The Cape St. Claire Gazette

Dear Cape St. Claire Families,

Happy New Year! It is my hope that you had a restful break spent with families and friends making memories. As we start a new calendar year, we continue to be excited at the teaching and learning that occurs each day at Cape. We are seeing students making great strides academically and socially. It is awesome to see!

The month of January will bring the end of the 2nd marking period for students. We will communicate to families when report cards will be available for viewing in the Parent Portal.  Please note that January 16th and 17th will be 2-hours early dismissal as is customary at the end of the marking periods. 

Also during the month of January, students in grades 3-5 will be taking Quarterly Assessments in the areas of Literacy, Math, and Science. Teachers will communicate with families about the dates of upcoming assessments via the Rooms App.

Thank you for your support of our December Attendance Challenge. Our overall school-wide attendance was 94.1%. We were just shy of our 95% target. Please continue to support our school improvement goal of reducing the number of students who are chronically absent. Consistent school attendance makes a difference. 

Lastly, as the cold weather months are approaching, we will make certain to communicate plans related to school closings, possible virtual instruction days, and the like. You will receive notifications from AACPS as well as Cape St. Claire Elementary which will contain important information. Be on the lookout for updates and please read those email notifications. 

Thank you as always for your partnership! Your support is invaluable and appreciated more than we can express. Stay safe and stay warm! 

Educationally Yours, 

Tamara Kelly-Molock- Principal 

Rochelle Barrett- Assistant Principal

The School Counselor’s Corner

Classroom Counseling Lessons:

Kindergarten and First-grade lessons will focus on making good choices and good student behaviors. Second grade is learning about Empathy, recognizing and caring about other people’s feelings. Third graders are learning about perseverance. Fourth and Fifth grades are working on goal setting using the Xello program. 

Next marking period the whole school will have School Counseling Lessons on Personal Safety.  These lessons can be found here https://www.aacps.org/documents/services/assistance-for-families/school-counseling/required-elementary-lessons/626222 “Erin’s Law” requires that all public schools implement a prevention-oriented child sexual abuse program which teaches students in grades prekindergarten through 12th grade age-appropriate techniques to recognize child sexual abuse and tell a trusted adult.  Please feel free to follow the link or give me a call/email to review the materials. 

Toy Donations:

We would like to thank everyone for the most successful toy drive we have ever had!!!  We donated 12 boxes plus a big barrel full of toys to the Sharing Foundation to help needy families during the Holidays. 

Fifth Grade Parents: 

The AVID teacher from the Magothy River Middle is planning to stop by during lunch on Monday, January 6, 2025, to meet the 5th graders.  Mrs. Glennon will share information about AVID with the 5th graders and they will get to ask her any questions they have.  Here is the flier for the parent nights if you and your child are interested.  The application is linked in this flier and is a Google form. Applications for AVID are due January 17, 2025.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/17TMNPT7T2S1XiYoxXudsy7Wd81om6aid/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101119375000937409622&rtpof=true&sd=true

The middle school counselors will be visiting our fifth graders soon.  At that time the children will fill out a Course Selection Sheet and bring it home for your approval.  There will be dates for Parent Orientations to 6th grade soon as well.  I will keep you posted! 

Mrs. Bachman

hbachman@aacps.org

410-222-1685

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. 

PBIS: Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports

We are off to a great start this school year! Students are excited about our Soaring Seagull of the Day initiative. It is great to see the smiling, proud faces of the students who earn them daily.

Children can earn individual recognition with a seagull feather for following the school rules. Classrooms can earn pompoms for their Class Respect Jar and earn group recognition. Classroom celebrations are occurring and students remain excited about them. Our quarterly event will occur early next month; it is extra recess. That is always a favorite event with our students.

The PBIS committee oversees spirit days too. We will have spirit days on the second Friday of every month. Here is a list of the sprit days for this school year!

· January 10th: Dress in your best!

· February 14th: Wear Red

· March 14th: Decade Day

· April 11th: Superhero Day

· May 9th: Mismatch Day

· June 13th: Beach Day

We are excited to promote school spirit and positive behaviors through our PBIS program. Cape St. Claire is truly #TheFlockThatRocks!

