.

As the year comes to a close, we are also completing our end-of-the-year benchmarks in order to prepare for the next school year.

Third grade is also getting ready to go on a field trip to the Tucson Symphony Hall on May 5th, 2026. Please make sure that they come prepared with water, a hat, and sunblock. Lunch will be provided for them by the school.

As we approach the end of the school year, we are incredibly proud of all the growth and hard work our 4th grade students have shown. Students are continuing to review and master essential standards that will prepare them for 5th grade, including finding evidence in the text, comparing two texts, identifying main ideas and supporting details, creating and comparing equivalent fractions, solving multi-step word problems, and using multiplication and division strategies. We are also excited to see how engaged students have been in their research project activities, showing curiosity and effort in their learning.

As we finish the year, it is important that students continue to meet expectations in all areas. Please talk with your child about maintaining positive behavior, completing their work, and showing respect in the classroom, during recess, and in special classes. Daily attendance and arriving on time are also very important as we wrap up the school year.

We are looking forward to attending the Water Festival at Nogales High School, which will be a fun and educational experience for our students. Please keep in mind that students who do not meet behavior expectations may be at risk of losing the opportunity to attend.

Thank you for your continued cooperation and support throughout the school year. Your involvement truly makes a difference. Let’s finish strong by encouraging consistent reading habits, positive behavior, and good attendance. We look forward to celebrating all of our students’ success as we close out a wonderful school year!

Please help us to remind the students that the school year is coming to an end, but the learning is not over. We still have a lot of lessons to share with our fifth graders to prepare them for middle school.

We will begin practicing for the D.A.R.E. graduation to be held on May 12th at 9:00 a.m., and the transition on May 19th at 1:00 p.m. Please make sure your child is at school every day, they need to know where their place will be for these important events

In ELA, we continue to dig deeper into Text Structures and learn more about how some of our reading stories can be used to find many of the components found in each of the different types of text structures. Students will use their learned knowledge to identify multiple text structures within the same stories.

We are reviewing grammar skills that some of the students struggled with earlier in the school year as well.

In math, we are going back and learning more about fractions and practicing how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide any given number. We will also dive deeper into decimals and converting fractions to decimals, as well as conversions of measurements.

We will continue learning more about the American Revolution in Social Studies.

Science ~ Students will be researching, planning, and executing their own Science Experiment. They will be choosing and then demonstrating through Google Slides, and then conducting their experiment for their classmates.