The Silverhawk's Nest

Silverhawk Families,

Happy March!

The end of the third quarter is quickly approaching! Until then, we will continue working hard to ensure our students are learning the curriculum they need to confidently “show what they know” on the upcoming AASA state assessments.

Please make every effort to have your child at school each day so they don’t miss out on important instruction and preparation.

Open Enrollment for incoming kindergarten students and new families is continuing this month. If you have a child who will be starting kindergarten next year—or if you know someone interested in joining our campus—please click the link below to complete the Open Enrollment process and feel free to share it with others. Open Enroll

March events are listed below for your convenience.

• March 2-6 - Read Across America Week
• March 6 - Literacy Night (4:30-6:00)
• March 12 - Spring Pictures/Kinder Preview Night (5:00-6:00)
• March 16-20 - Spring Break - No School
• March 27 - Quarter 3 Awards Assembly @9:00
• March 30 - AASA Testing Begins

As always, if you ever have any questions or concerns please don't hesitate to email me at christine.fitzsimmons@dvusd.org or you can catch me in the front parking lot at drop-off and pick-up.

Have a great March!!

Warm regards,

Principal Fitzsimmons

TAX CREDITS - Last Opportunity to Help Us

Silverhawk families,

If you are interested in donating Tax Credit money we would appreciate you donating it to our campus. We are in need of replenishing our recess and gym equipment. If you donate please make sure to mark GENERAL TAX CREDIT so we can use it for more than field trips. Thank you in advance for your help and support.

The Arizona tax credit program (A.R.S. 43-1089.01) allows a tax credit of up to $200 for individuals and up to $400 for married couples, filing jointly, in support of extracurricular activities. The tax credit reduces your tax burden to the state of Arizona, dollar for dollar.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR TAX CREDIT DONATION:

ONLINE at: K-8 & High School Online Donations

Your tax credit receipt will be mailed back to you. Your tax credit goes directly to the school you choose, not to the state or district.

Hello Bellair Families! Preschool is excited to do a little bit of cooking during the month of March now that we have wrapped up our unit on exercise. We are going to make butter, soda bread, and orange juice to fuel our bodies. We are looking forward to many spring crafts, Literacy Night, and more Dr. Seuss books than we can even read. There are so many fun stories that will help us focus on rhyming words, colors, letters, and our environment. Our focus in March will help us lead into our next study, Recycle, Reduce and Reuse! If you have any cardboard tubes we would love to take them off your hands. Please stay posted for our next update!

Welcome March/Spring!

IMPORTANT

Spring Gifted Testing is Complete

We did it! For those of you that had a student test, you should be getting the results of the CogAT (gifted test) prior to Spring Break from our district gifted services team. If you have any questions regarding the test results, please reach out: https://www.dvusd.org/departments/cia/gifted-servicescia/gifted-services-home

EMAIL:

GiftedServices@dvusd.org

PHONE:

623.445.5588

SPARK & Sage have resumed!

As mentioned in previous months, In SPARK & Sage, we continue using our new district resources from William & Mary and Jr. Great Books for grades 4 - 6. In grades 2 & 3, after our "Morning" or "Afternoon" meetings, we have been doing some fun SPARK challenges completing the STEM design process and learning to work together in groups.

More details…

SPARK

Grades 2&3 - We read Snowflake Bentley by Jaqueline Briggs Martin, which is part of the William & Mary/Jacob's Ladder gifted curriculum. Students answered "laddered" comprehension questions and then we enjoyed exploring different shapes of snowflakes and created our own patterns in February.

In March, we will finish up our cold weather/winter unit by designing a parachute from "Lookout Mountain." From there, we will move ahead and start a fun unit based on Rome. More to come on that in April.

When students are finished early with any challenge, I give them time for brain builders and/or brain flakes as well as time to play Set (3rd grade).