Did you know that as many as one in three students in the country misses 10%, or about 18 days, of the school year? This year, let's work together to make sure all kids show up and participate every day possible. Being in school supports students' social, emotional, and physical well-being and provides students with opportunities to learn and reach for their dreams. Let's show up together and make daily attendance a habit.

Cape St. Claire Overall Attendance (As of December 20, 2024) 94.1%

PreK 92.4%

Kindergarten 94%

1st Grade 93.7%

2nd Grade 94.2%

3rd Grade 95%

4th Grade 95.4%

5th Grade 94%

Cultural Arts

Triple E: Global Studies

All grade levels are continuing to persevere through the projects listed below. Be sure to ask your students what they are learning about the success skills: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity, in our classrooms!

PK-Habits of Mind: Part 2

K-Tinkering with Tools

1-Galimotos

2-Make Way for Ducklings

3-Fantastic Contraption

4-Water Harvester

5-Ruins Rover

Recyclable Materials Needed:

• Paper towel rolls

• Toilet paper rolls

• Cereal boxes

• Printer paper box lids

We are still collecting recyclable materials! Please see the list above for much-needed items. If you have any to donate please send them in to your student’s Triple E teacher. 

Thank you!

Mrs. Bathras and Mrs. Shattuck

tmbathras@aacps.org jshattuck@aacps.org 

Music:

The Winter Concert was a success. I am so proud of all the students who practiced and worked hard for the performance. 

Kindergarten will be working on dynamics, high and low sounds, and upward and downward melodic contours by singing, moving, and playing instruments.

First grade will be reviewing dynamics, high and low voices, melodic steps, skips, and repeats through singing and playing instruments.

Second grade is playing a variety of melodic patterns that move by step, skip, repeat, and leap. The students will also work on the difference between staccato and legato while singing and playing instruments. A variety of dynamics will be used as the students sing and play instruments.

Third grade is working on a variety of forms and the treble clef note names. They will also be preparing to play the soprano recorder in the months ahead.

Fourth grade is reviewing melodic patterns and the treble clef note names. The fourth grade is preparing for the beginning of “Recorder Karate”. When a student passes a song, they will receive a ribbon to go on their recorder. Each song will get a little more difficult, and hopefully, all the students will achieve their goal of getting a black ribbon. 

The fourth-grade chorus will begin at the end of January. 

Fifth grade will be working on playing a melodic piece independently that incorporates steps, skips, repeats, and leaps. The major and minor scales will be introduced. We will also begin listening and identifying music from different style periods. 

The 5th grade chorus will sing at Magothy River Middle School on January 9th for the Cluster Chorus Concert.

Ms. Harrison and Mrs. Abbott

Media: 

Students have begun "The Hour of Code".  During our coding lessons, students utilize technology and problem-solving skills in our coding programs. Students will also begin refining their questions for research as well as engineering skills in maker space. We look forward to reading various types of tales in different grades such as folktales, fairy tales, trickster tales, tall tales, pourquoi stories, and cryptic tales. 

Mrs. Crocker and Mrs. Smith

Art:

Many of our art classes at CSCES are diving into our annual Art To Remember fundraiser! During this fundraiser, students will make a variety of beautiful Maryland-themed works of art. Towards the end of February, fliers will come home with information on how parents and families can purchase their student’s masterpieces on a keepsake item. 

Mrs. Morris’ Art Classes:

PK - ATR MD Crab

K - ATR MD Skipjacks

1 - ATR MD Black Eyed Susans

2 - ATR MD Baltimore Checkered Spot Butterflies

3 - ATR MD Thomas Point Lighthouse

4 - ATR MD Flags

5 - ATR MD Terrapins

Ms. Howe’s Art Classes:

K - ATR MD Skipjacks

1 - Finishing Snowglobe Families/ATR MD Black Eyed Susans

2 - Papier-Mache Snow People

3 - Value Winter Night Landscapes

4 - Finishing Emoji Agamographs/ATR MD Flags

P.E.:

December was a fast-paced month in PE. All grades completed a unit on basketball skills. During this unit, grades PreK, K, and 1st focused on dribbling skills while the students in grades 2nd - 5th grade learned about dribbling and shooting. The students worked hard and were respectful to each other throughout the unit. For the last week of December, we reviewed the overhand throw during some winter-themed cooperative activities. Thank you for all of your support and we hope everyone had a wonderful winter break!

