AMS Peoria Advanced November Newsletter

The STINGER|December 2020

A Message from the Principal

Happy December Scorpion Families!

This will be another short month due to the Winter Break, so please make sure that your scholar is attending school unless he/she is sick. You all did a fabulous job helping us get close to our attendance goal of 95% for November. Let's keep our streak going and make sure that our scholars are attending the last 13 days of the first semester. Woohoo...Go Scorpions.

This has definitely been a roller coaster of a ride for the first half of the school year, but we are getting through this together. Due to the increase of COVID cases we will be starting out the the new year with Distance Learning. Please be on the lookout for more information to come from administration and your scholar's teacher. Please reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns.

Be safe and have a wonderful December Scorpions. 🦂🦂🦂

~Mrs. Fitzsimmons

FOR MORE INFO

🦂 Scorpion Reminders:

Please join us for Winter Spirit Week December 7-11th!

Holiday Headgear Monday

Wear your favorite holiday hat to school; Uniforms still required.

Candy Cane Tuesday

Wear your stripes!

Winter PJ Wednesday

Wear your pajamas to school; Tennis shoes still required, no slippers.

Tacky Sweater Thursday

Wear your “ugly sweater” or holiday gear to school!

Fuzzy Sock Friday

Wear your favorite winter socks to school; Uniforms still required.

Curriculum Highlight: 3rd Grade Math

Ms. Lydia Quince is leading the charge for 3rd grade math this year. Students are working to generalize their understanding of place value through 1000 and the relative size of numbers in each place. They use their understanding of properties of operations to perform multi-digit addition and subtraction with multi-digit whole numbers less than or equal to 1000. They round multi-digit numbers to 10 or 100.

Students are developing an understanding of the meanings of multiplication and division of whole numbers through activities and problems involving equal-sized groups, arrays, and area models. They will be starting their Study Island computer program soon, which offers supplemental math practice that can be completed both in class and at home.

Students are using properties of operations to calculate products of whole numbers, using increasingly sophisticated strategies based on these properties to solve multiplication and division problems involving single digit factors. By comparing a variety of solution strategies, students learn the relationship between multiplication and division. Students understand that rectangular arrays can be decomposed into identical rows or into identical columns. By working with arrays, students connect area to multiplication and justify using multiplication to determine the area.

By the end of 3rd grade, students should be fluent in multiplication and division within 100.

Students will be working on the following standards for mathematical practices:

Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
Model with mathematics.

Use appropriate tools strategically.
Attend to precision.
Look for and make use of structure.
Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

Professional Development

With students completing their NWEA Fall Tests last month, teachers are now completing data dives with their grade-level colleagues to take a look at the results for each section.

The NWEA tests are skills mastery and progress monitoring assessments that help teachers drill down to the specific skills each student needs to learn. Teachers see exactly what struggling students are missing and advanced students are ready to take on—then adjust instruction in the moment and monitor student progress.

Below are the Student Achievement Norms for each grade level for Reading, Math, and Language. Based on the Family Growth Reports that were sent home in November, teachers will compare student scores with the grade-level norms to identify gaps in learning and differentiate their future instruction to try and narrow those gaps before the next benchmark.

Student & Staff of the Month

Ms. Saniya Longoria

5th Grader

Saniya Longoria is ten years old and in 5th grade this year. Her homeroom teacher is Ms. Urquiza-Whitiker.

Her favorite subject is Science. She states "I like to have fun with it and learn new things about it. I may want to be a Scientist when I grow up."

Her hobbies include: singing, reading, drawing, and doing her homework. When I questioned her about it, she said "I really like doing homework!"

She said she especially enjoys reading comic books. Her grandmother works at a library and introduced her to comic books. She likes to look at the pictures and read as the drama unfolds.

Saniya is looking forward to a "happy school year" and improving in her math class. She recently got a B on her math test, but wants to get A's by the end of the school year.

Ms. Barbara Mack

Kinder Teacher

Miss Mack has been teaching for 30 years. She has taught or tutored Pre-K through 12th grade. She graduated from Arizona State University, in the first class to graduate from the west campus. She has had many different experiences in teaching.

Miss Mack started as a preschool teacher before moving on to substitute teaching. Her next experience came as a reading specialist to fourth and fifth graders, followed by several years as a Title 1 teacher using a mobile classroom to travel around the greater Phoenix area.

After that she acted as librarian, art teacher and middle school Language Arts teacher at a small school in South Phoenix where she later taught 3rd grade and Kindergarten. She also spent a couple of years teaching 1st grade.

After all of her various experiences she decided Kindergarten was the place for her and has been teaching Kindergarten ever since.

Ms. Zuri Avila

Paraprofessional

Ms. Avila joined AMSPA this year as a paraprofessional working most closely with Ms. Causland in KA. Although she spends most of her time in Kindergarten, she also assists with lunch, recess, and driveline, helping all of our campus routines and procedures run smoothly.

Zuri states, "I have always enjoyed working with children. Some of my previous experiences have been with preschool children, autistic children, and high school interns. I am working towards my early childhood education degree and I hope to have my own kindergarten classroom in the future."

When not in school, Zuri enjoys binge watching shows on Netflix and taking care of her turtles.

School Calendar Updates

2020-21Calendar:

December

December 2- Early Dismissal

December 9- Early Dismissal

December 16- Early Dismissal

December 14-18- Winter Spirit Week

December 18- End of 2nd Quarter, Report Cards Sent Home, Early Dismissal

December 21- January 3- Winter Recess (NO SCHOOL)

(14 instructional days)

Connect with the AMS Peoria Advanced Office Team

623-888-6697

Connect with Principal Fitzsimmons