Sage Reading:

Grade 4 - We finished our literature study of the book, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Bail E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg at the beginning of February. Students planned, designed, and have now finished creating a "mini museum" based on the Metropolitan Museum of Art as described in the book. Each student got to pick a topic of interest to study for their space in the museum. Students have enjoyed this project as we relate what they're building to information in the book and outside nonfiction sources. These projects will be presented at the district gifted showcase in April. More to come on that!

We have now chosen novels based on interest in our gifted curriculum to read in small groups. We are incorporating the depth & complexity framework for each chapter answering questions based on the dimensions of our choice in our reading journals. (See pictures!)

Grade 5 - During our "safari" time away from the classroom during Tier II instruction, we are reading short stories in our Jr. Great Books series as we maximize our reading skills using the depth & complexity framework. This will continue to look the same for the rest of the school year, but we will explore various genres of literature as we do so. Our shared inquiry skills are getting much more refined as we experience the process. We've completed a vocabulary web from William and Mary curriculum with a challenge word of our choice (from Jr. Great Books). Students learned a lot about the analysis of different parts of a word with this activity. We are also fitting in time for Stories with Holes as much as possible.

Grade 6 - We have been reading the William & Mary 6th grade novel of choice, The Wednesday Wars, by Gary D. Schmidt. We have taken the approach of enriching our multiple reading strategies using the depth & complexity framework in a "book club" at the end of the school day with this book. As mentioned previously, students are required to complete a research hands-on project for this novel and have been doing so for the past several weeks. It is quite extensive, and due to our limited reading time together. This task has been chunked as we learn more information about the characters, setting, plot, etc. while reading. I will be working closely with Mrs. Michelski to give a grade based on this in quarter 4. We didn't get as much time to work together this past quarter due to prioritizing gifted testing, so will look to get this done in our final quarter together.

As always, please reach out if you have any questions for me. 😀

Best,

Brittany Balog, M.Ed.

Gifted Specialist

Traditional Academy at Bellair

3rd Quarter Awards Assembly for 3rd-6th graders will be on Friday, March 27th @9:00 in the gym. Your child's teacher will reach out to you to let you know if your child will be receiving an award for the 3rd Quarter.

Students who received Highly Proficient on last year's AASA testing will also be recognized at this assembly. Your child's teacher will reach out to you in regard to this, as well.

If you would like to volunteer in your child's classroom, or go on any field trips, you must go through Volunteer Training. We will be having Volunteer Training in room 608.

• August 19th @4pm
• November 4th @4pm
• January 13th @4pm
• March 10th @4pm

During our Early Release/PD Dates teachers will be reviewing student data and collaboratively working together to plan how to best support students throughout the school year.

• August - 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th
• September - 12th, 19th and 26th
• October - 10th, 24th and 31st
• November - 7th, 14th and 21st
• December - 5th and 12th
• January - 16th, 23rd and 30th
• February - 6th, 20th and 27th
• March - 6th, 13th and 27th
• April - 24th
• May - 1st, 8th and 15th

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based, tiered framework for supporting students’ behavioral, academic, social, emotional, and mental health. When implemented with fidelity, PBIS improves social emotional competence, academic success, and school climate. It also improves teacher health and wellbeing. It is a way to create positive, predictable, equitable and safe learning environments where everyone thrives. We use ‘students’ to refer to all children and youth in any educational or therapeutic setting (e.g., K-12 school, early childhood program, treatment program, juvenile justice program). Learn more about PBIS in schools, classrooms, early childhood programs and juvenile justice programs on those topic pages.

Our new PBIS Acronym is S.O.A.R. Silverhawks show Safety, Ownership, Achievement and Respect. Please help us to instill these behaviors at home, so we can all "S.O.A.R. to #Extraordinary Heights Together!"

Email: christine.fitzsimmons@dvusd.org
Website: https://www.dvusd.org/traditional
Location: 4701 West Grovers Avenue, Glendale, AZ, USA
Phone: 602-467-5700
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Traditional-Academy-at-Bellair-109175091218455
Twitter: @Trad_Bellair