Mr. Gillette and Mrs. Venturella

Pre-Kindergarten

In Pre-K, we continue to work on our Design and Build unit. We will explore with ramps, towers and arches. The stories we read will focus on choosing materials, tools and the importance of planning for structures. We will work on teen numbers and play missing number games. We will also revisit 3D shapes (cube, cone, sphere, rectangular prism). We will learn to identify the forms and sounds for letters Nn, Pp, Cc, Hh, Rr and Ww. The social skill we will focus on is choosing a problem-solving strategy.

Kindergarten

We hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing winter break!  We are excited for all of the learning that will happen in January. Please make sure your child has a change of warm clothes in their lockers. We look forward to our field trip to the theatre to see Rainbow Fish on January 28th! 

Language Arts: In CKLA skills we will be finishing up with Unit 5 and moving on to Unit 6. Make sure to take some time to read through the parent letter when it comes home-there is a lot packed into Unit 6. Students will continue to work on blending sounds to make words and will move on Consonant clusters. Students will also learn new trick words and will be able to decode several more words.  In CKLA knowledge, we will finish up our farm unit in January and move on to our Unit about Native Americans. Through a variety of texts, students will learn all about Native American culture, traditions, history, and tribes. 

Math: We are working with understanding addition problem solving as "add to" or "put together". Students will use manipulatives, draw pictures, act out, and describe addition problems. They should be able to represent a given problem with drawings and numbers, as well as match a given picture to a number sentence. The next unit will focus on understanding subtraction problem-solving. Please continue to work on counting and writing numbers with your children.

Science/Social Studies: "Students will investigate how people and things can be moved and the importance of safety when moving. They will recognize and compare people in the community as students discover the cultures and traditions of others."

1st Grade

First-grade students will be learning many new and exciting topics during January. As mathematicians, students will be exploring 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes. They will also be reviewing addition and subtraction strategies while solving word problems. During the science and social studies block we are studying the question, “How does culture connect people?”. We will be continuing to discover how various cultures eat, play, and celebrate holidays.  During reading, students will be diving into the Early American Civilizations: Maya, Aztec, and Inca. They will learn about where and how they lived their lives. Students will be focusing on reading and spelling words with r-controlled vowels (er, ir, ur, ar, or). They will be applying their knowledge regarding nouns, verbs, and adjectives while reading and writing about our new skills and topics. During the beginning of the third marking period, first grade will be participating in their annual Top Dog Reading Competition. Please look for more information to come later this month. As always, we are thankful for all of your support.

2nd Grade

We hope you all enjoyed your winter break with family and friends!  As we dive into 2025, we have a lot of exciting happenings.  

In our Knowledge block, we will be finishing up our unit about the War of 1812 and moving on to Cycles in Nature. In this unit, we will introduce students to many natural cycles that make life on Earth possible. Our students will increase their knowledge of cycles in nature by learning more about seasonal cycles, and by beginning their study of flowering plants and trees, animal life cycles, and the importance of the water cycle. We will work on note-taking and graphic organizers and by the end of the unit students will write an informational paragraph summarizing the life cycle of a frog.

During Skills, we will begin Skill Unit 4 where we will introduce more spelling alternatives for vowel sounds and three tricky spellings. The students will begin their new decodable reader called “The Job Hunt”, where we will work on text-dependent questions and utilize close reading approaches to dive deeper into the text. The students will learn more about persuasive communication, specifically how to incorporate persuasive writing as part of a friendly letter.  

In Math, we will begin Unit 6 with strategies to fluently subtract within 100. Students will focus on subtracting 2-digit numbers, and work towards regrouping 1 ten as 10 ones. We will use base-ten blocks to represent and solve subtraction problems without regrouping first and then moving towards regrouping along with other strategies such as: decomposing/ adjusting and/or using addition to subtract. 

Lastly, in Science and Social Studies we will continue our unit “We are Scientists”, where students will work in cooperative groups to describe the properties of objects: color, size, shape, texture, flexibility, and luster. We will then use these descriptions to classify items and identify career connections that use classifying. The students will create an investigation that determines the absorbency of different types of material. They use the data they collect to determine which material is best for our fun activity called “Desk Mop Challenge”.

We are looking forward to all the fun we have planned ahead!

3rd Grade

Third grade was excited to return to school after the busy holiday season and prepare to wrap up the second marking period!  We are only about halfway through the school year, but we have already seen tremendous growth socially, emotionally, and academically! 

• We are currently studying light and sound in reading, which has introduced students to many new vocabulary words such as opaque, translucent, transparent and refraction.  In our next unit, we will integrate history and reading to study The Viking Age. 

• In math class we have practiced real-world applications of math by calculating the area of various rectangular shapes.  In our next unit, students will be introduced to fractions and equivalence.  

• In science the students have been investigating predictable patterns in magnets, motion, and static electricity.  We will begin studying life cycles, group survival in animals, and heredity soon.

• In social studies we recently learned about the people in our community and how they contribute to our culture.  Next, we will study our economy and its resources, ending with an exciting cardboard engineering project!

4th Grade

Math - We are finishing our unit on division and will be transitioning into our fraction units! Students will decompose fractions in a variety of ways using visual models. Students will join and separate parts in order to add and subtract fractions with like denominators. Students will also determine equivalent fractions, and come to a generalization that multiplication and division can be used to generate equivalent fractions.  Finally, students will compare two fractions by reasoning about their size.

Resources- Math Unit Letters are linked below:

Unit 7 Family Letter

Unit 8 Family Letter

Math Fact Fluency:  Mastering multiplication facts will be crucial this year.  This is the #1 skill we recommend to help your child with at home.  

Social Studies - In January, fourth grade will be exploring the ways in which slavery shaped Maryland.  We’ll be looking at case studies of formerly enslaved Marylanders, many from Anne Arundel County to see what their lives were like.  

Science - Science hits close to home in the next few weeks as we discuss weathering and erosion.  We can spot examples of weathering (breaking down rocks and minerals) and erosion (movement of broken down rocks and minerals) on our very own playground.  Can you find examples in your backyard?  In your neighborhood? 

CKLA  (Core Knowledge Language Arts)-  We are beginning Unit 5 “Geology” this month. Students will learn about the theory of plate tectonics  They will also study geological processes like rock formation, weathering, and erosion to understand how the earth changes over time and why it looks the way it does.

Students will review the stages of the writing process and engage in several short writing projects including an informational pamphlet and a descriptive paragraph.  Unit 5 Family Letter

5th Grade

It’s hard to believe that January is already upon us and with it winter temperatures.  Please make sure that your child is dressed appropriately for the temperatures as we will continue to enjoy outdoor recess on days when the wind chill and temperatures are above freezing.  Students have completed their fourth unit in CKLA and have enriched their vocabulary and gained knowledge of fiction along with many concepts about knights of the Middle Ages.  Additionally, they have completed their first four-paragraph essay.  Students will be transitioning into the next unit in CKLA which focuses on the Renaissance.  In math, students are close to finishing unit seven, the division of whole numbers, and will be learning about the division of decimals in unit eight.  Please practice multiplication facts at home as this will make concepts easier to understand and strategies easier to apply in math.  Remember to visit our Rooms platform to access newsletters for information on units in both math and CKLA.  We are learning about the four spheres of Earth in science.  We continue to learn about the U.S. history of the industrial revolution in social studies.  Please remember to keep a check on Parent Connect so you can keep abreast of your child’s missed assignments.  The county policy is that students have the number of days they were out to make up missed assignments.  This is an effort to prepare your child for the demands they will encounter in middle school. 

Cape Families - Please keep in mind that domestic pets, such as dogs and cats, are not permitted on school grounds. Thank you for working with us to keep all students safe!

When visiting the school, please remember to bring your government issued photo ID